Postmodernism

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Postmodernism
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• Allows for multiple meanings and multiple worlds
• Structures works in nontraditional forms
• Comments on itself
• Can be intensely personal
• Features cultural diversity
• Blends fiction and nonfiction
• Uses the past fearlessly

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• Postmodern writers build with many of the tools
  the modernist provided, but they are constructing
  a body of literature that is strikingly different
  from that produced by the modernists
• The postmodernist would ask, Why choose only one
  version? Why limit ourselves?

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• The Beat Poets
• The confessional school
• Page 807

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Themes

• DeconstructionThis is the term that defines the
  basic premise of Postmodernism. It does not mean
  destruction, but rather it is a critique of the
  criteria of certainty, identity, and truth.

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Styles

• Parody
• Irony
• A blending of genres
• Prose poetry
• The nonfiction novel
• Authorial Intrusion