Includes bibliographical references and index.

Front Matter -- Preliminary Material / Geoffrey Lord -- Acknowledgements / Geoffrey Lord -- 1 Postmodernism and its Critical Constructions / Geoffrey Lord -- 2 On Selecting Authors, and Designated Examples of Postmodern Fiction / Geoffrey Lord -- 3 Mystery and History, Discovery and Recovery in Thomas Pynchon’s The Crying of Lot 49 and Graham Swift’s Waterland / Geoffrey Lord -- 4 Language, Culture and the Presence of the Past in Donald Barthelme’s The Dead Father and Peter Ackroyd’s Hawksmoor / Geoffrey Lord -- 5 Conclusions: National Difference and Global Postmodernism / Geoffrey Lord -- 6 Talking about Postmodernism: an Interview with Hans Bertens / Geoffrey Lord -- Back Matter -- List of Works / Geoffrey Lord -- Index / Geoffrey Lord.

Postmodernism and Notions of National Difference examines the critical construction of postmodern fiction raising the question of whether the construction of postmodernism has sufficiently accounted for national difference. Geoffrey Lord argues that current meta-national conceptions of postmodernism need serious reconsideration to take national cultural contexts into account. Through a comparative investigation of the theoretical debate, literary traditions and close textual reading of a number of postmodern texts, Lord makes a persuasive case for his broad claim that national cultural differences are more persistent and powerful than usually allowed by established theories of postmodernity which claim a general collapse of traditional cultural orders and the meta-narratives that justify them. See Less

English

Description based on print version record.