The Modern English-Language Novel

Abstract

The aim of the study is to determine the characteristic features of post-postmodernism in their thematic and compositional construction based on the material of the English-language novel of 2018-2019. The paper identifies the specific features of the worldview of post-postmodernist authors and the figurative expressive means used by them to form the readers’ aesthetic impression. The researchers identify the devices of postmodernism and post-postmodernism, which allow the reader to get a better picture of a person’s vulnerable position in the surrounding reality: fragmentation, fabulation, genre polyphony, game elements, theatrical narrative. The study clarifies how the conditional convergence of narrative techniques with previous literary models occurs: references to myth, as well as to English and American classics are traced. Scientific originality of the study lies in shedding light on some features of modern authors’ approach to reality depiction. The readers’ interpretation turns into interactivity, a kind of a dialogue with the characters and the text. As a result, it has been proved that the chaos and absurdity of reality are taken to the extreme by creating a virtual reality in the literary works of the first quarter of the XXI century. The nature of traditional English humour is also changing: the authors turn to post-irony, i.e. they find ways to distance themselves from the text, impart a conditional ironic character to it and mitigate the negative effect of the narrative.

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About this article

Publication history

• Received: November 12, 2022.
• Published: December 30, 2022.

Keywords

• постпостмодернизм
• фрагментация
• фабуляция
• жанровое многоголосие
• виртуальная реальность
• post-postmodernism
• fragmentation
• fabulation
• genre polyphony
• virtual reality

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© 2022 The Author(s)
© 2022 Gramota Publishing, LLC

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Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International (CC BY 4.0)