Postmodern Techniques Research Articles

The Postmodern Individual in J.M. Coetzee’s Novels: Exploring Issues of Identity, Representation, Intertextuality, and the Self

This paper explores the postmodern elements in J.M. Coetzee’s novels, focusing on his treatment of themes such as representation, intertextuality, fragmentation, and ambiguity. Through a close examination of works like Foe, Waiting for the Barbarians, and In the Heart of the Country, the study demonstrates how Coetzee disrupts conventional narrative structures and challenges traditional ideas of truth and reality. The analysis delves into how Coetzee’s novels reflect the postmodern rejection of a singular truth, emphasizing the plurality of perspectives and interpretations. The paper also highlights Coetzee’s use of fragmented narratives to depict the instability of identity and meaning in a chaotic world. Furthermore, it explores Coetzee’s conscious deployment of intertextuality, where his works engage with and reinterpret previous literary texts, reinforcing the postmodern view that no text is entirely original. The paper ultimately argues that Coetzee’s fiction exemplifies postmodern techniques, inviting readers to actively engage in constructing meaning and questioning established narratives.

Sessiz Ev'in Çok Sesliliğinde Groteskin Sesini Duymak

ABSTRACT Having placed postmodern techniques at the basis of his works, Orhan Pamuk frequently benefited from these techniques in his second novel, Silent House, published in 1983. In this sense, the concept of polyphony, in which the narration is made through various sources rather than a single source, stands out in the novel. Polyphony enables the text to have a multi-layered quality; the narrator constantly changes within the text, thus the novel takes on a varied structure, as in Mikhail Bahtin’s concept of carnival. Moreover, this carnivalesque structure is supported by the descriptions of the summer house, which forms the main place of the text, and the events experienced by the three generations who came together in this house. On the other hand, in order to diversify the carnival, Pamuk also included the grotesque body, which is an integral part of it. The grotesque body, pushed out of society and condemned to live with the misfortune of its deformity, stands right next to the sublime, turning the text inquestion into a carnival venue. Based on this, this study will examine the position of the grotesque body in Silent House and its function within the text.

Negotiating the Postmodern Narrative Techniques in Life of Pi

The present paper attempts to analyse the complex and ambiguous phenomenon of the very movement of postmodernism in Yann Martel’s distinguished novel Life of Pi. Owing to the techniques and strategies employed in this novel, it can be called the true representative of postmodern fiction. As it breaks with realism and avoids rigid genre distinction, postmodernism deconstructs the wholeness and completeness associated with conventional storytelling ways. There is use of postmodern narrative as the novel is highly self-reflexive and Martel also experiments with intertextuality and historiographic metafiction. He weaves this novel withextraordinary and unusual events. By blending facts and fiction, he makes space for the readers for different interpretations. The contours of postmodern techniques such as fragmentation, metafiction, multiple points of view, advocacy of plurality of histories, and sheer rejection of grand narratives are used in this novel. Out here Martel delineates the chaotic condition of the postmodern world through Life of Pi.

Political Satire in Gabriel Garcia Marquez's "Death Constant Beyond Love"

Political satire has been invested in many forms such as cartoon, caricature, allusion, and T.V. shows. However, literature is one of the major domains the writers have invested in to criticize the wrongs and follies of the authority. The paper hypothesizes that Gabriel Garcia Marquez attempts to present a feminist presentation of the theme of political satire and to attain his goal he employs postmodernist techniques in his short story, "Death Constant Beyond Love". It aims at validating the hypothesis by following the postmodernist approach and character-analysis approach. It starts with an introduction to the subject and the writer. A discussion occurs followed by the conclusion that sums up the findings of the analysis.

“Zindagi aik naraz matan”: A postmodern study

Shahida Dilawar's novel “Zindagi aik naraz Matan” was published in 2023 by Akas Publications Lahore. In the story of this novel, three main characters include Anum (Anu), Ali (narrator) and Sarwar Javed The story is structured through these three characters. The contemporary social situation and the life spent in offices is the prominent theme of this novel. The use of postmodern techniques of fiction is very common in the novel Zindagi aik naraz matan, Which makes this novel postmodern . In this novel, the post-modern technique of fiction is the use of irony, palyfullness, black humour, faction, Metafiction, Historiographic Metafiction, Pastiche, Intertextuality, Paranoia ،Temporal Distortion, Maximalism techniques. In this paper, by studying these postmodern techniques, this novel has been declared as postmodern

THE 2000S: SIGNS OF THE TIMES IN IAN MCEWAN’S NOVEL, SATURDAY

This paper seeks to present Ian McEwan’s novel, Saturday (2005) in the prism of the new century, manifesting itself in the cluster of signs of the times. It discerns seven key attributes of the first decade which collectively outline the contour of the 2000s.The novel which spans a day is evocative of Ulysses and Mrs. Dalloway as it centres on the life of a middle-class 48 years old Henry Perowne - a successful neurosurgeon, and rationalist who moves through the streets of London in anticipation of a dinner with his dearest ones at the evening’s familial reunion. His dense observation of the time he lives in combines rationality and spontaneity.Perowne (and McEwan) catalogues signs of the 2000s. They include a fear of global wars in the aftermath of 9/11, which is recognised by both generations of the Perownes (of the 1950s and 1980s); growing awareness of the exhaustion of natural resources and its disastrous consequences; increasing secularisation in the post-Christian Great Britain; unprecedented scientific progress with technologies impacting the whole society; excessive mediasation in the digital era resulting in lack of scepticism.In the novel’s fictional world, the tension between private and collective is epitomised in the protagonist’s acknowledging the threat of unprovoked violence as well as accepting his own increased personal vulnerability and precarity as a mode of existence.Henry Perowne reaffirms domesticity as his response to the new global world; he also finds consolation in the profession of neurosurgeon as it provides a unique control of reality where he can give life to those who balance life and death.Typical of Ian McEwan is his reliance on the English literary tradition — first and foremost on the Modernist writing of Virginia Woolf and James Joyce, prioritising the individual perception of the world. The author also refers to the resources of the ‘Man-in-Society’ tradition, evoking the conventions of realistic writing which he combines with postmodernist techniques such as play with the reader, dramatic turns, hybridisation, emphasised intertextuality (from Shakespeare onwards) and indeterminacy.

Scrutinising the Moon: Randa Jarrar’s “The Lunatic’s Eclipse” Under a Postmodern Lens

This paper aims to investigate the short story “The Lunatic’s Eclipse” by the Arab-American Randa Jarrar and explain the postmodern techniques represented through the different functions of the moon. The study is qualitative research that employs postmodern strategies of magic realism, metafiction, carnivalesque, and intertextuality as the study's methodology. Through these strategies, the story blurs the boundaries between reality, magic, and fiction and unites them in one entity to highlight themes of freedom, happiness, and self-reliance. Therefore, the study relies on postmodern theorists' ideas and theories on these strategies, including Jean-Francois Lyotard, Linda Hutcheon, Franz Koh, Mikhail Bakhtin, Gerard Genette, and William Gass. The moon is also employed as a structure for the story and a theme that unites all the parts of the story together. The characters are also given names that mean different phases of the moon in Arabic. Jarrar uses the moon to resist stereotyping Arab women as weak and submissive.

POSTMODERN ELEMENTS IN TOM STOPPARD’S THE REAL INSPECTOR HOUND AND FERHAN ŞENSOY’S FİŞNE PAHÇESU: A COMPARISON

Postmodernism is a stream of thought that consists of a complex, multi-layered and multifaceted collection of phenomena, behaviours, and products. Postmodernism, which has different definitions by many academics, still exists as a concept that is not clearly defined today. It is possible to say it is an era of new thinking about literature and theatre. Postmodern drama emerged in the second half of the twentieth century when postmodernism began to prevail. It includes the self-awareness and self-consciousness of the society that changed with the conditions of the period. In this context, Tom Stoppard and Ferhan Şensoy, two successful playwrights who used postmodern features in their plays, have gained respect in our country and the world. This study is based on the idea that there is a close relationship between the styles of both playwrights. Thus, the postmodern techniques used by the two authors in their plays under consideration are examined. Accordingly, this article aims to define postmodern drama and the methods used in the theatre to show how postmodern elements such as metadrama, parody, cultural reference, wordplay, and absurdity in Tom Stoppard's The Real Inspector Hound and Ferhan Şensoy's Fişne Pahçesu.

Exploring T.S. Eliot’s The Waste Land as a Pre-postmodern Text

Despite being a groundbreaking literary work of Modernism, T.S. Eliot’s poem The Waste Land heralds the new era of Postmodernism that officially begins almost two decades after its publication. Although Eliot is one of the best representatives of modernist poets, his major work The Waste Land foreshadows some postmodern techniques and concepts. A seminal modernist poem of 1922, it can also be read as a postmodernist poem in the making. The present paper analyses some postmodern elements in The Waste Land and finds it a great epic of pre postmodernist thoughts. Its intertextuality, fragmentation, discontinuity in narrative structure, and deconstruction of meaning put The Waste Land closer to postmodernism.

Self-Reflexivity and Inter-textuality: A Study of Jostein Gaarder 's Sophie's World as a Meta-fictional Work

Jostein Gaarder (1952- ) is a Norwegian thinker and author of a great number of novels, short stories, and children's books among them Sophie's World. This novel deals with a number of issues, and uses a lot of postmodern techniques like meta-fiction. This paper is to explain the use of meta-fiction in the concerned novel to the readers as a postmodern element. Sophie's World, besides being a great philosophical one, it contains several meta-fictional elements like: the story has another story within, commenting on the story while telling it; the narrator exposes himself as both: a character and the narrator, and many more elements. The paper is divided into two sections and a conclusion. Section one deals theoretically with meta-fiction, self-reflexivity and inter-textuality as postmodern techniques. Section two is the analysis of the novel. At the end of the paper is the conclusion which will show the findings of the analysis. The paper end with the works cited.

On strangers sleuthing and flâneurs reading. The subversive power of C. J. Sansom’s historical crime fiction

ABSTRACT This article provides an analysis of C. J. Sansom’s Matthew Shardlake novels (2003–2018), considering the fact that both crime and historical fiction may be used to reconceptualise collective memory in subversive ways, and with important implications for both genres. I will attempt to demonstrate that Sansom’s narrative illustrates the shift in recent crime fiction from the crime itself to the historical conditions of its setting. As a result, Henrician England is presented as a very different context from that foundational time identified by Whig historiography, thereby questioning the very pillars of Englishness / Britishness that were such a central part of the country’s political climate leading up to the Brexit referendum. This is not achieved through the use of any postmodern technique. Instead, the reader perceives a sense of ‘neo-historical’ authenticity in Sansom’s fiction that results from its sensorially approaching the historico-geographical locus of the narrative through the eyes of its anachronistically cosmopolitan stranger protagonist (the lawyer Matthew Shardlake), whose walks and rides through the Tudor city turn the reader into a privileged flâneur, ultimately raising awareness of the subversive power of everyday life.

The Simpsons: A Postmodern Reading for the Position of an American Family

With analysing The Simpsons, the following paper aims at clarifying the ideology of postmodernity and how this literary work exposes and confronts them. The paper analyses the text according to the postmodern techniques and strategie; intertextuality, hyper-reality, and fragmentation. The Simpsons, a popular cartoon comedy in the USA and worldwide, is intended to show the values of damaged American families. The Simpsons’ postmodern techniques have established it as one of the most significant shows. Throughout The Simpsons, readers get to see a variety of characters. This work shows essentially every element of North American society. Finally, almost anybody who has viewed The Simpson the least once in his\her life will find that it presents predictions which have received the corresponding traction. The Simpsons has become a routine dependency on subconsciously predicting actual events.

Narrative Game in the Context of Ian McEwan’s Genre Searching

The article analyzes the peculiarities of narrative experiments in the novels by Ian McEwan, which aims to reveal the author's genre and poetical innovation. The writer's works demonstrate numerous variants of «multiple coding»,one of the most characteristic tendencies of contemporary literature. The deceptiveness of the genre specification of McEwan's novels lies in the fact that on the surface level they are perceived as a traditional realistic narrative with an exciting plot, detailed psychological characteristics of personages, deterministic motivation of their behavior, numerous descriptions, etc. At the same time writer's works demonstrate plot uncertainty, complicated narrative organization with changes in focalization perspectives, dialogues with readers, ingenious use of various fictional comments, and implication of metatextual reflections. Therefore, to a large extent, it is due to the narrative game the traditional genre matrix is changing, filled with new meanings and possibilities. One of the productive methods of complicating the plot and narrative is the inclusion in main text a number of nested fictional texts and numerous references to classical and modern literature works. The combination of the principles of classical poetics and postmodern techniques opens up a way beyond the purely «playful» function of narrative experiments, makes it possible to pose important social, cultural, moral and philosophical problems of nowadays, and contributes to the expansion of the genre paradigm of modern novel.

POSTMODERN PARODY AS ONTOLOGIZATION OF REALITY (BASED ON THE STORY BY D. BARTHELMY "A SHOWER OF GOLD")

The article examines the problem of postmodern parody from the point of view of its ontologizing potential, namely the interpretation within its limits of the problem of the subject. The concept of ontologization is interpreted in the tradition of the opposition to the paradigm of the philosophy of presence to extra-subjective versions of ontology, in particular the postmodern concept of intertextuality. The actualization of the parody concept as a formative tool along with the explicit or implicit accentuation of the integrity of the world picture is interpreted as a search for metaphysical grounds for the aesthetic system of postmodernism and D. Barthelemy's poetics. The article substantiates the philosophical aspect of the interpretation of parody accepted in the scientific literature as a mode of organization of the structure of the text and the form-content of the text in general for postmodern aesthetics. The universal nature of parody as an interpretive optics and postmodern technique of textual collage for literature in the conditions of the visual turn of the 20th-21st centuries is outlined. It has been found that the use of the collage technique in the form of cataloging reality as its reformatting is inherent in the poetics of D. Barthelemy. It is shown that parody for the writer is a formal and substantive principle, an artistic and aesthetic instruction, and not just a technique. The demonstrativeness, or "nakedness" of the parody is achieved by changing phrasal modes, alternating dialogues and descriptions, and visualizing the action. The structural levels of parody overlap both at the formal intertextual level and at the level of numerous pretexts and supporting semantic and symbolic series. Therefore, the transgression of parody manifests itself through the unity and separation of the coder and the decoder at the moment of forming the ethos of the fragmented text as its experience. It is concluded that grotesque and parody can be considered as synesthetic sense-generative models of postmodern literature. Parody as a vital receptive and cognitive form can ontologize the subject of the text. The grotesque is a paradoxical, finalized, objectified entelechy of parody, which is practically never ontologized and does not acquire features of subjectivity. Postmodern parody reformats the subject of the narrative and the text as a formal structure, thus giving it additional semantic dimensions.

ЕМОТИВНА КРЕАТИВНІСТЬ ЯК БАЗОВА ХАРАКТЕРИСТИКА КОМІЧНОГО ЕКО-ДИСКУРСУ

This article focuses on the ecological approach in comic discourse which aims at analyzing the interinfluence of language environment and person’s environment, regulated by emotions. It is proved that violation of norms (language, logical, ontological, valorative) in eco-discourse is the key factor of paradoxicality, which is a norm for humour. Thus, the essence of comic eco-discourse lies in its variation. We conclude that flexibility in comic eco-discourse depends on creativity of a discourse identity. Creativity presupposes charisma, talent, inspiration, intention to create something unique, wit etc. In our work a creative discourse identity is the postmodern American writer-humorist Dave Barry. The author’s linguocreativity finds expression in the language game – postmodern technique of comic. Dave Barry’s postmodern texts include: incongruent combination of a title and a picture, violation of graphical norms, specific book cover with a self-ironic photo of the author, usage of the intertextual elements (allusions, parodies, reminiscences, quotes etc.). Scientific research demonstrated the interaction of Dave Barry as a discursive identity with the world that surrounds him through the medium of the comic. The comic author tries to improve the surrounding world by non-canonical variation of the comic means, and thereby contributes to the ecology of discourse.

Sadık Yemni’nin Nazarzede Kliniği Romanında Postmodernist Unsurlar

Postmodernism, which has not been fully agreed on in its definition and boundaries, has become an art movement that is increasingly utilized in Turkish novels after 1980 due to some editing techniques, perspective, language and expression possibilities it offers to writers. Elements such as metafiction, intertextuality, deconstruction, irony, play, fantasy, simulation, pluralism, which are frequently seen in the works after 1980, required to approach the works with the techniques and perspectives imposed by postmodernism. However, it would be wrong to call every work that has these features a 'postmodern work'. The specified features should be decided within the general context of the work. "Postmodernism", which gains meaning with the "post" suffix that precedes modernism, has been considered both as a "continuation of modernism" and as a "reaction to modernism".
 Nazarzede Clinic novel, written by Sadık Yemni to criticize the world that has lost its meaning in which modern people live, is a remarkable work with its postmodern techniques and language. In the narrative, in which imagination and reality are intertwined, how reality is distorted/distorted in our age is reflected, and the collision of "postmodern reality" and "truth" with the techniques of postmodernism is conveyed to the reader. In this study, where data was collected through document analysis, the reflections of postmodern elements on the language in the novel Nazarzede Kliniği were also tried to be determined. In our study, Sadık Yemni's ways of using the techniques of postmodernism (fantasy, simulation, intertextuality, irony, pluralism, pop-art, deconstruction in language) and "tradition", which is the representative of "truth", were examined by giving examples from the work.

David Lindsay Abair and Jeanine Tesori’s Shrek the Musical

Postmodernism is an intellectual movement that characterizes by scepticism and fragmentation. Postmodernist writers return to traditional fairytales to question and challenge their norms and meanings. Shrek the Musical is a play based on classic fairytales of Rapunzel and Beauty and the Beast. Shrek the Musical will be studied according to postmodern techniques and strategies. They are many such as deconstruction and intertextuality. This play will be analyzed according to Kevin Paul Smith's method of intertextuality. This method traces the elements of fairytales in postmodernist literature and their unique alterations by using deconstruction theory that shows the false hierarchies and the false values upon which these classic tales are built.

Rethinking the pedagogy of dance pedagogy

ABSTRACT Many graduate dance programmes require a pedagogy course to ensure that graduate students, who are future faculty, have the capacity to successfully educate the next generation of dance practitioners. The majority of graduate dance programmes in the United States prioritise Western theatrical forms, yet increasingly there is a call to decolonise dance curricula by broadening the scope of dance forms present in degree programmes. For this to happen, graduate programmes must make space for students to rigorously develop as postsecondary dance educators. In graduate teaching courses, this requires a shift away from ‘best practices’, which may unintentionally privilege Western constructs of dance and pedagogy, and towards cultivating ethical approaches for dance teaching that reflect teachers’ personal and cultural values, the aesthetics of a given dance form, and the community of students being taught. Using an autoethnographic approach in combination with qualitative content analysis, this article examines a dance educator’s journey revising her approach from one that instills ‘best practices’ for teaching modern or postmodern dance techniques to a model that develops graduate students’ competencies as ethical dance educators and embraces a range of dance forms. This pedagogical shift is requisite for approaching equity in tertiary dance education.

Offspring of a virgin’s womb

Robert Antoni’s Divina Trace has not yet found the wide readership that might be expected of the winner of the Commonwealth Writers’ Prize, perhaps because it does not conform to its readers’ expectations of a Caribbean novel. And yet it is of particular relevance to the legacy of indentureship and the East Indian presence in Trinidad and to the relationships among the different ethnic groups on the island through its central concern with a black madonna on a fictional island unmistakeably resembling the Divina Siparia worshipped by Catholics or the Hindu Siparia Mai. This essay examines the author’s postmodern techniques with particular reference to his treatment of sexuality, stereotypes, the grotesque and religious themes to discover what could be the significance of the idea of the Virgin and her representation in the black madonna. In doing so it engages with Deleuze’s ideas on repetition to investigate the relationship between storytelling and reality, and the nature of the creative imagination.

Genre discourse of Lesya Romanchuk’s prose

The article considers the genre identity of Lesya Romanchuk’s prose. It is shown that the novel of the Ternopil writer is an original phenomenon of modern Ukrainian literature, insufficiently studied in the context of women’s writing. Thus, the need to deepen scientific ideas about the genre nature of women’s art on the example of novel text creation by Lesya Romanchuk is obvious. This is the relevance of our article. The purpose of this study is to investigate Lesya Romanchuk’s prose through the prism of genre dominance. Its achievement involves solving such specific tasks: to outline the creative individuality of Lesya Romanchuk; identify the genre features of melodrama in the novel of the writer; to comprehend the poetics of the postmodernist game in her novels; Analysis of the novel cycles “Do not leave…”, “Blooming thorns”, “City of dwarfs”, “Gravity”, novels “Knights of Love and Hope”; andshow the modernist thinking of the writer with elements of postmodernism. The process of diffusion of genre constructions: love, melodramatic, psychological, fantasy and other types of novel is understood. In particular, it determines the influence of modernist poetics in the melodramatic book series “Don’t Leave…”; the typological features of the fantasy novel are outlined using the example of the novel “City of Dwarfs”, which is characterized by intriguing events, mysticism, bizarre intertwining of the tragic past with partly farcical present; signs of postmodernist thinking of the writer were revealed in the cocktail novel “Gravity” (postmodernist techniques of intertextuality and game means, internal focalization, film editing, chronotope, poetics of dreams, etc.). The scientific novelty of the research is that in the article an attempt is made to generalize the genre features of Lesya Romanchuk’s novels, to find out the relationship between tradition and innovation in it. It is important that the analysis of the genre specifics of the author’s “female” writing, the structure of female images in the novels “Do not leave…”, “Blooming thorns”, “Dwarf City”, ‘Gravity” and others is carried out through constant and variable features of the writer’s artistic style and experimental nature.