Postmodern Fiction Elements

Flashcards covering different elements of postmodern fiction.

Irony, playfulness, black humor

The use of irony and humor as hallmarks of their style, often treating serious subjects with distance and disconnect.

Pastiche

Combining or 'pasting' elements of previous genres and styles of literature to create a new narrative voice or comment on the writing of contemporaries.

Intertextuality

Acknowledgment of previous literary works, commenting on the situation in which both literature and society found themselves in the second half of the 20th century.

Metafiction

Writing about writing, making the reader aware of its fictionality and sometimes the presence of the author.

Historiographic Metafiction

Novels that fictionalize actual historical events and characters.

Temporal Distortion

A literary technique that uses a nonlinear timeline, jumping forwards or backwards in time, or including cultural and historical references that do not fit.

Paranoia

The assumption that modern society cannot be explained or understood, lending a sense of paranoia to many postmodern works.

Maximalism

Characterized as disorganized, sprawling, overly long, and emotionally disconnected, often defended as being as long as it needs to be depending on the subject material.

Faction

Blurring the line between fact and fiction to the degree that it is almost impossible to know the difference between the two.

Magical Realism

The introduction of fantastic or impossible elements into a narrative that is otherwise normal.

Participation

Attempting to involve the reader as much as possible, such as asking the reader questions or including unwritten narratives.