HUM 4.01 From Modernism to Postmodernism
Fredric Jameson once described postmodernity as “the effort to take the temperature of the age without instruments and in a situation in which we are not even sure there is so coherent a thing as an ‘age,’ or ‘zeitgeist’ any longer.” Taking the temperature of the age through a comparative reading of modern and postmodern texts, we will try to seize the change from one era and movement to the other by way of elucidating a number of modern and postmodern concepts such as “representation” or “literary self-reflexivity,” “the world as text,” “the death of the author” or “the end of meta-narratives.” Movies, art works, essays and some theoretical texts will enhance the literary readings, which include texts by modern and postmodern writers such as Abish, Fowles, James, Stein, and Woolf. The feature that characterizes and associates the two movements best is their awareness for how form impacts content, or, as Gertrude Stein said, “how writing is written.” The world comes into being and takes shape in the words we use, the texts we write, the images we produce, the movies we shoot, or the maps we draw to name only some of the signifying systems that give the universe a form.
Instructor
Milich