Post Modernism is a cultural movement that develops after the WII. Post Modernism believes there is no one authority related by a stable meaning (or the community belong to).
It considers a movement after but also beyond the Modernism, refusing traditional view of a centre or authority point of reference to everybody. More over, Post Modernism assumes the relative position of men in universe.
Modernism still believes in a metaphysical aim to give sense to existence, and still believes that it's possible to find a fundamental truth All Modernism is a QUEST.
As far for Post Modernist, they don't even believe that it can exist.
The advent of technologies and the crisis of capitalism made men understand that position of mankind is extremely relative. There are many forms of true, many centers, many concepts of authority, and the way men living shows their fragility. Strong values in which man bases his life and his thought show his weakness. And the disease spread in the society.
Technology also speeds up the spread of Post Modernism, because the culture becomes easy to access, and because Post Modernism doesn't prefer high or low art.
Le cause che portano alla nascita del movimento:
1. Crisi della società occidentale
2. Nuova visione spazio\tempo data dalla relatività.
3. Ricerca, sperimentazioni, avanguardie.

In Post Modernism literature is in the central position, because "there is nothing outside the text". One of the most important feature is INTERTEXTUALITY. (relation between La Coscienza di Zeno and Sigmund Freud's theory for example, but also The Hours and Woolf's Mrs Dalloway).