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| The Literature of Replenishment--Postmodernist Fiction |
| 作者Author / John Barth 約翰．巴斯 |
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The
Literature of Replenishment--Postmodernist Fiction
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| There
is no clear definition for the term "postmodernism" and for the
characteristics of "postmodernist fiction" in this era, and some
scholars claim that postmodernism is the extension or the opposition of
modernism in a way. In this essay, John Barth show his disagreement
with this notion, and at the same time he also point out his liking of
some qualities of literature of the last century. However, he does not
really wants to get rid of all elements of modernism in postmodernist
fiction, and he does not want to trace back to the ancient traditions
completely either. Synthesis
is the ideal way for postmodernist writer and fiction. |
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About Postmodernism & Postmodernist
Fiction General Views
Modernism
Barth's Disagreement with Modernism
Barth's
View of
Postmodernism & Postmodernist Fiction
Two
Examples
Related Links
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| General
Views about Postmodernism & Postmodernist Fiction |
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A.
General speaking, the term postmodernism clearly suggests that any
discussion of it must therefore either. . .
1. presume
that modernism in its turn, at this hour of the world, needs no
definition.
2. or define,
or redefine, that predominant aesthetic of Western literature in the
first half of this century.
B. Professor Robert
Alter:
"Over the past
two decades, as the high tide of modernism ebbed and its master died
off. . ." But there is no proceeding definition of the ensuing low
tide, postmodernism.
C. Professor
Ihab Hassan:
1. He
suggests that postmodernist fiction is both rightly proceed from the
premise that the programme is in some respect an extension of the
programme of modernism and in other respects a reaction against it.
Similar to the two above, he also has no clear definition of
postmodernist fiction.
2. For Alter,
Hassan and other postmodernist, postmodernist fiction merely emphasis
the 'performing' self-consciousness and self-reflexiveness of
modernism, in a spirit of cultural and anarchy. It is more and more
about itself and its process, less about objective reality and life.
D. Professor Gerald
Graff:
1. He makes
a quick review of conventions of literary modernism before discussing
the mode of fiction "departs not only from realistic conventions but
from modernist ones as well."?But still he does not make a clear
definition of postmodernism.
2. For Graff,
postmodernist fiction is also anti-rationalist, anti-realist, and
anti-bourgeois programme. But the difference is he gets rid of certain
postmodernist satire as managing to be vitalized by the same kitschy
society that is its target.
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| Modernism |
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Through out
the definition of postmodernism above, we see that there are indeed
every close relationship between modernism and postmodernism (since
some suggests postmodernism is the extension or opposition of
modernism). In this article Barth tries to reexamine the
characteristics of modernism.
A.
Graff's check list of modernism: This checklist in some way is the
criticism of the 19th century bourgeois social order and its world view.
.. Its
artistic strategy was the self-conscious overturning of the conventions
of bourgeois realism by such devices as the substitution of 'mythical'
for a 'realistic' method and the manipulation of conscious parallels
between contemporaneity and antiquity...
.. the radical
disruption of the linear flow of narrative
.. the
frustration of conventional expectation concerning unity and coherence
of plot and character and the cause-and-effect "development" thereof
.. the
development of ironic and ambiguous juxtapositions to call into
question the moral and philosophical "meaning" of literary action
.. the
adoption of a tone of epistemological self-mockery aimed at the naive
pretensions of bourgeois rationality
.. the
opposition of inward consciousness to rational, public, objective
discourse
.. an
inclination to subjective distortion to point up the temporariness of
the objective social world of the 19th bourgeoisie
B. Barth
himself adds some characteristics of modernism:
..
modernists' insistence on the special, usually alienated role of artist
in his society, or outside of it. e.g. Joyce, Mann, Kafka
.. the
modernists' foregrounding of language and technique as opposed to
straightforward traditional 'content' e.g. Mann, Flaubert, and Barhes'
sum
.. James Joyce
& Co. set very high standards of artistry, no doubt implicit in
their preoccupation with the special remove of the artist from his
society
.. Difficulty
of access (high standards of craftsmanship): anti-linearity, aversion
to conventional characterization and cause-and-effect dramaturgy, their
celebration of private, subjective experience over public experience,
their general inclination to 'metaphoric' as against 'metonymic'
means.--it leads to the result of unpopularity. e.g. guide-book needed
for understanding the allusion; distant from our world.
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| Barth's
Disagreement with Modernism |
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A. First we
see Barth borrows the words of Roland Barthes: ". . . the whole of
literature, from Flaubert to the present day, became the problematics
of language."?That is, one major preoccupation of the modernists was
the problematics, not simply of language, but of the medium of
literature. Here my assumption is that the focus of modernist
literature is not merely the content, the form or the appearance of a
piece of artistic or literary work will become the media between
authors and readers. It is not the essence of literature.
B. Barth
approves the value of 19th century literature. He suggests that
suggests we should agree with the commonplace that the rigidities and
other limitation of the 19th prompted the great adversary reaction
called modernist art. But it (modernist art) belongs to the first half
of the century. In this passage we see Barth‘s aversion of modernist
art and his liking of the 19th century.
C. However,
Barth does not agree the total repudiation of the enterprise of
modernism as if the period never happened. The chart below will help to
understand the values of different characteristics of different periods:
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19th Century
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Post/Modern
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linearity
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disjunction
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rationality
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irrationality
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consciousness
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self-reflexiveness
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cause
and effect
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simultaneity
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naive
illusionism
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anti-illusionism
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transparent
language
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medium-as-message
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innocent
anecdote
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political
oliympianism
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| middle-class moral convention |
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moral
pluralism/entropy
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not the whole story
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not the whole story
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Barth thinks
that postmodernism is neither extension of modernism, nor on the
contrary the wholesale subversion of either modernism or postmodernism,
or 'traditional' bourgeois realism. Only combining the ideas together
can help to get the whole story. This is where his idea of synthesis is
from.
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| Barth's
View of Postmodernism & Postmodernist Fiction |
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A.
When observing the ideas of other postmodernists, Barth thinks that the
so-called is indeed a kind of pallid, last-ditch decadence, of no more
than minor symptomatic. There is no want of actual texts illustrative
of this view of the postmodernist breakthrough. Like those modernists
who only have the posture but no understanding. A worthy programme for
postmodernist fiction is the synthesis and transcendence of these
antitheses (pre and modernist writing).
B. The ideal
postmodernist writer neither repudiates nor merely imitate either his
19th and 20th parents. Without falling into moral or artistic simplism,
shoddy craftsmanship, or either false or real naivety, he nevertheless
aspires to a fiction more democratic in its appeal than such
late-modernist marvels. He may not hope to reach and move the devotees
of James Michener and Irving Wallace--not to mention the lobotomized
mass-media illiterature. But he should hope to reach and delight beyond
the circle of what Mann used to call Early Christians: professional
devotees of high art.
C. Novel is a
genre whose historical roots are famously and honorably in middle-class
popular culture. The ideal postmodernist novel will rise above the
quarrel between realism and irrealism, formalism and 'contentism,' pure
and committed literature, coterie and junk literature. It may nor needs
so much teaching as Joyce's or Pynchon's books. Barth's
analogy--listening to jazz.
TOP
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| Two
Examples |
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A. Calvino's Cosmicomics
as the example of the synthesis
.. enormously
appealing space-age fable
.. the
materials are as modern as the new cosmology and as ancient as
folktales
.. the themes
are love and loss, change and permanence, illusion and reality,
including a good deal of specially Italian reality
.. As a true
postmodernist, Calvino keeps one foot always in the narrative
past--characteristically the Italian narrative past of Boccaccio, Marco
Polo, or Italian fair tales--and one foot in the Parisian structuralist
present; one foot in fantasy, one in objective reality
B. Marquez's One
Hundred Years of Solitude, a great novel not only in the
second half of this century, but also would be great in any century.
.. synthesis
of straitforwardness and artifice, realism and magic and myth,
political passion and nonpolitical artistry, characterization and
caricature, humor and terror, not only artistically admirable, but also
humanly wise, lovable, literally marvelous. People had almost forgotten
that new fiction could be so wonderful as well as so merely important.
TOP
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| Related
Links |
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Literary
Criticism Databank: Postmodernism and Urban Space
N.
American Postmodern Fiction & Film, Spring
2000
Postmodern Theories and Texts Fall, 1998 |
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