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Constructing postmodernism / Brian McHale.

By: McHale, Brian [author].
Material type: materialTypeLabelBookPublisher: London : Routledge, 1992Description: xii, 342 pages ; 24 cm.Content type: text Media type: unmediated Carrier type: volumeISBN: 0415060141 (paperback); 0415060133 (paperback) .Subject(s): Fiction -- 20th century -- History and criticism | Postmodernism (Literature) | Science fiction -- 20th century -- History and criticismDDC classification: 809.304
Contents:
Introduction -- Part I Narrating literary histories -- 1. Telling postmodernist stories -- 2. Constructing postmodernism: the case of Ulysses -- Part II (Mis)reading Pynchon -- 3. Modernist reading, postmodernist text: the case of Gravity's Rainbow -- 4. You used to know what these words mean: misreading Gravity's Rainbow -- 5. Zapping, the art of switching channels: on Vineland -- Part III Reading postmodernists -- 6. The postmodernism of The Name of the Rose -- 7. Ways of world-making: on Foucault's Pendulum -- 8. Women and men and the angels: on Joseph McElroy's fiction -- 9. I draw the line as a rule between one solar system and another: the postmodernisms of Christine Brooke-Rose -- Part IV At the interface -- 10. POSTcyberMODERNpunkISM -- 11. Towards a poetics of cyberpunk -- References.
Summary: Postmodernism is not a found object, but a manufactured artifact. Beginning from this constructivist premise, Brian McHale develops a series of readings of problematically postmodernist novelsJoyce's Ulysses; Pynchon's Gravity's Rainbow and Vineland; Eco's The Name of the Rose and Foucault's Pendulum; the novels of James McElroy and Christine Brooke-Rose, avant-garde works such as Kathy Aker's Empire of the Senseless, and works of cyberpunk science-fiction by William Gibson, Bruce Sterling, Lewis Shiner, Rudy Rucker, and others. Although mainly focused on high or elite cultural products, Constructing Postmodernism relates these products to such phenomena of postmodern popular culture as television and the cinema, paranoia and nuclear apocalypse, angelology and the cybernetic interface, and death, now as always, the true Final Frontier. McHale's previous book, Postmodernist Fiction (Routledge, 1987) seemed to propose a single, all-inclusive inventory of postmodernist poetics. This book, by contrast, proposes multiple, overlapping and intersecting inventoriesnot a construction of postmodernism, but a plurality of constructions - publisher description.
Holdings
Item type Current library Call number Copy number Status Barcode
General lending MTU Crawford College of Art and Design Library Lending 809.304 (Browse shelf(Opens below)) Available 00196495
General lending MTU Crawford College of Art and Design Library Lending 809.304 (Browse shelf(Opens below)) 1 Available 00196082
Total holds: 0

Enhanced descriptions from Syndetics:

Brian McHale provides a series of readings of a wide range of postmodernist fiction, from Eco's Foucault's Pendulum to the works of cyberpunk science-fiction, relating the works to aspects of postmodern popular culture.

Includes bibliographical references (pages [308]-324) and index.

Introduction -- Part I Narrating literary histories -- 1. Telling postmodernist stories -- 2. Constructing postmodernism: the case of Ulysses -- Part II (Mis)reading Pynchon -- 3. Modernist reading, postmodernist text: the case of Gravity's Rainbow -- 4. You used to know what these words mean: misreading Gravity's Rainbow -- 5. Zapping, the art of switching channels: on Vineland -- Part III Reading postmodernists -- 6. The postmodernism of The Name of the Rose -- 7. Ways of world-making: on Foucault's Pendulum -- 8. Women and men and the angels: on Joseph McElroy's fiction -- 9. I draw the line as a rule between one solar system and another: the postmodernisms of Christine Brooke-Rose -- Part IV At the interface -- 10. POSTcyberMODERNpunkISM -- 11. Towards a poetics of cyberpunk -- References.

Postmodernism is not a found object, but a manufactured artifact. Beginning from this constructivist premise, Brian McHale develops a series of readings of problematically postmodernist novelsJoyce's Ulysses; Pynchon's Gravity's Rainbow and Vineland; Eco's The Name of the Rose and Foucault's Pendulum; the novels of James McElroy and Christine Brooke-Rose, avant-garde works such as Kathy Aker's Empire of the Senseless, and works of cyberpunk science-fiction by William Gibson, Bruce Sterling, Lewis Shiner, Rudy Rucker, and others. Although mainly focused on high or elite cultural products, Constructing Postmodernism relates these products to such phenomena of postmodern popular culture as television and the cinema, paranoia and nuclear apocalypse, angelology and the cybernetic interface, and death, now as always, the true Final Frontier. McHale's previous book, Postmodernist Fiction (Routledge, 1987) seemed to propose a single, all-inclusive inventory of postmodernist poetics. This book, by contrast, proposes multiple, overlapping and intersecting inventoriesnot a construction of postmodernism, but a plurality of constructions - publisher description.

Table of contents provided by Syndetics

  • Acknowledgments
  • Introduction
  • Part I Narrating literary histories
  • 1 Telling postmodernist stories
  • 2 Constructing postmodernism: the case of Ulysses
  • Part II (Mis)reading Pynchon
  • 3 Modernist reading, postmodernist text: the case of Gravity's Rainbow
  • 4 "You used to know what these words mean": misreading Gravity's Rainbow
  • 5 Zapping, the art of switching channels: on Vineland
  • Part III Reading postmodernists
  • 6 The postmodernism of The Name of the Rose
  • 7 Ways of world-making: on Foucault's Pendulum
  • 8 Women and men and the angels: on Joseph McElroys fiction
  • 9 "I draw the line as a rule between one solar system and another": the postmodernisms of Christine Brooke-Rose
  • Part IV At the interface
  • 10 POSTcyberMODERNpunkISM
  • 11 Towards a poetics of cyberpunk
  • References

Author notes provided by Syndetics

Brian McHale is Senior Lecturer in Poetics and Comparative Literature at Tel-Aviv University, and Co-Editor of Poetics Today.