Postmodern Literature

by Ian Gregson

A fascinating variety of writing has been produced in the period since the Second World War. Much of this can be helpfully understood by reference to postmodernism. Many important texts in the period, however, are distorted when this label is applied to them, and others are actively anti-postmodernist. Postmodern Literature accessibly defines postmodernism, compares and contrasts it with modernism, and places it in its historical context, especially in relation to crucial phenomena like Auschwitz, the clashing of ideologies, and the prevalence of propaganda and misinformation. It discusses the major theorists of postmodernism, Jean-Francois Lyotard, Fredric Jameson and Jean Baudrillard, and demonstrates how their theories illuminate the work of postmodernist writers such as John Ashbery, Walter Abish and Angela Carter. It defines the key postmodern theories of language, race and gender--poststructuralism, postcolonialism, and feminism--and explores their often fraught relationships with postmodernism in relation to important writers such as Toni Morrison, Adrienne Rich and Salman Rushdie.

192 pages, Paperback

First published September 16, 2004

About the author

Ian Gregson is an award-winning poet whose latest book of poems is How We Met (Salt, 2008); Call Centre Love Song (Salt, 2006) was shortlisted for a Forward prize. He has published five books of criticism on contemporary writing. Contemporary Poetry and Postmodernism: Dialogue and Estrangement (Macmillan, 1996) applies Bakhtininian theories of the dialogic, and Shklovskian theories of estrangement, to contemporary poetry. The Male Image: Representations of Masculinity in Postwar Poetry (Macmillian, 2002) uses gender theory to talk about the masculinity of poets such as Robert Lowell, Ted Hughes, Seamus Heaney and Derek Walcott. Character and Satire in Postwar Fiction (Continuum, 2004) explores the widespread use of caricatural techniques in the contemporary novel. Postmodern Literature (Hodder Arnold, 2006) is a reappraisal of theorisings of postmodernism and indicates the presence of realist writings, and concerns about Nature, which oppose the official line on the postmodern. The New Poetry in Wales (University of Wales Press, 2006) celebrates the strength of recent poetry in Wales and discusses it in terms of questions of national identity.

He recently took early retirement from teaching literature and creative writing in the English Department at Bangor University, where he was Professor and was nominated for Professor of Poetry at Oxford, receiving the largest number of nominati