Narrating Postmodern Time and Space (Suny Series in Postmodern Culture) - Softcover

Francese, Joseph

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0791435148 ISBN 13: 9780791435144

Publisher: State University of New York Press, 1997

Synopsis

Francese defines postmodern writing and distinguishes it from modernist prose by citing the examples of two modern and three postmodern authors: Italo Calvino, John Barth, Toni Morrison, E. L. Doctorow, and Antonio Tabucchi. While the modernist narratives of Calvino and Barth attempt to assimilate what is other, the postmodern narratives of Morrison, Doctorow, and Tabucchi recognize diversities that cannot be assimilated, instead seeking out external, communicative sources of authentication. To a great extent, these changes in narrative strategy are a response to changes in real living conditions, namely, our modified perception of space and the radical shortening of time horizons caused by recent revolutionary advances in information technology. Although Morrison, Doctorow, and Tabucchi vary in their stylistic responses to these changes, their narratives propose a collective recovery of the past into a future-oriented present and serve as examples of how literature can intervene in history, rather than merely reflecting and acquiescing to it.

About this title

About the Author

Joseph Francese is Associate Professor in the Department of Romance and Classical Languages at Michigan State University. He is the author of a monograph on Pier Paolo Pasolini and of a forthcoming study on Italian cultural politics in the early 1950s.

Edition details

• Publisher: State University of New York Press
• Publication date: 1997
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 0791435148
• ISBN 13: 9780791435144
• Binding: Paperback
• Number of pages: 222