Subjective narrative in J. Franzen’s novel “Freedom” (2010) in the light of the paradigm of post-postmodernism

Abstract

The aim of the research is to find an answer to the following question: how the narrative-artistic structure of J. Franzen’s novel “Freedom” (2010) reflects the problematisation of the concept of freedom in US post-postmodern literature. The paper analyses the changes in the life of American society after the terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001 in the light of the reduction of civil liberties and the strengthening of the role of state control in various spheres; determines the influence of sociopolitical and economic changes on the formation of the paradigm of post-postmodernism and identifies the mechanisms and motives for constructing the characters’ subjectivity in the post-postmodern novel “Freedom” (2010) by J. Franzen. The research is original in that it is the first to analyse the narrative-artistic structure of the novel “Freedom” as a work of US post-postmodern literature through the lens of problematisation of the concept of freedom after the 2001 terrorist attacks. As a result, it has been proved that the narrative-artistic structure of the novel, in which the explicit narrator takes into account the explicit reader, restores the characters’ subjectivity and gives them post-postmodern freedom, allowing the characters to find their place in modern realities on their own.

References

1. Вежбицкая А. Семантические универсалии и описание языков / пер. с англ. А. Д. Шмелева; под ред. Т. В. Булыгиной. М.: Языки русской культуры, 1999.
2. Кешокова Е. А., Соколова И. В., Шишкова И. А. Современный англоязычный роман // Филологические науки. Вопросы теории и практики. 2022. Т. 15. Вып. 12.
3. Кузеев С. Е. «Поправки» Дж. Франзена: прощание с постмодерном // Международный научно-исследовательский журнал. 2019. № 2 (80).
4. Лушникова Г. И., Осадчая Т. Ю. Контаминация жанровых форм в романе «Безгрешность» // Филология и человек. 2020. № 3.
5. Лушникова Г. И., Осадчая Т. Ю. Контаминация тенденций постмодернизма и пост-постмодернизма в творчестве Дж. Франзена // Филологический класс. 2021. T. 26. № 2.
6. Сардар З., Дэвис М. Почему люди ненавидят Америку? М.: Проспект, 2003.
7. Academic Freedom in the Post-9-11 Era / ed. by E. J. Carvalho and D. B. Downing. N. Y.: Palgrave Macmillan, 2010.
8. Anker E. Feminist Theory and the Failures of Post-9/11 Freedom // Politics & Gender. 2012. Vol. 8. Iss. 2.
9. Berman E. Regulating Domestic Intelligence Collection // Washington & Lee Law Review. 2014. Vol. 71 (1).
10. Garcia R. J. Labor’s Fragile Freedom of Association Post-9/11 // Scholarly Works. 2006. Art. 655.
11. Nealon J. Post-Postmodernism: or, The Cultural Logic of Just-in-Time Capitalism. Stanford: Stanford University Press, 2012.
12. Patterson O. Freedom and 9/11 // Democracy: A Journal of Ideas. 2011. Iss. 21.
13. Savvas T., Coffman C. American Fiction after Postmodernism // Textual Practices. 2019. Vol. 33 (2).

Author information

About this article

Publication history

• Received: April 16, 2023.
• Published: June 15, 2023.

Keywords

• постпостмодернизм
• 9/11
• американский роман
• свобода
• субъектный нарратив
• post-postmodernism
• American novel
• freedom
• subjective narrative

Copyright

© 2023 The Author(s)
© 2023 Gramota Publishing, LLC

User license

Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International (CC BY 4.0)