Post Modernism Key

Terms
Pastiche

• In literature , a text made up of material from other texts, or a

patchwork of words, sentences of complete passages from various
authors or one author.
• It is therefore a kind of imitation and when intentional, may be a form
of parody. (traditionally disparaging but assumed a more respectable
status with the advent of postmodernism)
• An elaborate form of pastiche is a sustained work written mostly or
entirely in the style and manner of another writer.
• A good modern example is Peter Ackroyd’s The Last Days of Oscar
Wilde
• A well-known modern example is John Fowles's novel The French
Lieutenant's Woman (1969), which is partly a pastiche of the great
Victorian novelists.
Magic realism
• was coined by Franz Roh
• He was concerned with the characteristics and tendencies discernible
in the artists of Munich.
• Their painting was marked by the use of still, sharply defined,
smoothly painted images of figures and objects depicted in a
somewhat surrealistic manner.
• The themes and subjects were often imaginary, somewhat outlandish
and fantastic with a certain dream like quality.
• Gradually the term came to be associated with certain kinds of fiction
• By the 1980s it had become a well-established ‘label’ for some forms of fiction.
• Term referring to fiction that integrates realisiic elements with supernatural or
fantastic experiences.
• It has been applied, for instance, to the work of Luis Borges (1899– 1988), the
Argentinian who in 1935 published his Historia universal de la infamia, regarded
by many as the first work of magic realism.
• The Colombian novelist Gabriel Garcia Márquez (1928– ) is also regarded as a
notable expo- nent of this kind of fiction, especially his novel Cien años de
soledad or One Hundred Years of Solitude (1967).
• Experiments in magic realism effects and techniques are also to be found in the
fiction of Italo Calvino (1923–85), John Fowles (1926–2005), Günter Grass
(1927– ), Emma Tennant (1937– ), Angela Carter (1940–92), and Salman Rushdie
(1947– ).
• Some of the characteristic features of this kind of fiction are the
mingling and juxtaposition of the realistic and the fantastic or bizarre,
skilful time shifts, convoluted and even labyrinthine narratives and plots,
miscellaneous use of dreams, myths and fairy stories, expressionistic
and even surrealistic description, arcane erudition, the element of
surprise or abrupt shock, the horrific and the inexplicable

• It is seldom easy to define it as a genre and a plausible case might be

made that there are plentiful instances of magic realism in the fiction of
Kleist, E. T. A. Hoffmann, Prosper Mérimée, Fournier, Kafka, Ronald
Firbank and Edward Upward
• Latin American writers later employed the term to characterize the
“marvel- ous real,” seeing everyday life as if for the first time. The
most celebrated example of magic realism is Gabriel García Márquez’s
One Hundred Years of Solitude (1971), an extraordinary blend of
realism, myth, comedy, and history, rendered in lush, poetic language.
Other sources of magic realism are the stories of Jorge Luis Borges,
Mario Vargas Llosa, and Julio Cortazar. The technique is artfully
represented in European literature by Milan Kundera’s The
Unbearable Lightness of Being (1984).
• In American literature, magic realism, evident earlier in the stories of
Bernard Malamud and in John Cheever’s short story “The Enormous
Radio,” has become a prominent feature in contemporary works by
Toni Morrison (Beloved, 1987), Donald Barthelme (The Dead Father,
1975), Alice Walker (The Color Purple, 1982) and William Kennedy
(Quinn’s Book, 1988).

• The appeal of magic realism lies in its effective resolution of the

tension between REALISM and experimentation, overcoming the
limitations of the former while providing an anchor for the latter.
Minimalism
• A style in contemporary literature and art that aims at reducing the
elements in a text to a bare minimum.
• An outstanding example is Samuel Beckett, who progressively
subtracted from his work story line, physical movement
• Minimalist fiction tends to represent characters who are isolated,
immobile, and sceptical about any possibilities life may appear to
offer.
• The term has been used to describe the stories of contemporary
American writers such as Raymond Carver ( Will You Please Be Quiet,
Please?, 1976) and Ann Beattie ( The Burning House, 1982).
Hyperreal
• The terms hyperreal and hyperreality suggest something that is
‘above’ reality, or in excess or reality, and have been associated with
the work of French theorist Jean Baudrillard (1929–2007).
• In his work Simulation and Simulacra (1981), Baudrillard defines the
hyperreal as ‘the meticulous reduplication of the real, preferably
through another reproductive medium, such as photography’.
• He examines postmodern consumerist societies and media culture,
particularly branding and marketing, and the instances when a
reproduction or a simulation of reality becomes more real than the
reality itself and assumes an independent value.
• Such images or signs have no referent in reality; rather they precede
their referents and determine the real in what Baudrillard terms ‘the
precession of simulacra’.
• As he explains, simulation is ‘a real without origins or reality: a
hyperreal’. Baudrillard’s famous example of this phenomenon is
Disneyland. As he writes:
• Disneyland is a perfect model of all the entangled orders of
simulacra. It is first of all a play of illusions and phantasms:
the Pirates, the Frontier, the Future World, etc. This
imaginary world is supposed to ensure the success of the
operation. But what attracts the crowds the most is without
a doubt the social microcosm, the religious, miniaturized
pleasure of real America, of its constraints and joys.
• Other examples of this collapse of the distinction between simulation
and reality can be found in signs and images such as Nike, Apple or the
McDonald’s ‘M’. A good example of a recent literary engagement with
Baudrillard’s notion of hyperreality is Julian Barnes’s novel England,
England (1998), in which a corporation turns the Isle of Wight into a
heritage theme park – a ‘fast forward version’ of England – that
gradually comes to replace real England. Another well-known example
is Umberto Eco’s Travels in Hyper- reality