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10. Postmodern literary theory

One could define postmodern literary theory very loosely as theory that rebels against formalism—especially the New Criticism, with its roots in the aesthetics of Modernism and French Symbolism. One might see, then, already with Northrop Frye's Anatomy of Criticism, a movement away from the aestheticism of the New Critics.⁷⁰ Yet Frye is frankly Aristotelian (as he states in his Preface) and his theoretical self-understanding certainly does not take a "postmodern" turn. Nor are social criticism and eclecticism, as alternatives to New Criticism, radical alternatives that venture beyond modernity. They only modify the extremes of formalist-rhetorical criticism.

The Geneva critics, however, do find in phenomenology the philosophical basis for a standpoint that is not formalist, nor simply eclectic, but genuinely moves beyond the objectivist assumptions of most modern criticism.

Sarah Lawall's excellent...

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1. Introduction
2. Representative Works
3. Overviews
4. Criticism
   1. Richard E. Palmer
   2. 1. Outgrowing the epistemological self-portrait of modernity
   3. 2. Postmodernity and the project of going beyond metaphysics
   4. 3. Transcending objectivism and technological rationality
   5. 4. A. "New Gnosticism": Ihab Hassan
   6. 5. The movement beyond Western forms of reality
   7. 6. Beyond naturalism
   8. 7. The apostles of "new consciousness"
   9. 8. New foundations in psychology
   10. 9. Radical philosophy of language
   11. 10. Postmodern literary theory
   12. 1. Hermes: God of the gaps
   13. 2. Toward a broader conception of hermeneutics
   14. 3. Toward a new interpretive self-awareness for teachers
   15. Brian McHale
   16. John Johnstone
   17. David H. Hirsch
   18. Peter L. McLaren and Colin Lankshear
   19. Decentering the subject
   20. Decentering the text
   21. Further criticisms
   22. Feminist contributions
   23. Subjectivity and subjects/agency and agenthood: Problems with identity politics in emancipatory research
   24. Pedagogy in the postmodern age
   25. Poststructuralist pedagogy versus political pedagogy
   26. Charles Russell
   27. Mark Parker
   28. Richard Bradbury
   29. John A. McClure
   30. John M. Unsworth
   31. Raymond J. Wilson III
   32. A literature of exhaustion and replenishment
   33. The zone of the bizarre
   34. The turn away from psychological depth in character
   35. Metafiction
   36. Reuse of earlier forms
   37. The zone of the bizarre
   38. Flatness of character
   39. Metafiction
   40. Raymond Federman
   41. Miriam Marty Clark
   42. Michael Davidson
   43. Charles Altieri
   44. Appendix
   45. Erika Fischer-Lichte
5. Further Reading
6. Copyright

1. Literary Theory