Postmodernism

Postmodernism, a movement that has influenced literature in the latter part of the twentieth century, has been defined as both a reaction against and a refinement of modernism. Some of the key elements of modernism in literature have been identified as experimentation, an emphasis on the individual and his or her perceptions, and a focus on rational thinking as opposed to the emotions. (Emotional writing was one focal point in literature during the Romantic period, a precursor to modernism.) The modernism movement is said to fall roughly between the 1860s and the 1970s. In the United States, the period is often limited to the first part of the twentieth century, up to about 1970. The British author Virginia Woolf is considered a modernist. She tended to write in a stream-of-consciousness mode (as in To the Lighthouse, published in 1927) in which the reader was privileged to the characters' interior...