Is it real? : postmodernist fiction, realism, and the representation of reality

Abstract

This study explores in what ways postmodern British fiction reinvents and re evaluates the literary conventions of Realism. Driven by an impetus to portray the lack of authoritative truths these novels analyse the relations between past and present to raise questions about truth and knowledge. The aim of this study is an attempt to show how Realism is extended to portray the multiple realities that characterise our contemporary world. Exploring how classic literary devices such as the omniscient narrator, coherent narration and characterisation, and narrative closure are reworked, this study attempts to analyse the aims and concerns of postmodern British fiction. The novels which feature in this study include Peter Ackroyd's Hawksmoor (1985), Julian Bames's Flaubert's Parrot (1984), and A History of the World in 101/i Chapters (1989), Kazuo Ishiguro's When We Were Orphans (2000), and Ian McEwan's Atonement (2001). Focusing on the modes these literary texts approach the relations between past and present, the elusiveness of history, and the distortions of memory, this study sets out to show how postmodern British fiction reconceptualises the reader's conceptions of both historical knowledge and fiction.