Postmodern literature

Postmodern literature tackles the modern world with playfulness

Postmodern literature shares many similarities with modernist literature, as both movements deal with the modern world and its depressing loss of tradition and meaning. However, what makes postmodern literature different is the fact that its mindset towards all this is more optimistic and playful. The postmodernists accept that life is basically without meaning and stability - and they make the best of it by playing around with this in literature in numerous ways. 

It is difficult to pinpoint particular literary genres as postmodern because postmodernism is the ‘breakdown of genre’: Its authors often mix a variety of genres and styles, from past to present and from high culture to low culture. One example is Pride and Prejudice and Zombies (2009), which mixes the 19th century love novel (past, high culture) with modern zombie movies (present, low culture). However, it is possible to outline some of the most famous texts from this literary period, which we do below.

Poetry

Eve Merriam was an American children’s poet who believed that reading poetry should be an almost physical experience. One example of this is “How to Eat a Poem” (1964) which encourages the readers to get involved with the text: “Bite in./ Pick it up with your fingers and lick the juice that/ may run down your chin”. In this, we find postmodern devices such as reader involvement and metafiction (because the poem makes the readers aware that they are reading a poem).

English poet Philip Larkin’s poems describe the absurdities of modern life in frank, ordinary language. In “This Be the Verse” (1971) he writes about the cruel irony of parents automatically passing on their faults to their children despite wanting to give them better lives. His use of black humor and irony...