Movements
Postmodernism
Also Known As Postmodern Literature
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A movement, following Modernism, marked by skepticism toward objective truth and totalizing historical narratives, self-conscious narrative technique, fragmentation, pastiche and unreliable narration foregrounded as technique rather than concealed, and a blurring of the line between high and popular culture. Where Modernism mourned the loss of coherent meaning, Postmodern fiction more often treats that loss playfully or ironically, and historiographic metafiction, fiction that interrogates how history itself gets narrated and by whom, is one of its central modes. Toni Morrison's Beloved (1987), which reconstructs the history of American slavery through a nonlinear, haunted narrative voice that refuses a single authoritative account of the past, is widely discussed as a landmark of this historiographic metafictional mode.
Facts
Disputed
Period, From (Year)Some critics trace Postmodernism to the rupture of the Second World War around 1945, others to the 1960s, when the term gained sustained critical currency in Ihab Hassan's and later Fredric Jameson's theorization; no single starting event is agreed. Cross-Tradition Connections
Associated Authors
Associated With
Beloved, Works Widely discussed as a landmark of postmodern historiographic metafiction.
In the Other Atlases
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Open Questions (2 open questions)
Has Postmodernism, as a literary period, ended?
Postmodernism carries a debated start date but essentially no agreed end date or settled successor period. Some critics and theorists have proposed a 'post-postmodern' or 'metamodern' shift beginning around the 1990s or after 2001, while others argue Postmodernism remains the operative frame for contemporary literature and no closing boundary can yet be drawn.
What would resolve this No single text or event would settle this; it would require broad critical consensus on a successor period's own defining features, which current literary theory has not reached.
Literary theory and periodizationEncyclopaedia Britannica
Has postmodernism in literature ended, and if so when?
Sources describe a new generation of writers and publications (David Foster Wallace, Zadie Smith, McSweeney's and others) as heralding either a new chapter of postmodernism or possibly a distinct post-postmodernism, without resolving which reading is correct, so no consensus end date exists.
What would resolve this A broadly adopted literary-critical consensus, or a landmark critical work, either marking postmodernism's close or confirming its continuation under a new name.
Literary criticism and periodization scholarshipPostmodern Literature (Wikipedia)
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