Postmodernism

In this topic guide we explain postmodernism and its characteristics. We mainly focus on postmodern literature, but also include many examples of postmodern movies and tv series. When we use the terms “text” and “fiction” in this guide, it often includes media texts.

We first give you a definition of postmodernism before focusing on stylistic traits such as metafiction, fragmentation and pastiche, intertextuality, black humor and irony, and postmodern literature. Learning about these aspects will help you understand postmodernism as a movement and will also make it easier to analyze texts with postmodern characteristics.

If you want a brief overview of postmodernism, you can find it here.

Postmodernism is sometimes also spelled post-modernism.