Narrative Techniques of Postmodernist Fiction

The literary style known as postmodernism attained currency in the years following World War II. In linear time, postmodernism may be said to follow that of modernism, which was itself a response to nineteenth-century late-Romantic or Victorian narrative conventions (Murphy 12). One could say, indeed, that postmodernists Fowles and Doctorow are to modernists Woolf, Faulkner, and Joyce, as the modernists are to romantics Dickens and the Brontes.

The notion that the postmodern response to modernism represents a dramatic break with the past, however, may not necessarily stand if Doctorow and Fowles are to be considered postmodernists. In this regard, it might be well to refer to Martin Esslin's remarks concerning the once controversial theater of the absurd, "Avant-garde movements are ha

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arles's feelings at being overcome by contemplation of Sarah's fate. He shares with the writer a sense of how unjust Victorian society was toward the powerless, and yet because of the writer's unusual method of pointing it out perhaps gains insight into how persistently unjust contemporary society is as well. The reader, who can perfectly well make the connections between present and past, participates, with the writer, in something like a shared narrative adventure. Fowles states the fact quite plainly, noting that "we are all poets,though not many of us write poetry; and so are we all novelists, that is, we have a habit of writing fictional futures for ourselves" (266). This is alluded to, although not developed in quite the same way, by Bump when he describes the narrator (i.e., omniscient author) of The French Lieutenant's Woman as "protoreader" (17). The ultimate point is that the novel is illustrative of postmodernist narrative technique, quite as much as it is a study of individual character, inasmuch as it involves the reader in the process of plotting a story as well as in the plot itself. Whatever confusions Charles experiences and whatever struggles he may have against his culture are therefore not so much centra
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Approximate Word count = 7464
Approximate Pages = 30 (250 words per page)