Postmodernism in literature of the 21st century. Russian postmodernism in literature

Why is the literature of Russian postmodernism so popular? Everyone can treat works that relate to this phenomenon differently: some may like them, others may not, but they still read such literature, so it is important to understand why it attracts readers so much? Perhaps young people, as the main audience for such works, after graduating from school, “overfed” with classical literature (which is undoubtedly wonderful), want to breathe in fresh “postmodernism”, albeit somewhere rough, somewhere even awkward, but so new and very emotional.

Russian postmodernism in literature dates back to the second half of the 20th century, when it shocked and bewildered people brought up on realistic literature. After all, deliberate disobedience to the laws of literary and speech etiquette and the use of obscene language were not inherent in traditional movements.

The theoretical foundations of postmodernism were laid in the 1960s by French scientists and philosophers. Its Russian manifestation differs from the European one, but it would not be such without its “ancestor”. It is believed that the postmodern beginning in Russia was made when in 1970. Venedikt Erofeev creates the poem “Moscow-Petushki”. This work, which we have carefully analyzed in this article, has a strong influence on the development of Russian postmodernism.

Brief description of the phenomenon

Postmodernism in literature is a large-scale cultural phenomenon that captured all spheres of art towards the end of the 20th century, replacing the no less well-known phenomenon of “modernism”. There are several basic principles of postmodernism:

• The world as a text;
• Death of the Author;
• The Birth of the Reader;
• Scriptor;
• Absence of canons: there is no good and bad;
• Pastiche;
• Intertext and intertextuality.

Since the main idea in postmodernism is that the author can no longer write anything fundamentally new, the idea of ​​“the death of the Author” is created. This essentially means that the writer is not the author of his books, since everything has already been written before him, and what follows is just a citation of previous creators. That is why the author in postmodernism does not play a significant role by reproducing his thoughts on paper, he is just someone who presents what was written previously in a different way, coupled with his personal writing style, his original presentation and characters.

“The death of the author” as one of the principles of postmodernism gives rise to another idea that the text initially does not have any meaning invested by the author. Since a writer is only a physical reproduction of something that has already been written earlier, he cannot put his subtext where there can be nothing fundamentally new. It is from here that another principle is born - “the birth of a reader,” which means that it is the reader, and not the author, who puts his own meaning into what he reads. The composition, the vocabulary chosen specifically for this style, the character of the main and minor characters, the city or place where the action takes place, arouses in him his personal feelings from what he read, prompts him to search for the meaning, which he initially lays down on his own from the first lines read.

And it is precisely this principle of “the birth of a reader” that carries one of the main messages of postmodernism - any interpretation of the text, any worldview, any sympathy or antipathy for someone or something has the right to exist, there is no division into “good” and “bad” ", as happens in traditional literary movements.

In fact, all of the above-mentioned postmodern principles carry a single meaning - a text can be understood in different ways, can be accepted in different ways, some may sympathize with it, but others may not, there is no division into “good” and “good”. evil,” anyone who reads this or that work understands it in his own way and, based on his inner sensations and feelings, knows himself, and not what is happening in the text. When reading, a person analyzes himself and his attitude towards what he read, and not the author and his attitude towards it. He will not look for the meaning or subtext laid down by the writer, because it does not exist and cannot exist; he, that is, the reader, will rather try to find what he himself puts into the text. We have said the most important things, you can read the rest, including the main features of postmodernism.

Representatives

There are quite a lot of representatives of postmodernism, but I would like to talk about two of them: Alexei Ivanov and Pavel Sanaev.

1. Alexey Ivanov is an original and talented writer who has appeared in Russian literature of the 21st century. It has been nominated three times for the National Best Seller Award. Winner of the literary awards “Eureka!”, “Start”, as well as the D.N. Mamin-Sibiryak and named after P.P. Bazhova.
2. Pavel Sanaev is an equally bright and outstanding writer of the 20th and 21st centuries. Winner of the October and Triumph magazine awards for the novel Bury Me Behind the Baseboard.

Examples

The geographer drank the globe

Alexey Ivanov is the author of such famous works as “The Geographer Drank His Globe Away,” “Dorm-on-the-Blood,” “The Heart of Parma,” “The Gold of Revolt” and many others. The first novel is widely known mainly for its film starring Konstantin Khabensky, but the novel on paper is no less interesting and exciting than on the screen.

“The Geographer Drank His Globe Away” is a novel about the Perm school, about teachers, about obnoxious children, and about an equally obnoxious geographer, who by profession is not a geographer at all. The book contains a lot of irony, sadness, kindness and humor. This creates a feeling of complete presence at the events taking place. Of course, as it corresponds to the genre, there is a lot of veiled obscene and very original vocabulary, and the main feature is the presence of jargon of the lowest social environment.

The whole story seems to keep the reader in suspense, and now, when it seems that something should work out for the hero, this elusive ray of sun is about to peek out from behind the gray gathering clouds, and again the reader goes berserk, because the luck and well-being of the heroes are limited only by the reader's hope for their existence somewhere at the end of the book.

This is precisely what characterizes Alexey Ivanov’s narrative. His books make you think, get nervous, empathize with the characters, or sometimes get angry at them, be perplexed, or laugh at their witticisms.

Bury Me Behind the Baseboard

As for Pavel Sanaev and his emotional work “Bury Me Behind the Baseboard,” it is a biographical story written by the author in 1994 based on his childhood, when he lived for nine years in his grandfather’s family. The main character is a boy, Sasha, a second grader, whose mother, not really caring about her son, gives him to the care of his grandmother. And, as we all know, children are contraindicated to stay with their grandparents for more than a certain period of time, otherwise either a colossal conflict occurs due to misunderstanding, or, like the main character of this novel, everything goes much further, even to mental problems and a spoiled childhood.

This novel makes a stronger impression than, for example, “The Geographer Drank His Globe Away” or anything else from this genre, since the main character is a child, a completely immature boy. He cannot change his life on his own, or somehow help himself, as the characters in the above-mentioned work or “Hostel on Blood” could do. Therefore, there is much more sympathy for him than for the others, and there is nothing to be angry with him for, he is a child, a real victim of real circumstances.

In the process of reading, one again encounters jargon of a lower social level, obscene language, and numerous and very catchy insults towards the boy. The reader is constantly indignant at what is happening; he wants to quickly read the next paragraph, the next line or page to make sure that this horror is over and the hero has escaped from this captivity of passions and nightmares. But no, the genre does not allow anyone to be happy, so this very tension drags on for all 200 book pages. The ambiguous actions of the grandmother and mother, the independent “digestion” of everything that happens on behalf of the little boy, and the presentation of the text itself are worth reading this novel.

Dorm-on-blood

“Dorm-on-the-Blood” is a book by Alexei Ivanov, already known to us, the story of one student dormitory, within whose walls, by the way, most of the story takes place. The novel is imbued with emotions, because we are talking about students whose blood boils in their veins and youthful maximalism seethes. However, despite this certain recklessness and recklessness, they are great lovers of having philosophical conversations, talking about the universe and God, judging and blaming each other, repenting of their actions and making excuses for them. And at the same time, they have absolutely no desire to improve and make their existence even a little easier.

The work is literally replete with an abundance of obscene language, which at first may put someone off from reading the novel, but even despite this, it is worth reading.

Unlike previous works, where hope for something good faded already in the middle of reading, here it regularly lights up and goes out throughout the book, which is why the ending hits the emotions so hard and excites the reader so much.

How does postmodernism manifest itself in these examples?

That the hostel, that the city of Perm, that the house of Sasha Savelyev’s grandmother are citadels of everything bad that lives in people, everything that we are afraid of and what we always try to avoid: poverty, humiliation, grief, insensitivity, self-interest, vulgarity and other things. The heroes are helpless, regardless of their age and social status, they are victims of circumstances, laziness, and alcohol. Postmodernism in these books is manifested in literally everything: in the ambiguity of the characters, and in the uncertainty of the reader in his attitude towards them, and in the vocabulary of the dialogues, and in the hopelessness of the characters’ existence, in their pity and despair.

These works are very difficult for sensitive and over-emotional people, but you will not regret reading them, because each of these books contains nutritious and useful food for thought.

The postmodernist trend in literature was born in the second half of the 20th century. Translated from Latin and French, “postmodern” means “modern”, “new”. This literary movement is considered a reaction to the infringement of human rights, the horrors of war and post-war events. It was born from the rejection of the ideas of the Enlightenment, realism and modernism. The latter was popular at the beginning of the twentieth century. But if in modernism the main goal of the author is to find meaning in a changing world, then postmodernist writers talk about the meaninglessness of what is happening. They deny patterns and put chance above all else. Irony, black humor, fragmented narration, mixing of genres - these are the main features characteristic of postmodern literature. Below are interesting facts and the best works of representatives of this literary movement.

The most significant works

Contemporary foreign postmodernists deserve special attention. This is Haruki Murakami and his “The Wind-Up Bird Chronicle” (1997) - a novel full of mysticism, reflections and memories by the most famous Japanese writer in Russia. “American Psycho” by Bret Easton Ellis (1991) amazes even connoisseurs of the genre with its cruelty and black humor. There is a film adaptation of the same name with Christian Bale in the role of the main maniac (dir. Mary Herron, 2000).

Examples of postmodernism in Russian literature are the books “Pale Fire” and “Hell” by Vladimir Nabokov (1962, 1969), “Moscow-Petushki” by Venedikt Erofeev (1970), “School for Fools” by Sasha Sokolov (1976), “Chapaev and Emptiness” Victor Pelevin (1996).

Vladimir Sorokin, a multiple winner of domestic and international literary awards, writes in the same vein. His novel Marina's Thirteenth Love (1984) sarcastically illustrates the country's Soviet past. The lack of individuality of that generation is brought to the point of absurdity. Sorokin’s most provocative work, “Blue Lard” (1999), will turn all ideas about history upside down. It was this novel that elevated Sorokin to the rank of classics of postmodern literature.

Classical influence

Which of these masterpieces of postmodernism in Russian and foreign literature did you miss? Hurry up and add it to your electronic shelf. Enjoy reading and immersing yourself in the world of satire, wordplay and stream of consciousness!

A characteristic feature of postmodernism in literature is the recognition of the diversity and diversity of socio-political, ideological, spiritual, moral, and aesthetic values. The aesthetics of postmodernism rejects the principle of the relationship between the artistic image and the realities of reality, which has already become traditional for art. In the postmodern understanding, the objectivity of the real world is questioned, since ideological diversity on the scale of all humanity reveals the relativity of religious faith, ideology, social, moral and legislative norms. From the point of view of a postmodernist, the material of art is not so much reality itself as its images embodied in different types of art. This also explains the postmodern ironic play with images already known (to one degree or another) to the reader, which are called simulacrum(from the French simulacre (similarity, appearance) - an imitation of an image that does not indicate any reality, moreover, indicates its absence).

In the understanding of postmodernists, human history appears as a chaotic heap of accidents, human life turns out to be devoid of any common sense. An obvious consequence of this attitude is that postmodern literature uses the richest arsenal of artistic means that creative practice has accumulated over many centuries in different eras and in different cultures. The quotation of the text, the combination in it of various genres of both mass and elite culture, high vocabulary with low, specific historical realities with the psychology and speech of modern man, borrowing the plots of classical literature - all this, colored by the pathos of irony, and in some cases - self-irony, characteristic features of postmodern writing.

The irony of many postmodernists can be called nostalgic. Their play with various principles of attitude towards reality, known in the artistic practice of the past, is similar to the behavior of a person sorting through old photographs and yearning for what did not come true.

The artistic strategy of postmodernism in art, denying the rationalism of realism with its faith in man and historical progress, also rejects the idea of ​​​​the interdependence of character and circumstances. Refusing the role of an all-explaining prophet or teacher, the postmodernist writer provokes the reader into active co-creation in search of various kinds of motivations for events and the behavior of characters. Unlike a realist author, who is the bearer of truth and evaluates heroes and events from the standpoint of the norm known to him, a postmodernist author does not evaluate anything or anyone, and his “truth” is one of the equal positions in the text.

Conceptually, “postmodernism” is opposed not only to realism, but also to modernist and avant-garde art of the early 20th century. If a person in modernism wondered who he was, then a postmodern person trying to figure out where he is. Unlike the avant-garde artists, postmodernists refuse not only socio-political engagement, but also the creation of new socio-utopian projects. The implementation of any social utopia with the aim of overcoming chaos with harmony, according to postmodernists, will inevitably lead to violence against man and the world. Taking the chaos of life for granted, they try to enter into a constructive dialogue with it.

In Russian literature of the second half of the 20th century, postmodernism as artistic thinking for the first time and independently of foreign literature declared itself in Andrei Bitov’s novel “ Pushkin House"(1964-1971). The novel was banned from publication; the reader became acquainted with it only in the late 1980s, along with other works of “returned” literature. The beginnings of a postmodernist worldview were also revealed in Wen’s poem. Erofeeva " Moscow — Petushki", written in 1969 and for a long time known only from samizdat, mass readers also became acquainted with it in the late 1980s.

In modern domestic postmodernism in general, two trends can be distinguished: “ tendentious» ( conceptualism, who declared himself as an opposition to official art) and “ untendentious" In conceptualism, the author hides behind various stylistic masks; in works of untendentious postmodernism, on the contrary, the author's myth is cultivated. Conceptualism balances on the line between ideology and art, critically rethinking and destroying (demythologizing) symbols and styles that are significant for the culture of the past (primarily socialist); untendentious postmodern movements are addressed to reality and the human personality; associated with Russian classical literature, they are aimed at new myth-making - the remythologization of cultural debris. Since the mid-1990s, postmodern literature has seen a repetition of techniques, which may be a sign of the self-destruction of the system.

At the end of the 1990s, modernist principles of creating an artistic image were implemented in two stylistic movements: the first goes back to the literature of the “stream of consciousness”, and the second to surrealism.

Book materials used: Literature: textbook. for students avg. prof. textbook institutions / ed. G.A. Obernikhina. M.: "Academy", 2010

In a broad sense postmodernism- this is a general trend in European culture, which has its own philosophical basis; This is a unique worldview, a special perception of reality. In a narrow sense, postmodernism is a movement in literature and art, expressed in the creation of specific works.

Postmodernism entered the literary scene as a ready-made trend, as a monolithic formation, although Russian postmodernism is the sum of several trends and currents: conceptualism and neo-baroque.

Conceptualism or social art.

Conceptualism, or sots art– this movement consistently expands the postmodern picture of the world, involving more and more new cultural languages ​​(from socialist realism to various classical trends, etc.). By weaving and comparing authoritative languages ​​with marginal ones (swearing, for example), sacred with profane, official with rebellious ones, conceptualism reveals the closeness of various myths of cultural consciousness, equally destroying reality, replacing it with a set of fictions and at the same time totalitarianly imposing on the reader its idea of ​​the world, truth, ideal. Conceptualism is primarily focused on rethinking the languages ​​of power (whether it be the language of political power, that is, socialist realism, or the language of a morally authoritative tradition, for example, Russian classics, or various mythologies of history).

Conceptualism in literature is represented primarily by such authors as D. A. Pigorov, Lev Rubinstein, Vladimir Sorokin, and in a transformed form - Evgeny Popov, Anatoly Gavrilov, Zufar Gareev, Nikolai Baytov, Igor Yarkevich and others.

Postmodernism is a movement that can be defined as neo-baroque. The Italian theorist Omar Calabrese in his book “Neo-Baroque” highlighted the main features of this movement:

aesthetics of repetition: dialectic of the unique and repeatable - polycentrism, regulated irregularity, ragged rhythm (thematically played out in “Moscow-Petushki” and “Pushkin House”, the poetic systems of Rubinstein and Kibirov are built on these principles);

aesthetics of excess– experiments in stretching boundaries to the utmost limits, monstrosity (the corporeality of Aksenov, Aleshkovsky, the monstrosity of the characters and, above all, the narrator in Sasha Sokolov’s “Palisandria”);

shifting the emphasis from the whole to the detail and/or fragment: redundancy of parts, “in which the part actually becomes a system” (Sokolov, Tolstaya);

chaoticity, intermittency, irregularity as the dominant compositional principles, connecting unequal and heterogeneous texts into a single metatext (“Moscow-Petushki” by Erofeev, “School for Fools” and “Between a Dog and a Wolf” by Sokolov, “Pushkin House” by Bitov, “Chapaev and Emptiness” by Pelevin, etc.).

unsolvability of collisions(forming in turn a system of “knots” and “labyrinths”): the pleasure of resolving a conflict, plot collisions, etc. is replaced by the “taste of loss and mystery.”

The emergence of postmodernism.

Postmodernism emerged as a radical, revolutionary movement. It is based on deconstruction (the term was introduced by J. Derrida in the early 60s) and decentration. Deconstruction is a complete rejection of the old, the creation of a new one at the expense of the old, and decentration is the dispersion of the solid meanings of any phenomenon. The center of any system is a fiction, the authority of power is eliminated, the center depends on various factors.

Thus, in the aesthetics of postmodernism, reality disappears under a stream of simulacra (Deleuze). The world is turning into a chaos of simultaneously coexisting and overlapping texts, cultural languages, and myths. A person lives in a world of simulacra created by himself or other people.

In this regard, the concept of intertextuality should also be mentioned, when the created text becomes a fabric of quotes taken from previously written texts, a kind of palimpsest. As a result, an infinite number of associations arise, and the meaning expands indefinitely.

Some works of postmodernism are characterized by a rhizomatic structure, where there are no oppositions, beginning and end.

The basic concepts of postmodernism also include remake and narrative. A remake is a new version of an already written work (cf. texts by Furmanov and Pelevin). A narrative is a system of ideas about history. History is not a succession of events in their chronological order, but a myth created by the consciousness of people.

So, a postmodern text is an interaction of game languages; it does not imitate life, like a traditional one. In postmodernism, the function of the author also changes: not to create by creating something new, but to recycle the old.

M. Lipovetsky, relying on the basic postmodernist principle of paralogy and the concept of “paralogy,” highlights some features of Russian postmodernism in comparison with Western ones. Paralogy is “a contradictory destruction designed to shift the structures of rationality as such.” Paralogy creates a situation that is the opposite of the situation of binary, that is, one in which there is a rigid opposition with the priority of one principle, and the possibility of the existence of something opposing it is recognized. The paralogy lies in the fact that both of these principles exist simultaneously and interact, but at the same time the existence of a compromise between them is completely excluded. From this point of view, Russian postmodernism differs from Western:

focusing precisely on the search for compromises and dialogical connections between the poles of oppositions, on the formation of a “meeting place” between what is fundamentally incompatible in classical, modernist, as well as dialectical consciousness, between philosophical and aesthetic categories.

at the same time, these compromises are fundamentally “paralogical”, they retain an explosive nature, are unstable and problematic, they do not remove contradictions, but give rise to a contradictory integrity.

The category of simulacra is also somewhat different. Simulacra control people’s behavior, their perception, and ultimately their consciousness, which ultimately leads to the “death of subjectivity”: the human “I” is also made up of a set of simulacra.

The set of simulacra in postmodernism is not opposed to reality, but to its absence, that is, emptiness. At the same time, paradoxically, simulacra become a source of reality only if they are realized as simulative, i.e. imaginary, fictitious, illusory nature, only under the condition of initial disbelief in their reality. The existence of the category of simulacra forces its interaction with reality. Thus, a certain mechanism of aesthetic perception appears, characteristic of Russian postmodernism.

In addition to the opposition Simulacrum - Reality, other oppositions are also recorded in postmodernism, such as Fragmentation - Integrity, Personal - Impersonal, Memory - Oblivion, Power - Freedom, etc. Opposition Fragmentation – Integrity according to the definition of M. Lipovetsky: “...even the most radical variants of the decomposition of integrity in the texts of Russian postmodernism are devoid of independent meaning and are presented as mechanisms for the generation of certain “non-classical” models of integrity.”

The category of Emptiness also takes on a different direction in Russian postmodernism. For V. Pelevin, emptiness “reflects nothing, and therefore nothing can be destined for it, a certain surface, absolutely inert, so much so that no weapon that enters into confrontation can shake its serene presence.” Thanks to this, Pelevin’s emptiness has ontological supremacy over everything else and is an independent value. Emptiness will always remain Emptiness.

Opposition Personal – Impersonal is realized in practice as a person in the form of a changeable fluid integrity.

Memory - Oblivion- directly from A. Bitov is implemented in the statement on culture: “... in order to preserve, it is necessary to forget.”

Based on these oppositions, M. Lipovetsky brings out another, broader opposition Chaos – Space. “Chaos is a system whose activity is opposite to the indifferent disorder that reigns in a state of equilibrium; no stability any longer ensures the correctness of the macroscopic description, all possibilities are actualized, coexist and interact with each other, and the system turns out to be at the same time everything that it can be.” To designate this state, Lipovetsky introduces the concept of “Chaosmosis”, which takes the place of harmony.

In Russian postmodernism, there is also a lack of purity of direction - for example, avant-garde utopianism coexists with postmodern skepticism (in the surreal utopia of freedom from Sokolov’s “School for Fools”) and echoes of the aesthetic ideal of classical realism, be it the “dialectics of the soul” in A. Bitov or “mercy for the fallen” by V. Erofeev and T. Tolstoy.

A feature of Russian postmodernism is the problem of the hero - author - narrator, who in most cases exist independently of each other, but their constant affiliation is the archetype of the holy fool. More precisely, the archetype of the holy fool in the text is the center, the point where the main lines converge. Moreover, it can perform two functions (at least):

A classic version of a borderline subject, floating between diametrical cultural codes. So, for example, Venichka in the poem “Moscow - Petushki” tries, being on the other side, to reunite in herself Yesenin, Jesus Christ, fantastic cocktails, love, tenderness, the editorial of “Pravda”. And this turns out to be possible only within the limits of the foolish consciousness. The hero of Sasha Sokolov is divided in half from time to time, also standing in the center of cultural codes, but without stopping at any of them, but as if passing their flow through himself. This closely corresponds to the theory of postmodernism about the existence of the Other. It is thanks to the existence of the Other (or Others), in other words, society, in the human mind that all kinds of cultural codes intersect, forming an unpredictable mosaic.

At the same time, this archetype is a version of the context, a line of communication with the powerful branch of cultural archaism, reaching from Rozanov and Kharms to the present.

Russian postmodernism also has several options for saturating the artistic space. Here are some of them.

For example, a work can be based on a rich state of culture, which largely substantiates the content (“Pushkin House” by A. Bitov, “Moscow - Petushki” by V. Erofeev). There is another version of postmodernism: the rich state of culture is replaced by endless emotions for any reason. The reader is offered an encyclopedia of emotions and philosophical conversations about everything in the world, and especially about the post-Soviet chaos, perceived as a terrible black reality, as a complete failure, a dead end (“Endless Dead End” by D. Galkovsky, works by V. Sorokin).

Postmodern literature

Term "postmodern literature" describes the characteristic features of literature of the second half of the 20th century (fragmentation, irony, black humor, etc.), as well as the reaction to the ideas of the Enlightenment inherent in modernist literature.

Postmodernism in literature, like postmodernism in general, is difficult to define - there is no clear opinion regarding the exact characteristics of the phenomenon, its boundaries and significance. But, as with other art styles, postmodern literature can be described by comparing it to the style that preceded it. For example, by denying the modernist search for meaning in a chaotic world, the author of a postmodern work avoids, often in a playful form, the very possibility of meaning, and his novel is often a parody of this search. Postmodern writers value chance over talent and use self-parody and metafiction to question the authority and power of the author. The existence of a difference between high and mass art is also questioned, which the postmodernist author blurs by using pastiche and combining themes and genres that were previously considered inappropriate for literature.

Origin

Significant influences

Postmodern authors point to some works of classical literature as influencing their experiments with narrative and structure: these are “Don Quixote”, “1001 and the Night”, “Decameron”, “Candide”, etc. In English-language literature, Laurence Sterne’s novel “The Life and Opinions of Tristan” Shandy, the Gentleman (1759), with its strong emphasis on parody and experimentation with storytelling, is often cited as an early precursor of postmodernism. 19th-century literature also contains attacks on Enlightenment ideas, parodies and literary games, including Byron's satire (especially his Don Juan); “Sartor Resartus” by Thomas Carlyle, “King Ubu” by Alfred Jarry and his own pataphysics; Lewis Carroll's playful experiments with meaning and meaning; works by Lautréamont, Arthur Rimbaud, Oscar Wilde. Playwrights active in the late 19th and early 20th centuries who influenced postmodern aesthetics included the Swede August Strindberg, the Italian Luigi Pirandello, and the German playwright and theorist Bertolt Brecht. At the beginning of the 20th century, Dada artists began to glorify chance, parody, jokes and were the first to challenge the authority of the artist. Tristan Tzara argued in the article "For a Dadaist Poem": to make one, you only need to write random words, put them in a hat and take them out one by one. The Dadaist influence on postmodernism was also evident in the creation of collages. Artist Max Ernst used advertising clippings and illustrations of popular novels in his works. Surrealist artists, successors to the Dadaists, continued to experiment with chance and parody, glorifying the activities of the subconscious. André Breton, the founder of surrealism, argued that automatic writing and the description of dreams should play a vital role in the creation of literature. In the novel “Nadya” he used automatic writing, as well as photographs, which replaced descriptions, thus ironizing the overly verbose novelists. Postmodernist philosophers Jacques Derrida and Michel Foucault turned to experiments with the meanings of the surrealist artist Rene Magritte in their works. Foucault often turned to Jorge Luis Borges, a writer who has had a significant influence on postmodern literature. Sometimes Borges is considered a postmodernist, although he began writing in the 1920s. His experiments with metafiction techniques and magical realism were only appreciated with the advent of postmodernism.

Comparison with modernist literature

Both the modernist and postmodernist trends in literature break with the realism of the 19th century. In the construction of characters, these directions are subjective, they move away from external reality to the study of internal states of consciousness, using the “stream of consciousness” (a technique brought to perfection in the works of modernist writers Virginia Woolf and James Joyce) or combining lyricism and philosophy in “exploratory poetry” like Thomas Eliot's The Waste Land. Fragmentation - in the structure of the narrative and characters - is another common feature of modernist and postmodernist literature. The Waste Land is often cited as a borderline example between modernist and postmodernist literature. The fragmentary nature of the poem, the parts of which are not formally connected with each other, and the use of pastiche bring it closer to postmodern literature, however, the narrator of “The Waste Land” says that “with these fragments I have shored against my ruins.” In modernist literature, fragmentation and extreme subjectivity reflect an existential crisis or Freudian internal conflict, a problem that needs to be solved, and the artist is often the one who can and must do this. Postmodernists, however, show the insurmountability of this chaos: the artist is helpless, and the only refuge from the “ruins” is play among the chaos. The play form is present in many modernist works (in Joyce's Finnegans Wake, in Virginia Woolf's Orlando, for example), which may seem very close to postmodernism, but in the latter the play form becomes central, and the actual achievement of order and meaning is undesirable.

Literary scholar Brian McHale, speaking about the transition from modernism to postmodernism, notes that epistemological issues are at the center of modernist literature, while postmodernists are mainly interested in ontological issues.

Transition to postmodernism

As is the case with other eras, there are no exact dates that could indicate the rise and fall of the popularity of postmodernism. The year 1941, in which Irish writer James Joyce and English writer Virginia Woolf died, is sometimes cited as the approximate beginning of postmodernism.

The prefix “post-” indicates not only opposition to modernism, but also continuity in relation to it. Postmodernism is a reaction to modernism (and the results of its era), which followed the Second World War with its disrespect for human rights, just approved by the Geneva Convention, after the atomic bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, the horrors of concentration camps and the Holocaust, the bombing of Dresden and Tokyo. It can also be considered a reaction to other post-war events: the beginning of the Cold War, the civil rights movement in the United States, post-colonialism, the emergence of the personal computer (cyberpunk and hypertext literature).

The beginning of literary postmodernism can be identified through significant publications and events in literature. Some researchers name among these the release of “Cannibal” by John Hawkes (1949), the first performance of the play “Waiting for Godot” (1953), the first publication of “The Scream” (1956) or “Naked Lunch” (1959). Events of literary criticism can also serve as a starting point: Jacques Derrida’s lecture “Structure, Sign and Play” in 1966 or Ihab Hassan’s essay “The Dismemberment of Orpheus” in 1971.

Post-war period and key figures

Although the term "postmodern literature" does not refer to everything written during the postmodern period, some postwar movements (such as theater of the absurd, beatniks, and magical realism) have significant similarities. These movements are sometimes collectively classified as postmodernism, since the key figures of these movements (Samuel Beckett, William Burroughs, Jorge Luis Borges, Julio Cortázar and Gabriel García Márquez) made significant contributions to the aesthetics of postmodernism.

The works of Jarry, the surrealists, Antonin Artaud, Luigi Pirandello and other writers of the first half of the 20th century, in turn, influenced the playwrights of the theater of the absurd. The term "Theater of the Absurd" was coined by Martin Esslin to describe the theatrical movement of the 1950s; he relied on Albert Camus's concept of the absurd. The plays of the theater of the absurd are in many ways parallel to postmodern prose. For example, “The Bald Singer” by Eugene Ionesco is, in fact, a set of clichés from an English textbook. One of the largest figures who are classified as both absurdists and postmodernists is Samuel Beckett. His works are often considered transitional from modernism to postmodernism. Beckett was closely associated with modernism through his friendship with James Joyce; however, it was his work that helped literature overcome modernism. Joyce, one of the representatives of modernism, glorified the powers of language; Beckett said in 1945 that in order to emerge from the shadow of Joyce, he must focus on the poverty of language, turn to the theme of man as a misunderstanding. His later works show characters stuck in hopeless situations, trying to communicate with each other and realizing that the best they can do is play. Researcher Hans-Peter Wagner writes:

“Most concerned with what he saw as the impossibilities of literature (the individuality of characters; the reliability of consciousness; the reliability of language itself and the division of literature into genres), Beckett's experiments with form and the breakdown of narrative and character in prose and drama won him the 1969 Nobel Prize in Literature. His works published after 1969 are, for the most part, metaliterary endeavors that must be read in the light of his own theories and previous works; these are attempts to deconstruct literary forms and genres. ‹…› Beckett's last text published during his lifetime, Stirrings in Still (1988), blurs the boundaries between drama, prose and poetry, between Beckett's own texts, being composed almost entirely of echoes and repetitions from his previous works. ‹…› He was, of course, one of the fathers of the postmodern prose movement, which continues to undermine the ideas of logical narrative sequence, formal plot, regular temporal sequence and psychologically explainable characters.

Borders

Postmodernism in literature is not an organized movement with leaders and key figures; for this reason it is much more difficult to say whether it has ended, or whether it will end at all (like, for example, modernism, which ended with the deaths of Joyce and Woolf). Postmodernism arguably reached its peak in the 1960s and 1970s, with the publication of Catch-22 (1961), John Barth's Lost in the Funhouse (1968), Slaughterhouse-Five (1969), and Rainbow Gravity by Thomas Pynchon (1973), etc. Some point to the death of postmodernism in the 1980s, when a new wave of realism emerged, represented by Raymond Carver and his followers. Tom Wolfe, in the 1989 article "The Hunt for the Billion-Legged Monster", announces a new emphasis on realism in prose to replace postmodernism. With this new emphasis in mind, some have cited Don DeLillo's White Noise (1985) and The Satanic Verses (1988) as the last great novels of the postmodern era.

Nevertheless, a new generation of writers around the world continue to write, if not a new chapter of postmodernism, then something that could be called post-postmodernism.

Common Topics and Techniques

Irony, game, black humor

Canadian literary critic Linda Hutcheon calls postmodern fiction "ironic quotes" because much of this literature is parodic and ironic. This irony, as well as the dark humor and playful form (associated with Derrida's concept of play and the ideas expressed by Roland Barthes in The Pleasure of the Text) are the most recognizable features of postmodernism, although they were first used by modernists.

Many American postmodern writers were first classified as “black humorists”: these were John Barth, Joseph Heller, William Gaddis, Kurt Vonnegut, etc. Postmodernists are typical of handling serious topics in a playful and humorous way: for example, Heller, Vonnegut and Pynchon talk about the events of World War II. Thomas Pynchon often uses ridiculous puns within a serious context. Thus, his Lot 49 Shouts out features characters named Mike Fallopiev and Stanley Kotex, and also mentions the radio station KCUF, while the novel's theme is serious and the novel itself has a complex structure.

Intertextuality

Since postmodernism represents the idea of ​​a decentered universe, in which the work of an individual is not an isolated creation, intertextuality is of great importance in the literature of postmodernism: the relationship between texts, the inevitable inclusion of any of them in the context of world literature. Critics of postmodernism see this as a lack of originality and dependence on cliches. Intertextuality can be a reference to another literary work, a comparison with it, it can provoke a lengthy discussion of it, or it can borrow a style. In postmodern literature, references to fairy tales and myths play an important role (see the works of Margaret Atwood, Donald Barthelemy, etc.), as well as popular genres such as science fiction or detective fiction. An early turn to intertextuality in the 20th century, which influenced subsequent postmodernists, is the story "Pierre Menard, Author of Don Quixote" by Borges, whose protagonist rewrites Cervantes' Don Quixote, a book that in turn harkens back to the tradition of medieval romances. “Don Quixote” is often mentioned by postmodernists (see, for example, Kathy Acker’s novel “Don Quixote: Which Was a Dream”). Another example of intertextuality in postmodernism is John Barth's The Dope Merchant, which references Ebenezer Cook's poem of the same name. Intertextuality often takes a more complex form than a single reference to another text. Robert Coover's Pinocchio in Venice connects Pinocchio with Death in Venice by Thomas Mann. The Name of the Rose by Umberto Eco takes the form of a detective novel and references texts by Aristotle, Arthur Conan Doyle and Borges.

Pastiche

Metafiction

Historical metafiction

Linda Khachen coined the term “historical metafiction” to refer to works in which real events and figures are reinvented and changed; famous examples are Gabriel Marquez's The General in His Labyrinth (about Simon Bolivar), Julian Barnes's Flaubert's Parrot (about Gustave Flaubert), and E. L. Doctorow's Ragtime, which features historical figures such as Harry Houdini, Henry Ford , Archduke Franz Ferdinand, Booker T. Washington, Sigmund Freud, Carl Jung. Thomas Pynchon's Mason and Dixon also uses this technique; for example, there is a scene in the book where George Washington smokes marijuana. John Fowles does a similar thing with the Victorian era in The French Lieutenant's Woman.

Time distortion

Fragmentation and nonlinear storytelling are the main features of both modern and postmodern literature. Time distortion is used in various forms in postmodern literature, often to add a hint of irony. Time distortions appear in many of Kurt Vonnegut's non-linear novels; the most famous example is the "timeless" Billy Pilgrim from Slaughterhouse-Five. In the story “The Nanny” by Robert Coover from the collection “Pricksongs & Descants,” the author shows several versions of the event occurring simultaneously - in one version the nanny is killed, in the other nothing happens to her, etc. Thus, none of the versions of the story is not the only correct one.

Magic realism

Technoculture and hyperreality

Paranoia

Maximalism

Postmodern sensibility requires that the parody work parodies the very idea of ​​parody, and that the narrative correspond to what is depicted (i.e., the modern information society), spreading and fragmenting.

Some critics, such as B. R. Myers, accuse the maximalist novels of writers like Dave Eggers of lacking structure, of sterile language, language play for its own sake, and lack of emotional involvement of the reader. All this, in their opinion, reduces the value of such a novel to zero. However, there are examples of modern novels where postmodern storytelling coexists with the emotional involvement of the reader: Pynchon's Mason and Dixon and D. F. Wallace's Infinite Jest.

Minimalism

Literary minimalism is characterized by superficial descriptiveness, thanks to which the reader can take an active part in the narrative. Characters in minimalist works, as a rule, do not have characteristic features. Minimalism, unlike maximalism, depicts only the most necessary, basic things; economy of words is specific to it. Minimalist authors avoid adjectives, adverbs, and meaningless details. The author, instead of describing every detail and minute of the story, gives only the main context, inviting the reader’s imagination to “complete” the story. Most often, minimalism is associated with the work of Samuel Beckett.

Different views

Postmodernist writer John Barth, who has spoken extensively about the phenomenon of postmodernism, wrote the essay "The Literature of Exhaustion" in 1967; in 1979 he published a new essay, "The Literature of Replenishment", in which he clarified his previous article. "Literature of Exhaustion" was about the need for a new era in literature after the exhaustion of modernism. In The Literature of Replenishment, Barth wrote:

“In my opinion, the ideal postmodern writer does not copy, but also does not reject his fathers from the twentieth century and his grandfathers from the nineteenth. He carries the first half of the century not on his hump, but in his stomach: he managed to digest it. ‹…› He may not hope to shake the fans of James Michener and Irving Wallace, not to mention the ignoramuses lobotomized by mass culture. But he must hope that he will be able to penetrate and captivate (at least someday) a certain layer of the public - wider than the circle of those whom Mann called the first Christians, that is, than the circle of professional ministers of high art. ‹…› The ideal novel of postmodernism must somehow be above the battle of realism with irrealism, formalism with “contentism,” pure art with biased art, elitist prose with mass prose. ‹…› In my opinion, a comparison with good jazz or classical music is appropriate here. Listening again, following the score, you notice what you missed the first time. But this first time should be so amazing - and not only in the opinion of a specialist - that you want to repeat it.”

Many postmodern novels deal with World War II. One of the most famous examples is Catch-22 by Joseph Heller. However, Heller argued that his novel, like many other American works of the time, was more related to the post-war situation in the country:

“The anti-war and anti-government sentiment in the book belongs to the period following World War II: the Korean War, the Cold War of the 1950s. A general decline in faith followed the war, and it affected Catch-22 in the sense that the novel itself almost fell apart. “Catch-22” was a collage: if not in structure, then in the ideology of the novel itself... Without knowing it, I was part of an almost-movement in literature. When I was writing Catch-22, Dunleavy was writing The Lightning Man, Jack Kerouac was writing On the Road, Ken Kesey was writing One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest, Thomas Pynchon was writing V., and Kurt Vonnegut was writing Cradle cats." I don't think either of us knew about each other. At least I didn't know anyone. Whatever forces shaped trends in art, they affected not only me, but all of us. The feeling of helplessness, the fear of persecution, is equally strong in Catch-22, in Pynchon, and in Cat's Cradle.

Researcher Hans-Peter Wagner proposes the following approach to define postmodern literature:

"The term 'postmodernism'... can be used in two ways - firstly, to designate the period after 1968 (which would embrace all forms of literature, both innovative and traditional), and secondly, to describe highly experimental a literature that began with the works of Lawrence Durrell and John Fowles in the 1960s and which suffocated with the works of Martin Amis and the Scottish "Chemical Generation" of the turn of the century. It follows that the term "postmodernist literature" is used for experimental authors (especially Durrell, Fowles, Carter, Brooke-Rose, Barnes, Ackroyd and Martin Amis), while the term "postmodern literature" “(post-modern) applies to less innovative authors.”

Significant works of postmodern literature