Metafictional narratives are often employed in postmodern novels to dig into the self-reflexive dimension of the authors. They emphasise the artificiality of the works to eliminate the boundaries between fiction and reality. Being aware of the structural components of narratives,… Read More ›
The Japanese grand master system iemoto seido is a hierarchical way to preserve many forms of traditional practices of arts such as calligraphy, Noh and chadō (the “Way of Tea”) in local households. When Yasunari Kawabata was awarded the Nobel… Read More ›
Love and intimacy are two important components in a romantic relationship. It is easy for us to discuss these topics openly nowadays, but not so much in early 20th century. Jenny, written by Sigrid Undset and published in 1911, highlighted… Read More ›
Italo Calvino’s Invisible Cities (1972), as its title suggests, implies the power of human imagination through an imaginary universe consisted of numerous surrealist representations of imaginative cities. Inspired by Marco Polo’s pilgrimages, the novel appears to be a product of… Read More ›
Like many of Umberto Eco’s works, The Name of the Rose (1980) is another postmodern novel that deals with the deceiving nature of language. However, although Eco once again makes use of the technique of intertextuality to mock the search… Read More ›
The literary movement, the Nouveau Roman, emerged in the 1950s in France. The New Novelists reject the traditional author-oriented sensorial syncretism. Being one of the most influential pioneers in the movement, Alain Robbe-Grillet, as both an author and filmmaker, writes… Read More ›
Following the publication of City of Glass in 1985, Ghosts was published in the following years, which is the second novel of Auster’s bestselling collection The New York Trilogy (1987). City of Glass emphasises on the theme of the crisis… Read More ›
Ernest Hemingway’s first published novel, The Sun Also Rises (1926), set in the 1920s, is about the polyamorous affairs between a group of lost young souls. The aimless drifting actions of the characters in the Fiesta in Spain metaphorically echoes… Read More ›
Many postmodern writers convey the inadequacy of mankind’s imagination to the infinity of the universe with endless repetitions of sublime imageries. In Jorge Luis Borges’ Ficciones (1944), the imagery of an exitless labyrinth is often employed in his short stories… Read More ›
Metafictional narrative is one of the most significant features fusing the reality and the fictional world together in postmodern literature. The metanarrative of one of the most influential postmodern novels, Italo Calvino’s If on a Winter’s Night a Traveler (1979), plays… Read More ›
