Notes of November, 28th 2011

Postmodernism is a movement of thought which began to make is presence felt during the 1950's. and it is still developing now It can be considered a sort of revived form of Modernism, a cultural movement which covered the first three decades of the 20^th century.

Postmodernism puts every accepted values into question. It follows that there are no longer "authors", there are nodes instead of a unique centre and there is not a unique point of reference to refer to.

It is a weak thought because it does not give people strong points of reference, strong values. All this comes out of the advent of technologies and the crisis of Capitalism which make people understand that men's position is a relative one.

All the values on which the western men had based themselves had shown their fragility. There is no longer something on which men can refer to, so they have to base on themselves. The faith of Capitalism has collapsed  because it dos not change men's relative position.

It is important to underline that Postmodernism and Modernism are very similar. The only main difference is that, while Modernist culture still believes in the possibility to find an order or a value that could help men, Postmodernism does not, it goes beyond.

I have studied two Postmodernist texts, an extract taken by David Lodge's Nice Work and The Hours  , a novel by Michael Cunningham.

The novel deals with the narration of a single day in the lives of three women ( Virginia Woolf, Laura Brown and Clarissa Vaughan), that are connected by the novel Mrs Dalloway, since Virginia Woolf is the writer of the novel, Laura Brown is reading the novel and Clarissa Vaughan is put into relationship with the main character of Mrs Dalloway, who is Clarissa Dalloway.

The connection between the three female characters is a Modern novel. This is not a random choice because Mr Cunningham's aim was to underline the important position of literature, which is able to win the time passing and somehow also to help people.