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Kurt Vonnegut
His Famous works include Slaughterhouse-Five and Breakfast of Champions. He was the paradigm for postmodernism literature He was pat of the Beat Generation -
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Maximalism
Where minimalism is all about making things neat, tidy, and low key, maximalism goes against the grain by embracing excess. however because postmodernism doesn't have any hard and fast rules, its texts can be any length. But, some of its best-loved texts tend to be longer -
Atomic Bomb
When narrowing down the end of modernism and the start of postmodernism the dropping of the atomic bomb and the end of WWII is when the switch began. This was due to the realization that no matter how hard one worked on something it could be undone and destroyed in an instant -
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Postmodernism
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" Exactitude in Science"
An extremely short story written by Jorge Luis Borges about Advances made in map-making. The map were made bigger and more accurate until they create a life sized map. The people figure out that is is worthless and leave it to rot. -
Mass Movement to the Suburbs
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Cold War/ Paranoia
The Cold war sparked an age of paranoia the US and the USSR was stockpiling weapons of mass destruction and the rest of the world was holding its breath, constantly worrying that the two major powers would go to war and in the process send the world into Nuclear Armageddon. The media reflected this influencing the art and literature. This is emphasized by the fact that in most postmodernism paranoia is a prominent theme . -
Term Postmodernism coined by Arnold J. Toynbee
Used in A Study of History, this was the first time the term was used in a similar definition to today's. For him postmodernism was a time of disruption and irrationality that needed to be worked through rather than embraced. -
European and Japanese Reconstruction
After WWII Europe and japan were devastated and america help rebuild economically -
Communism Spreads
China falls to communism causing increased fear of communism spreading to the U.S. -
Catcher in the Rye
The Catcher in the Rye, Holden Caulfield recounts the days following his expulsion from Pencey Prep, a private school. After a fight with his roommate, Stradlater, Holden leaves school two days early to explore New York before returning home, interacting with teachers, prostitutes, nuns, an old girlfriend, and his sister along the way. Holden is not specific about his location while he's telling the story, but he makes it clear that he is undergoing treatment in a mental hospital or sanatorium. -
Segregation made illegal
Brown v Board of Education overturned the "separate but equal" ruling of Plessy v Ferguson -
Montgomery Bus Boycott
Starting with Rosa Parks, it was the beginning of the civil rights movement -
Sputnik
The russians were the first to spend a object into space. this increases the paranoia and the fright that the russians could bomb the US with ease -
Irony
Irony isn't exclusive to postmodernism,but is a very common characteristic in it. By the 1990s, irony had exploded onto the pop culture scene. In fact, it had become so popular that it seemed to have lost its impact—people even started talking about the end of irony, especially in the immediate wake of 9/11. For some, irony seemed to have no place following the very real horror of this tragedy -
A&P
This short story's importance lies in it's influence. The themes of rebellion that are displayed in John Updike's fictional work are a first on this period. The ideas of rebellion and distrust, sparking from the Civil War also influenced A&P and other rebellion based novels of the late post-modernism era. -
Berlin Wall is Built
The Iron Curtain descends and separates east and west; communism and capitalism -
Joseph Heller's Catch-22 Is Published
The novel looks back at World War II, but in many ways it anticipates the anti-war movement as U.S. involvement in Vietnam began.
Catch-22 tells the story of one Captain John Yossarian, an Air Force bomber pilot in WWII. While lots of people might think of him as a hero for his brave service, Yossarian sees past all the pomp and patriotism and understands war as something else entirely: sheer madness. The book condemns both war itself and the powers that carry out this systematic carnage. -
Pale Fire
The book stats with a foreword by a scholar called Charles Kinbote, who has been entrusted with the final poem of his late friend John Shade. The poem is called "Pale Fire," and Kinbote has been editing it for publication. The end result is a poem of four sections along with Kinbote's own commentary and notes. Kinbote's commentary takes up more room than the poem itself.
Seen as Vladimir Nabokov's most postmodern pieces. -
Civil Rights Movement
Civil Rights activists used writing to achieve racial equality. Martin Luther King Jr. was a key figure during this movement using his persuasive Letter from Birmingham Jail and later his iconic "I Have a Dream" speech. Other authors in this movement were, W.E.B DuBois and poet Maya Angelou. -
Intertextuality
Postmodernism is all about the connections between texts. Julia Kristeva coined the term "intertextuality" in 1966, explaining the two relationships when we read a text: the relationship between us and the author (the horizontal axis) and between the text and other texts (the vertical axis). It's the vertical axis that defines intertextuality; but both axes emphasize that no text exists in a bubble and that we need to recognize how existing works shape current texts -
Slaughterhouse-Five
It is about a WWII soldier called Billy Pilgrim, who travels back and forward through time, relives the events in his life, and even finds himself abducted by aliens. -
Metafiction
Meta-fiction is the kind of text that emphasizes its status as a text. in other words Meta-fiction is aware of the fact that it's fiction— while some literature may try to be naturalistic or realistic, postmodernism doesn't hide what it is.In fact, it flaunts it. Meta-fiction is a prime example of the self-awareness that is often found in postmodernism. -
Breakfast of Champions
The story is about a businessman, Dwayne Hoover, who becomes fixated with a sci-fiction novel written by Kilgore Trout— so fixated that he's unable to recognize that it's a work of fiction. It's a recipe for disaster, as Hoover gets the idea that everyone other than him is a robot and subsequently running riot. -
Berlin Wall Falls
The symbol of soviet power and control fall after many summit meetings between Reagan and Gorbachev soon after the USSR falls -
9/11 Tragedy
This tragedy sparked a slight change in post modernism literature. Following this event many people lost faith in the goodness of humanity and fully realized the cruelty of the world and also the fact that there was nothing they could do about it. This led to a string of novels leaning on escape from reality and also hints of the return utopian societies. -
Escape from Reality
Following the 9/11 Tragedy, in a sense of hopelessness came literature that provided readers with an escape from reality by using unrealistic settings and situations. Also mixing in utopian societies and governments but seeing them fail. 2 examples of this are The Hunger Games, and the Divergent Trilogies.
