In her book, A Poetics of Postmodernism, Linda Hutcheon sees postmodernism, when used in fiction, to describe fiction that is metafictional and historical at the same time by presenting the texts and contexts of the past (Hutcheon, 40). This is what she calls historiographic metafiction. Most of the historiographic novels emphasize self-reflexivity and our paradoxical relations of past events. Historiographic metafiction somehow acknowledges the paradox of the past, that is to say, the past that is accessible to us today only in the form of text. As Fredric Jameson reminds us, “history is not a text, but it is only accessible in textual form (Homer, w8, slide 4)”.
Subsequently, the reader can make different predictions on what will occur throughout Don’t Get Caught, and the ability to predict and analyze uniquely is one of the principal ideals of Postmodernist literature. Ultimately, the central purpose of an author’s novel is to engross the reader, by writing in a genre and movement that is appropriate the book. Appropriately, Kurt Dinan engages the reader with both a Mystery genre and Postmodernist elements in his novel, Don’t Get Caught. Postmodernists believe that traditional authority is false and corrupt, and the central theme of Don’t Get Caught is that the powerful students play pranks and humiliate the less influential students. There exists a social elite club known as the Chaos Club that plays pranks on the school and faculty, and nobody can figure out the leader of the club is or who the members’ are.
The researcher also needs supporting data to analyze the novel therefore; the researcher uses previous researches and books related to the thesis. The researcher has to read about deconstruction and absurdism as philosophical and literary approaches, which depends on postmodernism in order to analyze the novel. There are some available books in the culture of these theories such as Deconstruction as narrative interruption by James Gilbert Walsh, The absurd in Literature by Neil Cornwell, Double Reading: Postmodernism after Deconstruction by Jeffrey T. Nealon, and Postmodern Literature by Ian Gregson. As Kafka is interested in writing about absurdity of existentialism, books like Kafka and his Precursors by Jorge Luis Borges, and Kafka's Jewish Language: The Hidden Openness of Tradition by David Suchoff, and Kafka: A Guide for the Perplexed by Clayton Koelb are helpful. The sources related to Franz Kafka are variable because most of critics see that Kafka is a postmodern writer who tries to bring out all what related to the social and political conflict as well as stating the idea of free play inside the language from a postmodern perspective.
Walsh surveys the history of attempts to explain what fiction isand how it operates, pointing out that, for all their rich variety, ‘‘modern accounts offictionality generally turn upon one or more of a small range of theoreticalploys.’’ In addition, as he proves through patient exploration of centralmodern accounts, especially those based in speech act theory and possible worldstheory, all these exercises reduce to various kinds of displacement ‘‘by detaching thefictive act from the domain of truth.’’ (Despite their differences, there are interestingmethodological similarities between Walsh’s and Jacobi’s essays.) As an alternative,Walsh offers a pragmatic account of fictionality in which relevance, rather than truthbecomes the key term, and he demonstrates its explanatory power by analyzing theopening of Kafka’s The
These binaries include history and literature, fact and fiction, and reality and imagination to mention just a few. According to them there shouldn’t be a distinction between these notions, rather they should be put together and presented as a whole to create a unified picture and a better understanding of, for example, history. Aside from these binaries, postmodernists have questioned two important notions that were set by the enlightenment thinkers and that are closely related to our understanding of the relationship between history on the one hand and fiction on the other as presented by Don DeLillo. These notions are ‘positivist history’ and ‘the universal subject’. Positivist history is the
Here we see Barton wondering if all the tales of Cruso were simply a myth to create the illusion of the famous castaway tale, a myth grounded in the male dominated literary tradition. Through Susan’s perspective, the narrative is re-constructed, and Foe sees that reconstruction as a threat, which is why he attempts to disrupt and conform Barton’s narrative to his own desires: the myth of the castaway narrative up holds the patriarchal power structure of literary tradition. However, by Barton disrupting the traditional narrative, she is, indeed, taking an old text, a myth, and taking it in a new critical direction. She admits, “We faced no perils, no ravenous beasts, not even serpents
1996 176-9) Johnson has already addressed the close relationship between history and fiction, a topic that has been discussed by several scholars. They predominantly come from literary studies and share a critical perspective on the historians’ claim for factuality and verisimilitude. Historians often tend to see themselves as scientists, as Beverley Southgate points out, while dramatists, novelists, etc. sometimes see themselves as historians; for Southgate history appears to be a literary genre (Cf. Southgate 44) Already in 1975 Peter Gay observed the similarity between literature and history.
1 Introduction A certain literary genre is based on certain philosophy theories. By comparing the different philosophical foundation of the traditional detective fictions and post-modern detective fictions from ontology and epistemology, post-modern detective stories not only deconstruct the narrative forms of traditional detective stories, but also implement post-modern literature theories to generate new philosophical space that is different from the former theories’ ontological and epistemological conclusions. Specifically speaking, post-modern detective fictions, represented by The New York Trilogy, creates a newly philosophical and aesthetic refutation, reconstructing the traditional detective fictions established by Edgar Allan Poe. 1.1 An Introduction to Detective Stories Detective story, is one of subgenres of crime story and mystery story where an investigator, no matter he is professional or amateur, detects some crime. Usually, it involves murder.
History is nothing but the literary work of writer who presents the past to the present reader for adventure. For example, Homer selected the Trojan War as a theme in his epics Iliad and Oddessy, Shakespeare selected historical themes to produce his famous dramas, and Voltaire and Rousseau created history by writing literature with historical themes. Historians like Herodotus, Thucidides, and Gibbon have presented their history in literary form, in a romantic style of novelty. George Macaulay Trevelyan argued that history is nothing but a collection of facts, the events happened. Against this, Theodore Roosevelt sharply attacked on Trevelyan for damaging the historiography for superficial approach to history.
THE NOVELS OF AMITAV GHOSH: A PERSPECTIVE STUDY Chapter VI CONCLUSION Deepa Bavanasi In foregoing pages an attempt has been made to trace and study in some detail the art and vision of Amitav Ghosh in his novels. They deal with the lives of human beings not in a static environment but that of mobility. His fiction is characterised by strong themes that may be somewhat identified with Post-Colonialism. They are unique and personal;