Tuesday, October 28, 2008
Flaubert's Parrot, postmodernism?
My overall interpretationg of Hassan's Schematic is that Modernism has purpose/structure, while postmodernism is whimsical and lacks any sense of purpose or direction. So far i definately get a feel for the antiform of postmodernism, with Barnes' chronologies, and story that provides us with no useful information. This seems to emobdy the term pastiche, in which everything is pasted together with no direction. Barnes seems to "play" with us when he makes us think we are going to get the all the fascinating details of Juliet and Flaubert's relationship, when in the end the letters were burned. Not only is Winterton teasing Braithwaite, but Barnes is teasing us the reader. Silence might be reffering to the lack of information or context gained from the chapters in postmodernism novels. I think process simply means that all these random bits of information in each chapter will come together in the end. Participation perhaps applies to the reader, meaning it is his or her responsibility to have all the background knowledge and apply it to understanding the novel. Antithesis confuses me because there isn't really a strong thesis in most fiction novels. Rhetoric could mean the author references several pieces of literature to support his or her arguement. Rhizome is any interesting word, and is paired with surface. Does this suggest that postmodernist novels state their purpose on the surface rather than throughout the story? For example we know that Flaubert's Parrot is going to be an investigation of the Parrot from A Simple Heart, but we wouldn't be able to determine that from the text thus far. Scriptable probably means if the author wanted to they could change the narration into dialogue or a script. Idiolect could be a loose account of dialogue - he said this and then she said that. Desire, from the reader to know the intentions of the odd stories? Schizophrenia seems weird to describe a style of writing, but i can see how it explains that postmodernism does not take one direct stance, or is indeterminate. The word imminence makes me think that in postmodernism the reader never knows what is about to come next. I don't really know about the other words, very confusing.
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1 comment:
I really appreciate the way you work your way through Hassan's list here. A very thoughtful post, thanks!
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