Postmodernism introduction

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"A style and concept in the arts characterised by distrust of theories and ideologies and by the drawing of attention to conventions".
"Of or relating to art, architecture, or literature that reacts against earlier modernist principles, as by reintroducing traditional or classical elements of style or by carrying modernist styles or practices to extremes: "It [a roadhouse] is so architecturally interesting... with its postmodern wooden booths and sculptural clock."
Taking classical elements and taking them to the extreme

Postmodernism tends to resist definition, hence it is difficult to classify and describe as a movement (usually post ww2)

After world war 2, they were shell shocked, little suspicious of the established order, so they kinda go crazy (also war kinda make you crazy)

Intertextuality
- A text is not constructed in isolation. Each text is influenced by those that preceded it. Texts may allude to or echo other texts.
  - "A text is not constructed in isolation.", or variants of it, are often found in exam questions. In general, all forms of text have some degree of intertextuality
Metafiction
- This is writing about writing OR foregrounding the process OR breaking the fourth wall.
Pastiche
- Like a collage or Frankenstein's monster... this is the collation of elements from a variety of sources/genres.
- A collection of multiple poetic styles
Maximalism and minimalism
- Minimalism: essentials only, low detail
  - Reader fills in gaps
- Maximalism: extreme detail of writing, elaborate (potentially verbose)
  - Steinbeck's Grapes of Wrath is quite maximalist
Playfulness and black humour
- Tongue-in-cheek, making jokes of dark topics, like death
- Use of irony
Fragmentation
- Non-linear narrative
- Time is not linearly presented, could be fragmented (i.e. presented as past future present instead of past present future)
- e.g. TOP GIRLS!!
Magic realism
Technoculture and hyperreality
Paranoia
- From cold-war thinking
Temporal distortion

Note that Top Girls and M. Butterfly are both postmodernist