Postmodernism

"Incredulity toward metanarratives"
--Jean-François Lyotard

A metanarrative is a "transhistorical narrative that is deeply embedded in a particular culture."

Postmodern writing is often:

• Nontraditional
• Experimental
• Against authority
• Eclectic
• Aleatoric (Aleatory means depending on the throw of a die, and it refers to writing achieved by some random means, by leaving things to chance or accident.)
• Parody (The imitative use of the words, style, attitude, tone, and ideas of an author in such a way as to make them ridiculous.)
• Pastiche (A patchwork of words, sentences, or complete passages from various authors or one author. It is a kind of imitation and may be a form of parody.)
• Ironic (Cicero referred to irony as "saying one thing and meaning another." Irony comes in many forms. Verbal irony (also called sarcasm) is a trope in which a speaker makes a statement in which its actual meaning differs sharply from the meaning that the words ostensibly express. Often this sort of irony is plainly sarcastic in the eyes of the reader, but the characters listening in the story may not realize the speaker's sarcasm as quickly as the readers do. Dramatic irony (the most important type for literature) involves a situation in a narrative in which the reader knows something about present or future circumstances that the character does not know. In that situation, the character acts in a way we recognize to be grossly inappropriate to the actual circumstances, or the character expects the opposite of what the reader knows that fate holds in store, or the character anticipates a particular outcome that unfolds itself in an unintentional way. Probably the most famous example of dramatic irony is the situation facing Oedipus in the play Oedipus Rex. Situational irony (also called cosmic irony) is a trope in which accidental events occur that seem oddly appropriate, such as the poetic justice of a pickpocket getting his own pocket picked. However, both the victim and the audience are simultaneously aware of the situation in situational irony--which is not the case in dramatic irony.)