POSTMODERNIST LITERATURE

English 5321.252       Spring, 2007
Th 6:30-9:15        Prof. Paul Cohen
Flowers Hall 358      Phone: 245-7685
E-mail: cohen@txstate.edu
Office hours: MW 2:00-3:15, Th 5:30-6:30 and by appointment



Postmodernism is an essentially interdisciplinary phenomenon, and this course will explore it in an interdisciplinary manner. Not a movement or a style, yet characterized by a distinctive perspective, the postmodern spirit has been evident in many key works of recent philosophy, social theory, literature, art, music, architecture, and even technology. We will study examples of postmodernist literary theory, fiction, and poetry against the dual backgrounds of early-twentieth-century avant-garde and modernist work, on the one hand, and recent work in these complementary fields, on the other, moving toward a more comprehensive grasp of the literature and culture of our own day.

These Web pages contain much material connected with the course and the subject. I will be asking you to study some of this material as the course goes on. In the meantime, feel free to explore. Please bear in mind that these pages are meant to be a tool for use with this course, rather than a comprehensive overview of postmodernism.

Syllabus

Periods

Subjects

Ihab Hassan on Modernism and Postmodernism

Postmodernism Web sites

Joyce

Poetry

Fiction with unusual structures

Tom Phillips' Ulysses

Electronic research resources

Paper 2