My dissertation focuses on an analysis of postmodern narrative
strategies in Milan Kundera's The Unbearable Lightness of Being
(ULB) and The Book of Laughter and Forgetting ( BLF) . By
analysing the postmodern ab/use of narrative strategies, I argue
that postmodern fiction marks a decided shift from both classical
realism and modernism.
My dissertation has predominantly been motivated through my
contention that postmodern fiction is not elitist as it has been
perceived to be. Rather, I suggest that postmodern fiction
ab/uses narrative strategies to deconstruct the ontological
boundaries between the political and private and fiction and
'fact'. Consequently, postmodern fiction interrogates the
contrived intelligibility of History. A further argument that
I raise is that postmodern fiction through its (re) appropriation,
subversion and use of parodic structures creates.narrative space
for the Other.
In order not to canonize Kundera's texts, I situate both ULB and
BLF as 'nodes' within a diffuse network of intertextual
discourse. My analyses of the postmodern narrative strategies
in ULB and BLF, attempt to interrogate the diffuse 'nature' of
postmodern fiction which resists both authorative analysis and
closure.
In exploring the relationship between recuperation and postmodern
narrative strategies in ULB and BLF and other works and/or texts
of fiction, I argue that postmodern fiction does not revel in its
narrativity, it constitutes, instead, a political strategy / Afrikaans and Theory of Literature / M.A. (Theory of Literature)
| Identifer | oai:union.ndltd.org:netd.ac.za/oai:union.ndltd.org:unisa/oai:uir.unisa.ac.za:10500/15743 |
| Date | 09 1900 |
| Creators | Patchay, Sheenadevi |
| Contributors | Grabe, Ina |
| Source Sets | South African National ETD Portal |
| Language | English |
| Detected Language | English |
| Type | Dissertation |
| Format | 1 online resource (242 leaves) |
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