美国后现代主义小说.ppt

1、,The American Post-Modernism novel,Postmodernism,Follows most of the same ideas as modernism with some exceptions Emerged in the 1960s, became prominent in the late 1970s and early 1980s Definition: Relating to art, architecture or literature that reacts against earlier modernist principles, by rein

2、troducing traditional or classical elements of style or by carrying modernist styles or practices to extremes,Characteristics: Rejection of rigid genre distinctions, emphasizing parody, irony and playfulness Favors reflexivity and self-consciousness, fragmentation and discontinuity Emphasis on the d

3、e-structured, de-centered, dehumanized subject,Historical Background of the Postmodernist Novel,The period since the 1960s has been a time of more than usual ferment in American social ,political, and artistic life. The unpopular war in Vietnam, the political assassination, the race riots, the hippi

4、e counterculture, pop art , mass poetry readings ,street theater ,vigorous avant-gardism in all the arts ,predictions of the death of the novel , etc .-all these were all assailing the thinking minds at the same time in the decades of 1960s and 1970s .Since then social concerns have become intense w

5、hen information begins to explode on the amazed public from different channels. There has appeared a marked change in the nature of things like the ideals of democracy, individualism ,and the credibility of the government along with a similar marked change in popular awareness . People have found th

6、e boundaries between fact and fiction obscured or no longer existing.,Classification of the Postmodernist Novel,There was the novel of the absurd , metafiction , and avant-gardism. (1)The novelists of the absurd tend to burlesque traditional novelistic devices .They hold that truth and reality are m

7、ultiple, elusive, and uncertain ;they regard any pretension of any traditional form to represent reality authentically as illegitimate and misleading. The tragic absurdity of the human black humor ,or black comedy ,which is one of the commonly employed devices of the novelists of the absurd .what oc

8、curs often is a sense of grief and pain coming through the laughter, a feeling of frustration and being bottled up . (2)Metafiction is a form writing about fiction in the form of fiction. It is a style of fictive narrative that tries to tell the readers that fiction is fiction and is not an illustra

9、tion of reality as he realists have tried to deceive the readers into believing. Notable metafictional strategies include such as text within text ,authorial personae, and undecidability with no real story. (3)As to avant-gardism ,it has been used as a term of preference for postwar writing which ha

10、s enjoyed some vanguard status. An avant-garde novel represents a clean breakaway from normal novelistic conventions ,has little or no story interest ,often dull, not satisfying, even offensive to middle-brow taste , and is often not readable,Common themes and techniques All of these themes and tech

11、niques are often used together. For example, metafiction and pastiche are often used for irony. These are not used by all postmodernists, nor is this an exclusive list of features. Irony, playfulness, black humor Linda Hutcheon claimed postmodern fiction as a whole could be characterized by the iron

12、ic quote marks, that much of it can be taken as tongue-in-cheek. This irony, along with black humor and the general concept of play (related to Derridas concept or the ideas advocated by Roland Barthes in The Pleasure of the Text) are among the most recognizable aspects of postmodernism. Though the

13、idea of employing these in literature did not start with the postmodernists (the modernists were often playful and ironic), they became central features in many postmodern works. In fact, several novelists later to be labeled postmodern were first collectively labeled black humorists: John Barth, Jo

14、seph Heller, William Gaddis, Kurt Vonnegut, Bruce Jay Friedman, etc. Its common for postmodernists to treat serious subjects in a playful and humorous way: for example, the way Heller, Vonnegut, and Pynchon address the events of World War II. The central concept of Joseph Hellers Catch-22 is the iro

15、ny of the now-idiomatic catch-22, and the narrative is structured around a long series of similar ironies. Thomas Pynchon in particular provides prime examples of playfulness, often including silly wordplay, within a serious context. The Crying of Lot 49, for example, contains characters named Mike

16、Fallopian and Stanley Koteks and a radio station called KCUF, while the novel as a whole has a serious subject and a complex structure.,The major novelist of Postmodernist Novel,Joseph Heller (1923-1999)约瑟夫.海勒,Joseph Heller is the most prominent American novelist of the absurd in the postwar period

17、. He wrote a book about his experience in the war .This is the famous catch-22 ,the title of which has become a new addition to the English language. 1.Major works Catch-22 第二十二条军规 Something Happened 出了毛病 We Bombed in New Haven我们轰炸了纽黑文 Good as Gold 好的不得了 God Knows上帝知道,2.Analysis of major work :,Catc

18、h-22（第二十二条军规）,(1)Catch-22 was the first book in America to treat the absurdity theme with absurdist techniques. It protests against the absurdity of modern America as embodies by the military power structure it describes. (2)The protagonist ,Yossarian, is afraid of death .He has lost faith in God ,a

19、nd feels no sense of security any more .Along with his fellow pilots ,he is horrified as the sight of death and absurdity around him.,(3)The world of Yossarian is an absurd one ,and the way Heller exposes it is through burlesque, the ruthless burlesque of the military unreason as best represented by

20、 its three major features :the structured chaos of the military build-up, the military logic ,one symbol of which is a “rule” known as “catch-22”,and the widespread absurdity on all leval of existence. (4)Joseph Heller uses an absurd linguistic surface to reflect the death of the absurdity of the mo

21、dern world. Devices such as “circular conversations ”,the “wrenched cliche” which results from the change of “a key word in an otherwise hackneyed expression,”,Other novelists of the Postmodernist Novel,Kurt Vonnegut(1922-2007)库尔特.冯内古特 Vonnegut is basically a science fiction writer. Meanwhile he is also well known as a short-story writer. In his short writing he is good at combing black humor with science fiction. Major works : Player Piano（自动钢琴） Mother Night（黑夜母亲） And so on,Ken Kesey肯.克西 Ken Kesey(1935-2001) was ano