Down in the Metamodernist Plain: Tracing a Twenty-First-Century Structure of Feeling in the Reception of NW and How to Be Both

Abstract

Abstract This article investigates how the manifestation of the structure of feeling labeled “metamodernism” by academics is recognized and interpreted by readers outside academia, represented by reviewers in established (print) media and on personal blogs and online platforms such as Goodreads. It focuses on the question of how two contemporary British novels (Zadie Smith's NW and Ali Smith's How to Be Both) that have been explicitly discussed in relation to metamodernism by literary scholars are read by readers who do not participate in the current academic debate about the supposed demise of postmodernism and who may not be familiar with the theorization of the new cultural dominant. The aim is to discover how readers recognize, interpret, and describe the novels’ processing of the legacies of modernism and postmodernism in an effort to move beyond both—a characteristic of literary metamodernism according to the scholars working in the field. The authors believe that a qualitative investigation of the reception of the two novels will advance the (academic) discussion aimed at conceptualizing metamodernism as well as contribute to a deeper understanding of the structure of feeling itself.