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Could you help me understand Postmodernism?


norsul

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Hi guys,

I am doing Cat's Cradle by Kurt Vonnegut as part of my English A: Lang & Lit course (not my choice by the way :D). Since it's one of the books for my IOC, and since the IOC is in a month, I think it's time to start preparing seriously :D.

So the problem is that I've been told (by our teacher and by wikipedia) that Cat's Cradle is a Postmodern novel. So I went to look up some stuff on Postmodernism and found quite decent explanations of many Postmodernist features. However, none of the sources actually said why Postmodern authors use these literary features. I mean, I understand that things like irony are just a part of the style, but why would you use things like intertextuality or historiographic metafiction in your novels? I'm more of a math and science kind of a guy, so understanding literature is a bit difficult for me.

So the question that I am asking is - why do Postmodern authors use the Postmodern literary features (well, apart from "to be a Postmodern author" :D)? Are they trying to advocate some idea? Or is it just to be all like different n' sheit?

Edited by norsul
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In photography terms, post modernism is just something out of the box that is totally unexpected and uncommon. It challenges conventional ideas and tries to present common things in a different perspective to change one's opinion...

Hope this is on the right line... I learnt about this in photography last year

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