Uncertainty in Postmodern Literature: With Special Reference to the Novels of Alasdair Gray and Salman Rushdie.
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This thesis is a selective study of Postmodern literature, focusing on the work
of Alasdair Gray and Salman Rushdie. Postmodern literature is an expression of
and response to the profound uncertainty that characterises the late-twentieth
century. The works of many diverse authors attempt to come to terms with the
Postmodern situation, which Jürgen Habermas has described as `the legitimation
crisis'. The Enlightenment metanarratives that legitimise Western, industrial
societies, have been undermined by Capitalism and events. We no longer accept
general metanarratives and this generates profound uncertainty.
As Postmodern literature challenges the incomplete certainties of grandnarratives,
such as religious and political ideologies, it adopts uncertain forms.
Texts create series of debates because these dramatise our conflicting
uncertainties and our reluctance to accept, set positions, and answers that
erroneously claim to be universal and absolute. By presenting issues in conflict
without offering a set conclusion, fiction is able to bring its readers actively into
the arguments and find a role for itself within society.
The uncertainty of the present has contributed to an impression that we have
lost a sense of connection with the past and future and therefore continuous
identity. Postmodern novels tend to concentrate upon the struggles of the present
in order to free the future from both restrictive traditional visions and the
paralysing present. The future finally emerges as the direct product of the past and
present, but we can also begin to imagine it as something radically different.
Postmodern literature does not create new metanarratives, it legitimises a tense
and provisional relationship with society that helps peoples to live in an uncertain
world while not surrendering to it.
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Davidson, Amanda AnneCollections
- Theses [4125]