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Bentley, NP (2018) Trailing Postmodernism: David Mitchell's Cloud Atlas, Zadie Smith’s NW, and the Metamodern. English Studies, 99 (7). pp. 723-743. ISSN 0013-838X
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Abstract
This article examines David Mitchell's Cloud Atlas (2004) and Zadie Smith's NW (2012) against recent theories of the post-postmodern. It argues that although both texts can be seen to be gesturing towards a reconstructive relationship with the absolute cynicism and scepticism of postmodernism neither represents a sustainable discontinuity with that late-twentieth-century mode. In this context, the essay challenges readings of Mitchell and Smith as representative of a metamodernism as that term is understood by critics such as Timotheus Vermeulen, Robin van den Akker, David James and Urmila Seshagiri. By referring to models suggested by Jean-Francois Lyotard, it suggests that the metamodern, as exemplified in the cases of Mitchell and Smith, represents a subsection of the postmodern rather than a clear break with it.
Item Type: | Article |
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Additional Information: | This is the accepted author manuscript (AAM). The final published version (version of record) is available online via Taylor & Francis at https://doi.org/10.1080/0013838X.2018.1510611 - please refer to any applicable terms of use of the publisher. |
Uncontrolled Keywords: | literary criticism, language studies, postmodernism |
Subjects: | P Language and Literature > PN Literature (General) > PN0080 Criticism |
Divisions: | Faculty of Humanities and Social Sciences > School of Humanities |
Depositing User: | Symplectic |
Date Deposited: | 02 Mar 2018 13:53 |
Last Modified: | 27 Nov 2020 09:55 |
URI: | https://eprints.keele.ac.uk/id/eprint/4519 |