Learning outcomes

Brief description

• To what does the 'post' refer?
• How is it (un)connected to modernism?
• What are the ramifications for literary practice?
• Framing the device, the death of the author, the destructible text, the unwriting of the text: what have we learned from such techniques?
• In what sense has self-reflexiveness made the writing of fiction more interesting and perhaps even more potent?
• To what extent have the interrogations of self-reflexivity liberated the novel from certain obsolete conventions?

The module will focus principally on literary examples of postmodernism, but attention will also be paid to other areas of cultural practice, such as film, visual art, and architecture. The seminar pattern will follow a series of thematic interests, which centre upon the characteristic features of postmodern practice, as well as considering some of the theoretical essays of the principal exponents of postmodern theory.

Content

Seminar 1: Theories of Postmodernism

• Fredric Jameson, Postmodernism, or The Cultural Logic of Late Capitalism; J-F Lyotard, The Postmodern Condition; Jurgen Habermas, Modernity - An Incomplete Project

Seminar 2: Erasing Worlds?

• The Novel Undone: Thomas Pynchon, The Crying of Lot 49

Seminar 3: Deconstructing Fiction

• Paul Auster, The New York Trilogy

Seminar 4: Poetry in the Age of Electronic Reproduction

• Extracts from American 'L=A=N=G=U=A=G=E' Poets: Susan Howe, Lyn Hejinian, Ron Silliman, Bob Perelman, Charles Bernstein

Seminar 5: Desire, Simulacra, and Spectacles

• Angela Carter, The Infernal Desire Machines of Doctor Hoffman

Seminar 6: Feminism/Postmodernism

• Joanna Russ, The Female Man

Seminar 7: Architecture and Urbanicity

• Charles Jencks, The Emergent Rules; Robert Venturi, The Duck and the Decorated Shed; Paolo Portoghesi, Postmodern

Seminar 8: Magic Realism

• Salman Rushdie, Midnight's Children

Seminar 9: Other Worlds

• William Gibson, Neuromancer

Seminar 10: Postmodern and Film

• Ridley Scott, Blade Runner; The Wachowski Brothers, The Matrix

Bibliographies

There is currently a vast proliferation of texts and studies of postmodernism and its various impacts upon spheres of our society. There is a good selection of the principal texts in the Hugh Owen Library (and this is well supplemented by texts in the National Library). Additional bibliographies concerning individual writers will be compiled and given to students on a weekly basis. The Hugh Owen Library has large holdings on most of the authors represented on this course (including writers not mentioned but nevertheless prominent in postmodern culture).

Reading Lists

Notes

This module is at CQFW Level 6