Flashcards on Postmodernism in Contemporary British Fiction
Postmodernism in Contemporary British Fiction: An SEO Guide
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21 cards
Card 1
Question: What characterizes postmodernism, according to Lyotard (The Postmodern Condition)?
Answer: The breakdown of metanarratives, a new nature of knowledge, a new understanding of history, and the decentering of the world; postmodernism equals dem
Card 2
Question: What are the main consequences of postmodernism for narratives?
Answer: The questioning of narrative authority, unreliable narrators, playing with the reader, metafiction, intertextuality, fragmentation, a plurality of opi
Card 3
Question: What does the term "metafiction" mean in the context of postmodern narratives, according to the text?
Answer: A narrative that comments on or reveals its own fictionality and plays with the form of storytelling (self-conscious fiction).
Card 4
Question: How does postmodernism engage with history?
Answer: It replaces a single grand History with many histories (histories vs. The History), often through historiographic metafiction, which is a narrative th
Card 5
Question: What does the term "multicultural literature" encompass in contemporary Britain, according to the text?
Answer: It's a broader category than postcolonial literature: it includes postcolonial authors, diaspora literature, authors with non-(post)colonial origins,
Card 6
Question: What are the main themes prevalent in British fiction from the 1990s to the present?
Answer: Millennial anxieties, identity (personal and national), sexuality and gender, childhood and parent-child relationships, historical fiction, narrative
Card 7
Question: How does the text describe the period of British prose in the 1990s (Fukuyama's quote)?
Answer: The 1990s are referred to as a "holiday from history"—literature from this era often does not engage with political or international themes.
Card 8
Question: Provide examples of authors and works that illustrate the theme of identity at the turn of the century.
Answer: Zadie Smith: White Teeth (2000); Helen Fielding: Bridget Jones’s Diary (1996); A.S. Byatt: Babel Tower (1996); Kazuo Ishiguro: The Remains of the Day
Card 9
Question: Which works and authors in the text represent historical fiction in British literature of the 1990s?
Answer: Peter Ackroyd: The House of Doctor Dee (1993), Dan Leno and the Limehouse Golem (1994); Pat Barker: the Regeneration trilogy, The Eye in the Door, The
Card 10
Question: What does the term "narrative geography" mean, and provide examples from the text.
Answer: A focus on cities and landscapes as narrative spaces: Hanif Kureishi (The Buddha of Suburbia), Jim Crace: Arcadia (urban pastoral), Peter Ackroyd: Lon