Postmodern Writers Research Articles

The Legitimacy of Liberal Feminism in Preeti Shenoy’s Select Texts

Postmodernism is a philosophical movement that comprises many perspectives. Feminism is a postmodern perspective and deals with all genders having equal rights and opportunities. Liberal feminism is one of the branches of feminism. Liberal feminism is concerned with women and their suffering, especially how they overcome all the impediments and make decisions independently. The aim of the study is to delve into the postmodern perspective of liberal feminism in Preeti Shenoy’s selected texts, The Secret Wish List (2012), Tea for Two and a Piece of Cake (2014) and It Happens for a Reason (2014). Preeti Shenoy is a famous Indian postmodern writer, and her contributions to liberal feminism cannot be denied. Liberal feminism is part of the feminist movement; it deals with women protagonists and their suffering. From those sufferings, they liberate and take all the decisions independently. Liberal feminism elucidates women empowerment. The precursors of liberal feminism and distinguished thinkers associated with the movement include Mary Wollstonecraft, John Stuart Mill, Susan Moller Okin, Martha Nussbaum and Zillah Eisenstein. The present study has adopted the elements of liberal feminism as presented in their works. The methodology of the study has adopted the concepts of liberal feminism such as moral theory, theory of justice, advocating educational and social equity for women, constructing a theory of capitalist patriarchy and socialist feminism, and capability approach. These theories substantiate the aspects of liberal feminism as manifested in Shenoy’s selected works. The results of the study are evaluated with other studies considering liberal feminism. Keywords: Liberal Feminism, Suffering, Empowerment, Patriarchy, Justice.

A‘mâk-ı Hayâl Romanında “Mise En Abyme”

In heraldry “mise en abyme” is described as a smaller shield bearing the same ensign inside the big one, and it literally means “to put in the infinite abyss”. André Gide introduced mise en abyme to literature inspired by the effect of reflection and depth in the visual arrangement of heraldic. He expanded the framework of the concept with different contexts of “picture within a picture” and “play within a play” and provided examples of mise en abyme as a literary technique in his novel The Counterfeiters. Gide's placement of smaller units representing/reflecting the whole in the narrative and his inclusion of the process of writing the novel as a theme in the fiction also influenced the literary views of the New Novelists and postmodernist writers. The works of many researchers such as Claude Magny, Lucien Dällenbach and Marcus Snow have brought about the emergence of different characteristics of mise en abyme and the expansion of its conceptual framework. In this study, the traces of the term mise en abyme in Şehbenderzâde Filibeli Ahmed Hilmi's novel A'mâk-ı Hayâl, are followed. The connection between microstructures and macrostructure in the novel, showing a helispherical organisation in terms of its form and content, has been analyzed. The novel, telling the story of Râci's journey to the truth to get rid of the crisis of faith into which he falls, is analyzed by considering the different features of mise en abyme such as reflection, repetition, resemblance and a part-whole relationship. The structures setting by Ahmed Hilmi in the centre/heart of A'mâk-ı Hayâl are analyzed.

Деструкция как важнейший принцип организации художественного мира Владимира Сорокина

Goals. The article analyzes the concept of destruction as a key tool of postmodern poetic text, examines the role of destruction as an organizing principle of Vladimir Sorokin’s artistic world, traces the evolution and transformation of destruction in his works. Materials. The paper investigates works of various genres (and periods) that most vividly characterize poetics of a postmodern writer, namely: The Month in Dachau (short story, 1990), Blue Fat (novel, 1999), The Snowstorm (novella, 2010), Doctor Garin (novel, 2021). Results. The work identifies specific features inherent to each of the latter, provides a general review to further conclude that essentials and mechanisms of destruction in discursive practices of the writer have experienced significant changes in recent decades.

UNDERSTANDING “REALITY AND ILLUSION THROUGH POST MORDERN DRAMA OR HOW THE REAL IS INHIBITED BY THE ILLUSION IN THE WORKS OF SAMUEL BECKETT AND TOM STOPPARD

The concept of free- will has been into question for years as to what governs the functioning of each and every individuals lives. Is it an illusion that confers our actions or is it a reality of our own decisions that make us live and suffer. The modern and postmodern writers have conferred their own justification via the theories of various philosophers and theorists. Shakespeare chooses to pursue Socrate’s philosophy of individualism or how a person should live while other’s belonging to the post modern era rely upon Nietzschi’s philosophy contemplating the meaning of values and their significance to human existence.

The pragmatic study of metafiction in Preeti Shenoy’s ‘The Secret Wish List’ and ‘It Happens for A Reason’

This study aims to spotlight the postmodern tendency of metafiction in Preeti Shenoy’s selected texts. Metafiction is self-conscious in relation to language, literary form, and storytelling in fiction. This form of fiction accentuates its construct and reminds the readers to be aware of a fictional work. Shenoy is a noteworthy postmodern writer, and her famous novels are ‘The Secret Wish List’ (2012) and ‘It Happens for Reason’ (2014). These two novels exhibit the subject of postmodern metafiction through her writings. In these novels, the protagonists overcome their family doctrines to fulfill their wishes. The method of study adopted the metafiction theories proposed by Mark Currie, Patricia Waugh, and Linda Hutcheon. It highlights Shenoy’s texts that represent the elements of metafiction through the protagonists. Using various theories related to postmodern metafiction, the view of metafiction in the texts is substantiated and explored. The postmodern perspective of metafiction is explored in Shenoy’s texts and analyzed with metafiction theories. The study results are compared and discussed with other studies and contemporary texts concerning metafiction. The findings show that metafiction is applicable in the texts of the two novels by Shenoy. She projects the aspects of metafiction in her works through her writing, especially narration, both fiction and reality.

Narrating Individual and Cultural Identity in Julian Barnes’s England, England

The conception of culture and identity has seen variations with the passage of time. Postmodern writers and thinkers do not consider them fixed or stable entities but fluid and fragmented. In the past they were treated as centered and fixed but in present conflicting scenario they are supposed to be decentered and deconstructed. In postmodern world, when each and everything is tinted with the effect of science and technology, contemporary generation is imbibing a new spirit of materialism. The more they are developing with the help of technology the less they are finding solution and satisfaction. Advancement of science and technology has coloured each and every object of contemporary era and projected them as mere objects of marketisation. This comodification and marketisation of objects has reached to such level that everything has lost its original meaning and value. It becomes obvious that culture and identity are not untouched by this effect. The more we are advancing towards technological development the more we are losing the original ground of ancient meaning and value. Julian Barnes entertains and mocks this idea in his novel England, England in which Barnes’s ambitious mission is search for individual identity of the English characters and cultural identity of England.

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.

Поэтика и эстетика творчества Ш. Бодлера и его коммуникация сквозь века с писателями- постмодернистами XXI века Ф. Бегбедером и Б. Вербером

The article deals with the main features of poetics and aesthetics of Ch. Baudelaire's work, entering into communication with modern postmodernist writers through the centuries. These principles of cultural dialogue, poetics and aesthetics include dualism, supernaturalism, the principle of playing with the reader, escapism to the imaginary country of Icaria, oneiric and thanatological motifs, the peculiar chronotope of the city. The worldview principles of the work include romantic pessimism, sleepwalking, dandyism and escapism.
 Contemporary French postmodernist writers B. Werber and F. Beigbeder are followers of the poetic heritage of Charles Baudelaire. In his novels one can find quotations from Baudelaire's Flowers of Evil, the author enters into a communicative dialogue with the French poet, some fragments of them even serve as epigraphs to his works. Werber's novel "The Sixth Dream" also contains direct references to the poetry of Baudelaire. 
 In B. Werber's Thanatonauts presents the themes of death, sleep and escapism in the compositional form of the journeys of the Thanatonaut scientists into the "space" of death. The theory of supernaturalism is embodied in the cycles of novels "About Angels" and "About the Gods", where the man appears as a decider of the fate of planets with an alternate reality. His colourful postmodern neo-mythological novels weave together different forms of art: painting, architecture and music. 
 In the works of F. Beigbeder widely represented the image of modern cynical urban dandy. The protagonist of his novels "99 Francs" and "Ideal", "The Man Who Cried Laughing", "Stories on Ecstasy" is a product of a consumer society era of postmodernism. He is carefree, cruel and amoral. His craving for escapism into a dream world is expressed in his infatuation with illegal substances.
 The work of Werber and Beigbeder encapsulates the dualistic principle of Baudelaire, Werber's characters strive for spiritual perfection, while Beigbeder's characters engage in carnal pleasures and self-destruction. Werber and Beigbeder are the successors and heirs of Baudelaire's poetics, expressed in sensual aestheticism, numerous allusions, eclecticism, supernaturalism, an interest in the afterlife and the poetics of sleep.

HOW TO COPE WITH POSTMODERN TEXTS: TEXTUAL ANALYSIS OF INTERTEXTUALITY, PARODY, AND PASTICHE IN READING POSTMODERN TEXTS

This work explores how postmodernism has developed its own literary style reflecting the social, political, religious as well as philosophical and intellectual mood of the era. Postmodern texts have been created and recreated out of a blend of varied texts from previous periods, and they succeeded in creating a more conscious and questioning audience. Throughout the postmodern period, readers replaced authors and writerly texts replaced readerly texts. Literary texts began to be deconstructed according to the notions and theories of scholars and philosophers such as Roland Barthes, John Barth, and Jean-François Lyotard. In an attempt to succeed in producing new texts, postmodern writers established a sort of textual relationship between metanarratives and little narratives, applying intertextuality that is in a close interrelation with parody and pastiche – two complicated terms often miscible to one another. This study seeks to clarify the meaning of postmodern literary works by highlighting some postmodern literary devices such as intertextuality, parody, and pastiche in The French Lieutenant’s Woman by John Fowles, Night Train by Martin Amis and The Crying Lot of 49 by Thomas Pynchon.

Revisiting the Elements of Postmodernism in Salman Rushdie’s Shame

Postmodern literature is thought to be typically anti-traditional and anti-foundationalist. It can be said that the major body of postmodern literature is thought to have started from the 1950s onwards. The major postmodern literary features are metafiction, self-reflexivity, intertextuality, writerly text, hybridity, magical realism, foreshadowing, irony, parody, anti-novel, anti-hero, fabulation, surfiction, hyperreality, use of language games etc. The prominent themes in postmodern literature are such as crisis of identity, cultural hybridity, experiences of migrants and their feeling of alienation, the general feeling of rootlessness. Postmodern fiction also emphasizes the disbelief in God as well as the disbelief in the conventional notions of the unified or coherent individual. Salman Rushdie has been studied and researched as a postcolonial writer as there are obvious postcolonial themes in his novels. But we can also study him as a postmodern writer. The paper makes an attempt to discuss the postmodern literary concept of meaningless of life as prevalent in Rushdie’s Shame and to put forth Rushdie as a postmodern writer.

Rushdie’s Shalimar the Clown a Postcolonial Representation of the Past India

Salman Rushdie is one of the most important postcolonial writers in English literature. Through his literary contributions, he ushers in a new era of postcolonial literature. Rushdie is a world-renowned novelist whose outstanding works have garnered him accolades, thrills, and controversy throughout his illustrious career. Several Indian authors, including Amitav Ghose and Rohinton Mistry, have been greatly influenced by his unquestionable creativity. As one of the world’s most controversial and provocative contemporary novelists, Salman Rushdie stands out. Postcolonial and postmodern writers like Gabriel Garca Márquez, Günther Grass, Milan Kundera, and Jorge Luis Borges were considered to be among his contemporaries during the 1980s and 1990s. Allegory, multiculturalism, magic realism and other postcolonial techniques are used in Rushdie’s works to create alternative views of the colonial situation in a postcolonial context.

Çoğuldizgeye göre postmodern yazının oluşumunda çevirinin rolü: Patrick Süskind’in postmodern eseri “Koku”nun dizgeye katkısı

Mevcut çalışmada Türk edebiyat tarihinde postmodern yazının oluşumunda çevirinin rolünü genel hatlarıyla saptamak amaçlanmaktadır. Özelde ise Alman yazar Patrick Süskind’in çok ses getiren ve birçok dile çevrilen postmodern eseri Koku, Bir Katilin Hikâyesi’nin (Das Parfum, Die Geschichte Eines Mörders) Türk postmodern yazın dizgesine katkısı tartışılmaktadır. Tüm bu incelemelerin kuramsal art alanı, İsrailli araştırmacı Itımar Even Zohar’ın geliştirmiş olduğu çoğuldizge kuramına dayandırılmaktadır. Türk edebiyat tarihindeki postmodern çeviri yazın ve söz konusu postmodern eserin katkısı, Zohar’ın kuramsal yaklaşımı doğrultusunda merkez-çevre; birincil edebiyat-ikincil edebiyat ve kültür repertuarı doğrultusunda yorumlanmaya çalışılmaktadır. Öncelikle postmodern yazın çoğuldizgesinde çevirinin rolü saptanmaya çalışılırken, Türk modern edebiyatının zayıf ve henüz gelişmemiş bir konumda olduğu, dizgede açık bulan postmodern çeviri yazın ile devinim gerçekleştiği, böylelikle modern edebiyatın ikincil edebiyat konumuna düştüğü sonucuna varılmaktadır. Ayrıca özellikle Amerikalı postmodernist yazarların çeviri eserlerinin dizgeyi yönlendirdiği ve Umberto Eco, Italo Calvino gibi İtalyan yazarların ise Türk postmodern yazının temsilcileri üzerinde etkili oldukları saptanmaktadır. Postmodern yazının ilk çeviri eserlerinden kabul edebileceğimiz Koku’nun ise henüz oluşmakta olan postmodern edebiyat çoğuldizgesine yenilik getirdiği; gelişim, eğitim, polisiye roman türü özelliklerini aynı anda taşımasından; üstkurmaca, metinlerarasılık, gerilim gibi postmodern yazının niteliklerine sahip olmasından ötürü Türk edebiyatının ve kültür repertuarının gelişimine olanak sağladığı saptamalarında bulunmak mümkündür. Çalışmanın sonucunda postmodern çeviri yazının, Türk postmodern yazının oluşumuna ve kültür repertuarına katkı sağladığı ve yönlendirici etkisi olduğu çıkarımına varılmaktadır.

Cross-Cultural Human Relationships in Sunetra Gupta’s So Good in Black

Sunetra Gupta who is an Indian immigrant living in England and working in Oxford University as a Professor of Zoology has written five novels. Her fifth novel, So Good in Black published in 2011 celebrates globalization and the free passage to western countries for Indians and for the westerners to India. Human relationship is the main crux of postmodern writings and Gupta also brings out the cross-cultural human relationship in So Good in Black with much details. At the backdrop of Kolkata, India, Gupta colourfully draws the human relationship especially man-woman relationship in this novel. As the values of life are at stake due to the materialistic advancement in the modern world, Gupta highlights the fact that human relationship always lies in dark and it is good to keep it in black. The characters namely Byron Mallick, Max Gate, Damini and Ela suffer as they from relationship with themselves and with others who are their kith and kin. The women characters namely, Damini, Ela and Barbara become victims in the hands of Byron and Max, as they try to form relationship among them. The cultural values of India and the West is comparatively discussed by the author in this novel to bring out the very nature of Indian woman like Ela who gives importance to Indian culture and prefers it though she experiences cross-cultural human relationship.

Westernised Chinese in Yu Hua’s Chronicle of a Blood Merchant

Yu Hua is one of the most illustrious avant-garde and post-modernist writers in contemporary China, whose chefs-d’oeuvre can be exemplified by a 1995 novel Chronicle of a Blood Merchant. Notwithstanding widespread accolades, Yu Hua’s fiction is excoriated by his peer Han Han for resembling works translated from Western literature. In this research, I scrutinise the language deployed in Chronicle of a Blood Merchant under the framework postulated by Yu Kwang-chung. I propound that the language in Chronicle of a Blood Merchant bears similitude to Westernised/Europeanised Chinese, in that it involves conspicuous light verbs, nominalisation, bei passivisation, subordinating and coordinating conjunctions, plural forms, as well as premodifiers and particles, a considerable proportion of which are redundant and impinged upon by the English language.

The Analytical Reading Discourse of Liberal Feminism in Bernardine Evaristo’s Girl, Woman, Other through Black Women in Different Generations

The postmodern perspective of liberal feminism relates to women’s empowerment. The aim of the study abbreviates liberal feminism in Bernardine Evaristo’s Girl, Woman, Other. She is a famous postmodern writer. The term liberal feminism explicates women’s sufferings and their empowerment. This study considers four liberal thinkers. They are John Stuart Mill, Mary Wollstonecraft, Martha Nussbaum and Susan Moller Okin. The present study focuses on the theory of liberal feminism. The four liberal feminism thinkers proposed four different liberal feminism aspects in different circumstances. Those ideas are explained in the methodology part. This part splits into four ideas according to liberal feminism thinkers. In this study, the authors have investigated liberal feminism and its aspects in the select text of Evaristo. The results of the study are evaluated with other studies under the postmodern tendency of liberal feminism.

Linking Metanarrative: Lexical Content in Preeti Shenoy’s A Hundred Little Flames

The Postmodern metanarrative abbreviates the relation between entrap the texts that are wreaked by incidents, quotes, allusions, translation and so on. The aim of the study spotlights on the postmodern tendency of metanarrative in Preeti Shenoy’s selected text, A Hundred Little Flames. Preeti Shenoy is a multifarious postmodern writer. The term metanarrative is linked with dialect in the texts. The features of metanarrative are dialect, incident, way of narration and allusion etc. Jean Francois Lyotard is one among notable theorist of metanarrative. The present study has adopted only Lyotard’s metanarrative theory. The methodology of the study splits into three metanarrative concepts – narration towards knowledge, narration towards dialect and narration towards nostalgia. Lyotard proposed these three diverse concepts in his famous book The Postmodern Condition. These metanarrative concepts are adapted to the present study, and the authors have investigated the metanarrative elements in the select text of Shenoy. The results of the study are evaluated with other studies under postmodern metanarrative.

ABSURDITY, NIHILISM AND THE EXISTENTIAL CRISIS: A STUDY OF MISTRY'S NOVELS THROUGH THE LENS OF EXISTENTIALIM

Existentialism as a philosophy became popular after World war I when the entire Europe was in the moral crisis of, to be or not to be. Europe paid the price of being too ambitious. The European countries till World War I was flourishing leaps and bounds but it's greed for owning more territory led to power tussle and the ambitions of a few cunning leaders thrust a big chunk of population of the world under the threat of death. Millions perished and the other millions related to them looked and cried for a messiah , a second coming that can save them from the human predicament that they were witnessing. But no second coming happened. This gave rise to nihilism, absurdity and existential crisis and the same was reflected in the post modern writers. The non-European writers also experienced the same crisis because the post modern novelists also raised these timeless questions and through their characters they try to resolve but without any success. The absurdity and helplessness of human beings as an entity of this whole cosmos is projected in post modern literature. The paper brings out the existential crisis is conspicuous in Rohinton Mistry's novels. The characters raise their heads against their destiny but in the end they surrender before the cosmic forces. Mistry's novels cover a wide array of issues ranging from diasporic crisis, hybridity and post-colonial crisis. The existential crisis is dominant in his novels. The predicament faced by the marginalized characters is explored in this study.

Role of Women in Amitav Ghosh’s The Hungry Tide

Amitav Ghosh, the Indian born writer, is now universally acknowledged as a postcolonial and postmodern writer. Apart from presenting the contemporary socio-political events of southeast Asia, another unique feature of Ghosh’s novels is the way he presents his women characters. In novels like The Shadow Lines, The Glass Palace, and The Hungry Tide, the women characters are indeed exemplary. They seem to be fully conscious of their socio-political condition, and play significant roles not only to make their lives beautiful but also to enlighten and empower the entire community. They are desperate to make a mark, to create a separate identity for themselves, to create an example to be followed by the rest. The purpose of this paper is to show how the women transcend their abilities and challenge the gender roles of the society by their remarkable determination, indomitable spirit and astonishing endurance.

Historical and religious speculations in Dan Brown's The Da Vinci code: A postmodernist study

Dan Brown is a postmodernist writer. He was born on 22Jun, 1964 in Exeter, New Hampshire US. Brown wrote a various number of what is called historiographic metafiction novel. This term has been equivalent to postmodernism in fiction and has become so popular trend of writing in the 70s and 80s. Dan Brown's Da Vinci Code (2003) is a "postmodern historical novel", in which he treats a large number of matters such as the questioning of the authority of Catholicism and conservative Protestantism. He used many sources to make his argument more believable and could be read as a realistic novel, such as Holy Grail and Holy Blood, The Dead Sea Scrolls, and The Gnostic Nag Hammadi. The paper will investigate the historical and religious speculations of Da Brown as reflected in Da Vinci Cod relying on the critical theory of postmodernism. The novel involves many postmodernist elements such as the use of textual and historical debate of the Holy Grail and Holy Blood. Dan Brown has challenged the Holy Writ "Biblical" authority when describing it as historically elevate, biased, and made to suppress Jesus's fact. The paper ends with a conclusion that clarifies how we could read The Da Vinci Code as a postmodern novel.

A Delicate Aggression: Savagery and Survival in the Iowa Writers’ Workshop by David O. Dowling.

<i>A Delicate Aggression: Savagery and Survival in the Iowa Writers’ Workshop</i> by David O. Dowling.