I'm going to analyse an extract from David Lodge's Nice Work written in 1982. It belongs to Postmodernism.

The narrator ends to speak about a male character, Vic Wilcox, and presents a new female character: Robyn Penrose. He introduces her through a flashback ("we travel back an hour or two in time") and a change in space ("a few miles in space"). The narrator, who is speaking in third person and is omniscient, adds that the new character is very different from the previous one. Probably Robyn Penrose may have different ideas, thoughts and feelings in comparison with Vic Wilcox. As a matter of fact there is a very significant phrase in the text: "a character who doesn't herself believe in the concept of character". The reader can immediately understand one of the most important belief of the character. After that the narrator says that she is a temporary lecturer in English Literature at the University of Rummidge. The characterization is made up of character's name (Robyn, which recalls Robin Hood, a medieval figure who fought against the injustice - Penrose, which recalls the word "pen" that refers to writing), character's thoughts and her professional occupation.
Robyn Penrose defines a "character" like a burgeois myth and an illusion, comparing it with the ideology of capitalism. To explain this she says that the rise of the novel in the 18th century had coincided with the rise of capitalism and also that the triumph of the novel in the 19th century had coincided with the triumph of capitalism. According to postmodernist thought, the traditional "character" is only an illusion, because it can no longer be considered stable and definite: on the contrary it is a fluid essence adopting different personalities in front of various situations. This concept goes under the name of "deconstruction of the character" and it is a very important feature of Postmodernism.
The relation between novel and capitalism is due to their contemporaneus rise and development: a novelist can be considered a capitalist of imagination, because he must produce a book to gain money, fighting against competition. The novel is considered "the first mass-produced cultural artefact". Protestant ethic comes to surface and the reader can know that Robyn is protestant: it is linked to the will to produce and gain something without stopping (The Parable of the talents).
After that the narrator says that "every text is a product of intertextuality": it means that it is not a creation, but a tissue of allusions and citations. As Jacques Derrida said, there is nothing outside the text. A very important expression is: "we produce ourselves in language", that is we are what we speak. The language (what you speak, but also body signs) is the most important expression of the human being and also something that does not change. The character is presented through her religion, thoughts and philosophy. The keyword "semiotic capitalism" summarizes Robyn's philosophy.
The narrator gives to the reader other information: the character is antihumanist (but not antihuman) and feminist. She seems to have ordinary feelings, desires, ambitions and fears but she has the natural will to make the world a better place.

At the end of the extract the narrator repeats the initial concept: "I shall therefore take the liberty of treating her as a character, not utterly different in kind, though of course belonging to a very different social species, from Vic Wilcox".

In conclusion the reader can know Robyn Penrose only through her name, thoughts, ideas, beliefs, phylosophic theories, professional occupation and not through her physical characteristics.

The third person omniscient narrator is also intrusive because he provides some personal comments ("a favourite phrase of her own", "But of course she has much more to say", "or, more precisely, according to the writers who have influenced her thinking on these matters", "famous to people like Robyn").