Postmodernism -  notes

The book "Oranges are not the only fruit" is a typical postmodern novel.

Postmodernism developed during the sixties and its main tenets are:

• it does no longer belong in the concept of truth, it puts therefore the question of authority into doubt

• it does no longer believe in the concept of a centre as it generally happened in all the previous generations.

If modernism (covers the first 3 decades of the XX century) was still looking for a centre point of reference and put the question and the research on art at the centre, postmodernism questions all that and comes to the conclusion that there is no absolute truth, also implies that there is not meaning à there is no longer one centre but more centres. And meaning is always differed: there is a continuous slipping of meaning because meaning is never stable.

The concept is connected to the relationship between: 1. signifier

                                                                                2. signified

The position of the reader is the best one because it is the reader that makes sense; he/she gives the meaning to what he is reading.

A perfect example of postmodernism is "Oranges are Not the Only Fruit" which relies on a restructuring on the Bible structure in a new context ( = con + text) with a lot of intertextuality.

Another example of a postmodernism work is "Nice Work" by David Lodge. There are two main characters: a man (Vic Wilcox, who recalls Victory), and a woman (Robyn Penrose who recalls Robin Hood, an idealist; from her surname the reader can understand she is a writer).