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JOMOPS
JOURNAL OF MODERNISM AND POSTMODERNISM STUDIES
Submitted: 10.02.2022 - Accepted: 16.06.2022
Year: July 2022- Volume: 3 - Issue: 1
DOI: 10.47333/modernizm.2022.71
RESEARCH ARTICLE
183
HOW TO COPE WITH POSTMODERN
TEXTS: TEXTUAL ANALYSIS OF
INTERTEXTUALITY, PARODY, AND
PASTICHE IN READING POSTMODERN
TEXTS
POSTMODERN METİNLERLE BAŞA
ÇIKMAK: POSTMODERN METİNELERDE
METİNLERARASILIK, PARODİ VE PASTİŞ
KULLANIMININ METİNSEL ANALİZİ
M. Zafer AYAR1
Abstract
Öz
This work explores how postmodernism has developed
its own literary style reflecting the social, political,
religious as well as philosophical and intellectual mood
of the era. Postmodern texts have been created and
recreated out of a blend of varied texts from previous
periods, and they succeeded in creating a more
conscious and questioning audience. Throughout the
postmodern period, readers replaced authors and
writerly texts replaced readerly texts. Literary texts
began to be deconstructed according to the notions and
theories of scholars and philosophers such as Roland
Barthes, John Barth, and Jean-François Lyotard. In an
attempt to succeed in producing new texts, postmodern
writers established a sort of textual relationship
between metanarratives and little narratives, applying
intertextuality that is in a close interrelation with parody
and pastiche – two complicated terms often miscible to
one another. This study seeks to clarify the meaning of
postmodern literary works by highlighting some
postmodern literary devices such as intertextuality,
parody, and pastiche in
The French Lieutenant’s
Woman
by John Fowles,
Night Train
by Martin Amis and
The Crying Lot of 49
by Thomas Pynchon.
Keywords: Postmodern Text, Deconstruction, Little
Narratives, Writerly Text, Intertextuality
Bu çalışma dönemin felsefi ve entelektüel olduğu kadar
sosyal, politik ve dini atmosferini yansıtarak
postmodernizmin kendi edebi üslubunu nasıl
oluşturduğunu incelemeye çalışacaktır. Postmodern
metinler, önceki dönem metinlerinin yeniden üretilmesi
ile oluşturulmuş ve bu anlamda daha bilinçli ve hatta
sorgulayıcı bir okuyucu kitlesinin ortaya çıkmasını
sağlamıştır. Postmodern dönem boyunca okuyucu
yazarın yerini alarak, yazar için metinler (writerly text)
okur için metinlerin (readerly text) yerine geçmiştir.
Ronald Barthes, John Barth ve Jean-Francis Lyotard
gibi düşünür ve eleştirmenlerin düşüncelerine ve
teorilerine bağlı olarak metinler bir dizi yapı bozuma
uğramışlardır. Postmodern yazarlar, yeni bir metin
kurgulamakta başarılı olmak için üst anlatı
(metanarrative) ve küçük anlatılar (little narratives)
arasında bir ilişki kurmuşlardır. Bunu metinlerarasılık
tekniğini kullanarak geçmiş metinlerin ya parodisini
yapmışlar ya da pastiş kullanarak- ki bu iki terim
birbirleriyle karıştırılır- eski metinleri günün şartlarına
uyarlamışlardır. Bu çalışma John Fowles’ın
Fransız
Teğmenin Kadını
, Martin Amis’in
Gece Treni
ve Thomas
Pynchon’ın
49 Numaralı Parçanın Nidası
adlı
postmodern eserleri metinlerarasılık, parodi ve pastiş
gibi postmodern terimleri öne çıkararak inceleyecektir.
Anahtar Kelimeler: Postmodern Metin, Yapıbozum,
Küçük Anlatı, Okuyucu Merkezli Metin, Metinlerarasılık
1
Dr., Karadeniz Technical University, School of Foreign Languages, zaferayar@ktu.edu.tr, ORCID: 0000-0003-4508-2452
JOMOPS July 2022 / Volume:3 / Issue:1 M. Zafer AYAR
184
Literary movements develop in dialectical and reactionary ways that establish links
to their preceding periods. Postmodernism, with its complementary devices, creates ways
in which new literary elements can be understood in connection with previous periods. In
this way, it offers meaningful interpretations for prior works. Postmodern texts furnish the
reader with binaries such as author/reader, grand narrative/little narrative, readerly
text/writerly text. Therefore, postmodern texts with their deconstructive characteristics
tend to be a bridge between previous literary works and the texts especially produced
during and after the 1950s. The cornerstones of this bridge consist of such literary devices
as intertextuality, parody, and pastiche in their ability to recreate a new meaning by
referencing it to the previous text(s). The aim of this study is to contribute to the creation
of meaningful interpretations of postmodern texts by providing more concrete connections
between these literary devices and selected texts
French Lieutenant’s Woman
by Fowles,
Night Train
by Amis,
The Crying of Lot 49
by Pynchon.
Modernism lasted for about half a century until its connection with postmodernism.
It is regarded as the age of fresh ideas, complex structure and the questioning of both
conscious and unconscious realities. Unlike postmodernism, modernism rejects the literary
traditions of the previous Victorian era to destroy the stereotype writing style. However,
the postmodern way of writing does not break ties with modernism and its preceding
periods but rather unites two distinct ages by reshaping previous works through varied
literary devices. The roots of postmodernism date back to the end of the World War II,
initiated by the thoughts of some prominent philosophers of the age such as Roland
Barthes
in
The Death of Author
(1967), John Barth
in The Literature of Exhaustion
(1967),
and Jacques Derrida in
Of Grammatology
(1967). Barthes (1967) claims that postmodern
texts are written in an attempt to give the reader an active role to comment on the function
of the text rather than the intention of the author. That is, the roles are shifted, so readers
create their own interpretations of the texts. Regarding reader-based knowledge, Zafer
Ayar suggests that “postmodern fiction does not enable readers to get to resolution easily
and they fail to present all the necessary materials readers need to establish the meaning.
This meaninglessness and incredulity towards grand narratives of previous literary periods
is reflected in the postmodern writerly texts whose purpose was to invite readers to
produce his/her own meaning and reality” (132). As the postmodern writer enables the
reader to make their own exploration, the basic characteristic of postmodern texts, the
author deconstructs the text by using varied literary devices. The reader thus takes on a
more active role; as Ayar writes, “By doing so, postmodern narrative gives the reader the
HOW TO COPE WITH POSTMODERN TEXTS:
TEXTUAL ANALYSIS OF INTERTEXTUALITY, PARODY, AND PASTICHE IN READING POSTMODERN TEXTS M. Zafer AYAR
185
opportunity to discover the meaning through an interwoven or twisted plot structure that
enables the reader to go through an inquiry throughout the whole reading process” (132).
This reading process lets the reader make an internal expedition that reaches the
unconscious imagination. Readerly texts, in contrast, as is the case in metanarratives,
“imposes a meaning on the reader and Barthes argues that readerly texts encourage
passive consumption, being designed to constrain the exercise of reader’s imagination”
(cited in Yaghoubi 2006, 106). Postmodern writing can be considered a means of
counterattack to metanarratives since it has highlighted and then developed its own
particular way of writing called writerly text. Postmodern texts have also emerged as a
reaction to the previous metanarratives. Bran Nicol (2009) comments on Jean-François
Lyotard’s description of the movement as follows: “[p]ostmodernity, Lyotard argues,
prefers ‘little narratives’ (petit recits), those which do not attempt to present an
overarching ‘Truth’ but offer a qualified, limited ‘truth’, one relative to a particular situation”
(12). Postmodernity, in other words, not only enables but requires the reader to conclude
or recreate the story with their own possible postures.
Postmodern intertextuality, e.g., the acknowledgement and reference of previous
works, is considered to be one of the most crucial postmodern writing methods that leads
readers as well as writers to create a kind of connection between the past and the present
with regard to literary genres. It gives readers an opportunity to perceive the events from
writers’ perspective of the previous centuries and comment on them in the vernacular of
the present literary era. As Hutcheon (1988) explains, “intertextuality is a formal
manifestation of both a desire to close the gap between past and present of the reader and
a desire to rewrite the past in a new context” (Hutcheon 118). Intertextuality suggests the
ways in which the text can be reshaped from a new perspective. In
The French Lieutenant’s
Woman
, Fowles uses epigraphs taken from different writers of the 19th century to incite
curiosity about the events and characters for the reader. In the following epigraph, Fowles
(1969) quotes from Tennyson’s Maud to help the reader to understand the situation of
Sarah in the related chapter: “And once, but once, she lifted her eyes, /And suddenly,
sweetly, strangely blush’d/To find they were met by my own…TENNYSON,
Maud
(1855)”
(Fowles 28). In the form of anachronism, the use of analepsis or flashback evokes a travel
back in time. In this way, Fowles manages to associate Victorian society with that of his
own day, and he consolidates his notion through referencing each opening quotation
especially from the prominent authors of the Victorian Era.
JOMOPS July 2022 / Volume:3 / Issue:1 M. Zafer AYAR
186
Hutcheon’s (1988) further explanation about intertextuality reinforces Fowles’
(1969) use of epigraphs from different writers of the previous periods. She asserts that “It
is not a modernist desire to order the present through the past or to make the present look
spare in contrast to the richness of the past. It is not an attempt to void or avoid history.
Instead, it directly confronts the past of literature and of historiography, for it too derives
from other texts (documents)” (Fowles 118). Therefore, intertextuality enables the writer
to connect previous texts with present works in order to contribute to the understanding
of contemporary events. In this context, Fowles in his
French Lieutenant’s Woman
establishes a set of intertextual links between his own web of plot and that of Victorian
writers such as Thomas Hardy, Brontë Sisters, and George Eliot, whose works particularly
deal with social issues of the period such as gender, love affairs, and class division.
Ernestina wanted a husband, wanted Charles to be that husband, wanted
children; but the payment she vaguely divined she would have to make for
them seemed excessive. She sometimes wondered why God permitted
such a bestial version of duty to spoil such an innocent longing. Most
women of her period felt the same; so did men; and it is no wonder that
duty has become such a key concept in our understanding of the Victorian
age- or for that matter, such a wet blanket in our own.’ (13)
The quotation accentuates a stereotype of the Victorian Period in that expectations of
women and men alike are peculiar to social norms and relations of Victorian society. Most
of these expectations make readers aware that the social perceptions of the previous
period are being narrated from Fowles’ later twentieth-century point of view. Fowles
deconstructs the romantic love story of the Victorian Era and transforms it into the taste
of his own time, namely postmodern period.
Postmodern parody is used as a device to reinterpret formerly written texts in an
ironic manner to draw attention for certain occurrences throughout the plot. As is the case
in postmodern literature, several writers of the period mastered the use of parody in their
works and presented events to create awareness through an entertaining way. This literary
device gives the reader a chance to rethink about specific occasions more intensively from
an objective perspective. The device also allows for creation of new meaning; as Hutcheon
(1988) writes, “Parody is a perfect postmodern form, in some senses, for it paradoxically
both incorporates and challenges that which it parodies” (Hutcheon 11). However,
postmodern texts present this incorporation and challenge by diverting the traditions and
HOW TO COPE WITH POSTMODERN TEXTS:
TEXTUAL ANALYSIS OF INTERTEXTUALITY, PARODY, AND PASTICHE IN READING POSTMODERN TEXTS M. Zafer AYAR
187
conventions of the text written beforehand, thus parody functions as a critical literary
device in this case. In common with intertextuality and pastiche, parody references earlier
texts; however, it differs from such devices with its ridiculous manner. So, postmodern
readers realise both positive and negative aspects of the situation in question. A notable
example written in the form of parody is Martin Amis’
Night Train
(1998)
that not only
diverts the stylistic devices of detective fiction, but it also deconstructs the traditional plot
structure of formerly written conventional crime stories that are a combination of setting
of the scene, interrogation and resolution respectively.
“You saved my life. I’d do anything for you. You know that.’’ He reached
down for his briefcase. From it he removed a folder. Jennifer Rockwell.
H97143. He held it out toward me, saying “Bring me something I can live
with. Because I can’t live with this.”
Now he let me look at him. The panic had left his eyes. As for what
remained, well, I’ve seen it a thousand times. The skin is matte, containing
not a watt of light. The stare goes nowhere into the world. It cannot
penetrate. Seated on the other side of the desk, I was already way out of
rage. (Amis 26)
The quotation suggests that the writer both re-routed the ordinary course of events of
detective stories and deconstructed the plot structure. Amis believes that absurd mimicry
and adaptation of detective stories need to be shifted for the reader to have a different
viewpoint and realise the main point of the events through humor. The writer presents the
events in a way that the deconstructed elements fit into the cases and gives the text a new
meaning by transforming them into a funny tone. In the quotation above, the traditional
way of writing detective stories is deconstructed, and the usual sequence is avoided.
Rather than investigating the crime of Jennifer Rockwell, detective Mike Holihan analyses
the attitudes of Jennifer’s father and makes inferences. This unusual outgoing is the
essential characteristic of parody that presents even a very serious event in a mocking way.
“Parody, according to [Fredric] Jameson, has a critical edge: it challenges and subverts
which it mimics” (cited in Malpas 25). The aim of parody in
Night Train
is both to criticise
the attitudes towards the events and undermine the interrogation process through a fitful
and inconclusive inquiry into the death of Jennifer Rockwell. The strategy Amis employs
fits into the tenets typical of postmodern plot structure. He parodies traditional detective
fiction by deconstructing the end of his fiction with a failed resolution contrary to the
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188
expectations of the reader:
On the fucking street Colonel Tom. For a year she was second-guessing
her own head. Bax Denziger told me she’d started losing it on the job. And
talking about death. About staring at death. And things were coming apart
with Trader because she was sizing up some other guy. …
I won’t be here. Listen, I’m fine. I’m really good- really, Wait… That’s better.
I’m just upset with all this. But now it’s made. And you just have to let it be,
Colonel Tom. I’m sorry, sir. I’m so sorry.
Mike…
It’s down. (71)
In the closing part of
Night Train,
Mike Holihan desperately accounts for the failed
interrogation of suicide -or homicide- and he informs Colonel Tom about the death of her
daughter. The ending of the novel suggests that Holihan reaches no concrete findings, and
Amis does not complete his fiction in parallel with the expectations of the reader.
Therefore, the expected genre is subverted; as Norman (2019) writes, “From this
perspective,
Night Train
adopts and distorts the narrative conventions of the hard-boiled
procedural but offsets such knowing strategies through appeals to authenticity through
style” (45). This distortion of the conventional genre appeals clearly to the taste of the
postmodernity, thus the adaptation of parody.
Pastiche, a literary device used in postmodern writing, is an imitation of style of a
previous work, without the mocking tone of parody. The aim of this literary device is to
blend previous related texts to highlight various parts of the novel. Pastiche is not
considered as plagiarism since it does not copy texts wholly but uses them in a certain
subverted way. As McArthur (1992) explains Pastiche as “a text consisting wholly or largely
of direct borrowings from one or more other works. [...] It is different from plagiarism, which
conceals borrowings in an attempt to deceive” (756). Moreover, pastiche, unlike parody,
does not necessarily endeavor to make fun of other texts and tends to borrow parts in
varied quantities from other texts are able to establish an intertextuality between different
literary works. Nicol comments on this relationship between texts citing: “Barthes contends
that literary composition is not and never has been an original activity, but a matter of the
author rearranging previous literary and linguistic conventions rather than creating
something completely new” (61). So such literary devices like parody and pastiche enable
authors to appropriate previous texts and imitate them to some extent. In
The Crying of
HOW TO COPE WITH POSTMODERN TEXTS:
TEXTUAL ANALYSIS OF INTERTEXTUALITY, PARODY, AND PASTICHE IN READING POSTMODERN TEXTS M. Zafer AYAR
189
Lot 49
, Pynchon uses pastiche to make the narration interrelated to other texts. Oedipa
goes after the real version of
The Courtier’s Tragedy
and finds a book whose “paperback
is supposed to be a straight reprint of the book she now held.’ Puzzled, she saw that this
edition also had a footnote” (70).
The Crying Lot of 49
is a combination of pastiches of
different literary genres. Pynchon designs the web of events in accordance with the
fragmented structure of post-war society of the postmodern era. In order to create a
multidimensional perspective in his novel, he includes such sub-genres like science-fiction,
fantasy and a taste of detective fiction that refer to the fragmentation of consumer society.
Nicol (2009) describes the novel as “an inversion of the Oedipus story. Where Oedipus is
able to solve a riddle and discover hidden truth, Oedipa is patently unable to do either. Her
quest is failure” (94). As a distorted pastiche of
Oedipus
by Sophocles, in
The Crying of Lot
49
, Pynchon chooses a role of failed mission for his main character: an inverted version of
pastiche of detective fiction in which Oedipa never reaches a solid solution for the riddle
about an underground organization named ‘Tristero’.
Either Oedipa in the orbiting ecstasy of a true paranoia, or a real Tristero.
For there either was some Tristero beyond the appearance of the legacy
America, or there was just America then it seemed the only way she could
continue, and manage to be at all relevant to it, was an alien, unfurrowed,
assumed full circle into some paranoia. (Pynchon 126)
Oedipa has complicated thoughts about this secret structure, yet she fails to sort out the
riddle about Tristero, and she cannot come to a final decision about this structure. “Oedipa,
like the classic private-eye, needs to know; she must struggle to bridge the gap between
appearances and reality, she must question the reliability of every piece of information,
every source” (Mchale 22). Yet, she has many questions in her mind, wondering if “she has
really discovered a secret network; this discovery is simply a delusion; a vast conspiracy
has been mounted to fool her thinking she has discovered a secret network; or she’s
imagining such a conspiracy” (Nicol 95). Accordingly,
The Crying of Lot 49
is a subverted
pastiche of traditional detective fiction that normally reaches solid resolution.
To conclude, postmodernity by its very nature features several literary
characteristics related to their historical, social, cultural, religious, political aspects,
creating a kind of fragmentation. This fragmentation is reflected in postmodern narrative
which makes it hard to understand the implicit meanings of the work. Literary devices,
such as intertextuality, parody and pastiche, deconstruct the plot and subvert traditional
JOMOPS July 2022 / Volume:3 / Issue:1 M. Zafer AYAR
190
ways of writing to make the work difficult to comprehend. The roles have been shifted with
the author giving the reader an active participation in the text to let them discover their
own truths. Postmodern style also allows the reader to engage with existing knowledge in
order to determine the implicit meaning of the work. This study has attempted to contribute
to the ways in which postmodern readers can cope with literary devices. In this way, it has
aimed to encourage the reader to interpret literary works in their own way of
understanding. Postmodern works in this study such as
French Lieutenant’s Woman
by
Fowles,
Night Train
by Amis,
The Crying of Lot 49
by Pynchon have potential to open the
door for the reader to make concrete connections between intertextual literary devices
included consciously or unconsciously in texts by writers in this literary turbulent period.
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