Parody / Irony – Unlike the blunt reality of modernist masters such as Ernest Hemingway and James Joyce, Postmodern authors often display a wicked sense of humor, relishing the opportunity to find laughs in the plain details of everyday life and mock those in power, especially for their hypocrisy. Modernist conventions, such as realism, seriousness and the invisibility of the author are also frequent targets. Their humor often veers in the direction of either the absurd, or a grim sense of irony.
Fragmentation – a holdover from the Modernist era, Postmodern works are often presented in small, sometimes microscopic fragments, which may or may not fit together. This technique lends itself well to pastiche (see below).
Pastiche / Collage – a cut-and-paste aesthetic device, in which various diverse elements are brought together, often providing ironic humor through the odd juxtapositions. This process can be more organic (i.e. the elements fit together smoothly) or mechanical (c.f. the “cut-ups” of William S. Burroughs and Tristan Tzara).
Intertextuality – present in Modernist literature, however intertextuality becomes a powerful aesthetic force in the Postmodern era. Intertextuality is the insertion of smaller sub-texts into a larger text, whether a single story-within-a-story (as in Barthelme’s “A Manual for Sons,” a “book” inserted into the middle of his novel, The Dead Father) or the presence of various media sources (television shows, films, songs, news articles/broadcasts, letters, phone calls, etc.) within a text, often delivered via modes of technology.
Metafiction – simply put, writing about writing; metafiction seeks to work against suspension of disbelief, reminding the reader that a text is, in Robert Duncan’s words, “a made thing.” This takes the form of writers inserting themselves into the text (e.g. Paul Auster, Kurt Vonnegut), writing about the process of writing, or about the text itself (cf. Brautigan’s chapter in Trout Fishing in America which refers to a photograph on the book’s cover), or reminding readers of their role (cf. Barthelme’s questionnaire in the middle of Snow White, which asks readers how they’re enjoying the novel).
Historiographic Metafiction – telling a fictionalized version of real events, and/or making real people characters in a fictional work. E.L. Doctorow’s Ragtime is perhaps the most famous example of this technique; Coover’s The Public Burning is another fine example. Historiographic metafiction gets further subverted when authors appropriate fictional characters for their own texts (e.g. Coover’s Pinocchio in Venice, Barthelme’s Snow White).
Ludic Processes – simply put, many Postmodern authors treat the writing process as a game, imposing concepts, limits and rules upon their works, or using forms which come with certain restrictions. The Oulipo authors made extensive use of gameplay, such as Georges Perec’s A Void, a novel which never uses the letter “e,” or Christian Bök’s Eunoia, a work in five sections, each of which features only words that use a certain vowel.
Non-linearity / Temporal Shifts – This technique often goes hand-in-hand with fragmentation, presenting events in a jumpy, haphazard fashion. An entire sequence of events might be told in this fashion, or there might be intentional gaps. A variation on this device is time running backwards.
A Multiplicity of Perspectives – this technique is to content what non-linearity is to time: multiple versions of the same event are presented, underscoring the unreliability of subjective voices, the authority of the author, or certainty as an abstract notion. Coover’s “The Babysitter” is a classic example of this device in action, as is the film Rashomon.
Hyperreality – a key concept of Jean Baudrillard’s—namely, the inability to tell reality from fantasy, because fantasy seems more real than reality, as direct result of the process of historicity.
The Technological Trope – A Postmodern world is a world teeming with technology—not to mention a media-saturated world—and so Postmodern texts are often loaded with televisions, computers, telephones, radios, appliances, cars, etc. (cf. Don Delillo’s White Noise).
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