Postmodernism and the Contemporary Novel: A Reader

The novel has led a fascinating life in the decades since the 1980s: reborn after the World War II, declared dead in 1969, and resurrected ever since. At the heart of the debate has been the question of postmodernism. The term is notoriously widely-used and hotly disputed, especially perhaps in literary theory, where a bewildering number of novelists and traditions have been claimed or rejected as postmodernist. Nevertheless, looking at the debate as a whole, there has been a broad consensus about the thematic and formal features of the postmodern novel, and several key lines of inquiry have been continually pursued. This text collects together the most important contributions to the theory of the postmodern novel since the 1960s, guiding readers through the complex questions and wide-ranging debates: what are its characteristics? Which novels and authors belong to the category? Does it even deserve to be a category on its own? From which traditions does it emerge? How does it relate to previous forms of the novel and to other aspects of postmodern culture? While discussion of the contemporary novel has been dominated by the question of postmodernism, developments in contemporary fiction are also central to the wider debate about postmodernism. Fiction is referred to frequently in the work of postmodernist thinkers not explicitly concerned with literature, like Baudrillard, Lyotard, and Haraway. The selections in this book should also enable readers to place the theory of postmodern fiction in a broader intellectual and cultural context.