After the veritable hype concerning postmodernism in the 1980s and early 1990s, when questions about when it began, what it means and which texts it comprises were apt to trigger heated discussions, the excitement has notably cooled down at the turn of the century. Voices are now beginning to be heard which seem to suggest a new episteme in the making which points beyond postmodernism, while it remains at the same time very uncertain whether what appears as newness is not rather a return to traditional concepts, theoretical premises, and authorial practices. Contributors to this volume propose to explore new openings and recent developments in anglophone literatures and cultural theories which engage with issues seen to be central in the construction of a postmodern paradigm, but deal with them in ways that promise new openings or a new Zeitgeist.
The Persistence of the Modernist Heritage
Peter V. Zima, Why the Postmodern Age Will Last? · Philip Tew, A New Sense of Reality? A New Sense of the Text? ExploringMeta-Realism and the Literary Critical Field · Lena Petrovic, Hear the Voice of the Artist: Postmodernism as Faustian Bargain · Bernd Klähn, The Threefold Way: About the Heuristics and Paradigmatics of (Post)Modernist Culture and Literature · Peter Paul Schnierer, Modernist at Best: Poeticitiy and Tradition in Hyperpoetry · Doris Teske, Beyond Postmodernist Thirdspace? - The Internet in a Post-Postmodern World
Re-Reading Postmodernism
Christophe Den Tandt , Pragmatic Commitments: Postmodern realism in Don DeLillo, Maxine Hong Kingston and James Ellroy· Christopher Norris, Why Derrida is not a Postmodernist? · Helga Thalhofer, Paradox vs. Analogy: De Man and Foucault · Peter Mortensen, 'Civilization's Fear of Nature': Postmodernity, Culture, and Environment in The God of Small Things
Beyond Posmodernism
Ihab Hassan, Beyond Postmodernism: Toward an Aesthetic of Trust · Klaus Stierstorfer, Wobbly Grounds: Postmodernism's Precarious Footholds in Novels by Bradbury, Parker, Rushdie, Swift · Vera Nünning , Beyond Indifference: New Departures in British Fiction at the Turn of the 21st Century· Dietmar Böhnke, Shades of Gray: The Peculiar Postmodernism of Alasdair Gray · VictoriaLipina-Berezkina, American Postmodernist Literature at the Turn of the Millenium: the Death and Return of the Subject · Susanne Peters, The Anglo-Irish Playwright Martin McDonagh: Postmodernist Zeitgeist as Cliché and a (Re)turn to the Voice of Common Sense · Laurenz Volkmann, Extension of the Battle Zone: Ian McEwan's Cult Novel The Cement Garden
