WAS THERE A POSTMODERNISM?

Abstract

Postmodernism as a cultural term has been in use since the mid-twentieth century. While a common use of the term refers to multiple cultural and economic conditions, it also suggests new artistic and literary forms. On the one hand, postmodernism is commonly considered as a reaction towards modernist movement in arts and literature, it is also regarded as an intensified version of modernist narrative techniques in literature. This article analyses and compares the various definitions of postmodernism and its literary forms to question whether or not there was a postmodernism before it began to be talked about. The article also reads the modernist texts of writers and poets such as James Joyce and Allen Ginsberg as the early examples of postmodernist tropes in literature in order to compare them with the narrative styles of postmodernist writers like Salman Rushdie.