Realism And Postmodernism In Literature

Post-modernist literary styles and ideas serve to dispute, reverse and reject the principles of modernist literature (Postmodernism in Literature) This plays in the fact that artists of the postmodern period tend to abstain from bringing out the possibility of meaning whereas this is opposite case in modernist fiction. The postmodern product is presented across as a parody of the modernist literary quest for meaning (Postmodernism in Literature). Some of the characteristics which run commonly in postmodernists texts include: magic realism, intertextuality, maximalism, metafiction, temporal distortion, pastiche, etc. I have analyzed two of the major ones: intertextuality and magic realism.

Post-modernist fiction entails within it the element

This is how Foucault drives his idea forward by substantiating it with the existing texts and making his into a form of reference for the next postmodernist text. Another example of this is where in the same reading He supports his arguments by taking the example of “Nietzsche’s works” (207) when elaborating upon the function of an author with respect to the works that they didn’t get published. He then uses this example of Nietzsche’s works out of which everything got published. He uses this to question this notion of “everything” one writes, which include their discarded works, etc. Therefore, this notion is enriched by using Nietzsche’s works as evidence to his argument. His argument wouldn’t have been unbelievable without this citation but since this but his reference to an existing and well author and his texts makes his argument all the more substantial. Here is how intertextuality acts as a significant factor in taking forward the ideas touched upon in postmodernist

He first describes the realistic aspects of a tiger’s image. “I used to linger endlessly before one of the cages at the zoo; I judged vast encyclopedias and books of natural history by the splendor of their tigers. (I still remember those illustrations: I who cannot rightly recall the brow or the smile of a woman.) (J.L.Borges) and then towards the end blends on to the Dreamtigers is a perfect example of that where the author describes how his fantastical eye creates the blended image of him “causing a tiger”. This is where magic realism flows in. He creates a platform where both the reality he has lived in (of lingering before cages in zoos) and illustrations of the existing species of tigers which merges with the magic his imagination creates. This is not real but it derives from reality and uses magic to enable him to cause a tiger. Therefore, magic realism is a contradictory term where we are pushed to look into the realms of the nature of reality. Reality is both magical and real where the “real” is assumed to be something which isn’t imagined. It exists in a world where objects become symbols for something else and they serve as metaphors for the “real objects”. Here, Borges is playing with the same idea of using tigers as real objects about which there are illustrations,etc. but at the same time redefining them as metaphors for the manifestation of the imagined creature which