RARA-AVIS: Re: One of Miker's favourite bugaboos (another definition to argue ab

From: jacquesdebierue ( jacquesdebierue@yahoo.com)
Date: 21 Sep 2007


--- In rara-avis-l@yahoogroups.com, DJ-Anonyme@... wrote:

> I agree with most of what you say (and would add Tristram Shandy to your
> examples of postmodernism before there as even a modernism;

Agreed. Tristram Shandy is a very good example.

>it was
> clearly there from the very beginning of the novel), but I'd like to
> quibble with your assertion that "the story isn't serious." Isn't meant
> to be a serious example of the genre it is deconstructing, maybe,

It isn't serious in the sense that you're not supposed to believe in the characters and situations as people and things that happen to actual people. The literary seriousness or the seriousness of the author are a different matter. I suppose Cervantes and Sterne were serious in that respect. How would we know, though?

but I
> find it very hard to think of Paul Auster's New York Trilogy, for
> example, as anything less than serious.

Do you believe in the characters and situations? I can't.

>And when it comes to postmodern
> criticism, well, you don't get much more serious than Lyotard and/or
> Jameson.
>

Their criticism is serious, of course, in the sense of not meant as a joke or easily interpretable as one.

Best,

mrt



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