In these lectures, delivered at Harvard University in March 1983, the differences between Modernism and Postmodernism are discussed in semiotic terms, based on a contrastive analysis of semantic and syntactical (compositional) features. They present the major results of research into the literary conventions of Modernism (Gide, Larbaud, V. Woolf, du Perron, Th. Mann) and the innovations of Postmodernism (Borges, Fuentes, Barthelme, Calvino, Hermans). The investigation of innovation in literary history is based on a concept of literary evolution, launched by the Russian Formalists and elaborated by reception theory and semioticians such as Lotman and Eco. The author argues for further corroboration by means of empirical – textual as well as psychological – research.

In these lectures, delivered at Harvard University in March 1983, the differences between Modernism and Postmodernism are discussed in semiotic terms, based on a contrastive analysis of semantic and syntactical (compositional) features. They present the major results of research into the literary conventions of Modernism (Gide, Larbaud, V. Woolf, du Perron, Th. Mann) and the innovations of Postmodernism (Borges, Fuentes, Barthelme, Calvino, Hermans). The investigation of innovation in literary history is based on a concept of literary evolution, launched by the Russian Formalists and elaborated by reception theory and semioticians such as Lotman and Eco. The author argues for further corroboration by means of empirical – textual as well as psychological – research.

The term "modernism" is central to any discussion of twentieth-century literature and critical theory. Astradur Eysteinsson here maintains that the concept of modernism does not emerge directly from the literature it subsumes, but is in fact a product of critical practices relating to nontraditional literature. Intervening in these practices, and correlating them with modernist works and with modern literary theory, Eysteinsson undertakes a comprehensive reexamination of the idea of modernism. Eysteinsson critically explores various manifestations of modernism in a rich array of American, British, and European literature, criticism, and theory. He first examines many modernist paradigms, detecting in them a conflict between modernism's culturally subversive potential and its relatively conservative status as a formalist project. He then considers these paradigms as interpretations-and fabrications-of literary history. Seen in this light, modernism both signals a historical change on the literary scene and implies the context of that change. Laden with the implications of tradition and modernity, modernism fills its major function: that of highlighting and defining the complex relations between history and postrealist literature. Eysteinsson focuses on the ways in which the concept of modernism directs our understanding of literature and literary history and influences our judgment of experimental and postrealist works in literature and art. He discusses in detail the relation of modernism to the key concepts postmodernism, the avant-garde, and realism. Enacting a crisis of subject and reference, modernism is not so much a form of discourse, he asserts, as its interruption-a possible "other" modernity that reveals critical aspects of our social and linguistic experience in Western culture. Comparatists, literary theorists, cultural historians, and others interested in twentieth-century literature and art will profit from this provocative book.

A lucid exploration of the key features of postmodernism and the most important authors from Beckett to DeLillo.

First published in 1988. Routledge is an imprint of Taylor & Francis, an informa company.

Widely acknowledged as a contemporary classic that has introduced thousands of readers to American literature, From Puritanism to Postmodernism: A History of American Literature brilliantly charts the fascinating story of American literature from the Puritan legacy to the advent of postmodernism. From realism and romanticism to modernism and postmodernism it examines and reflects on the work of a rich panoply of writers, including Poe, Melville, Fitzgerald, Pound, Wallace Stevens, Gwendolyn Brooks and Thomas Pynchon. Characterised throughout by a vibrant and engaging style it is a superb introduction to American literature, placing it thoughtfully in its rich social, ideological and historical context. A tour de force of both literary and historical writing, this Routledge Classics edition includes a new preface by co-author Richard Ruland, a new foreword by Linda Wagner-Martin and a fascinating interview with Richard Ruland, in which he reflects on the nature of American fiction and his collaboration with Malclolm Bradbury. It is published here for the first time.

How can the short story help to redefine modernism, postmodernism and their interrelationship? What is the status of the short story in modern literary history? These are the central questions that the essays collected in this volume try to answer from different perspectives through readings of short fiction in English and accounts of the genre’s theorisations. The essays by a group of international scholars tackle theoretical issues that are central in approaches to both “movements” such as periodisation, autonomy, high vs. popular literature, totality vs. fragmentation, surface vs. depth, otherness, representation, and, above all, the subject and its vicissitudes. Because it blends theory-based arguments into the approaches to the short fiction of mainly canonical authors (Joyce, Woolf, Lewis, Ballard, Carter, Rushdie, or Wallace), Modernism, Postmodernism, and the Short Story in English is of interest not only to readers and scholars of the short story, but also to those coming from the fields of literary theory and literary history.