Post Modern
California State University, Dominguez Hills
Essay 3
Examining characteristics of postmodern fiction depicted within Italo Calvino’s novel If on a
Winter’s Night a Traveler
Casey Robertson (202306117) crobertson25@toromail.csudh.edu HUX 581: Key Periods and Movements, Philosophy: Philosophy and Postmodernism
07 27 2012
When discussing the genre of postmodern literature, Italian author Italo Calvino’s 1979 novel titled If on a Winter’s Night a Traveler is definitely a work worthy of examination within this realm. While ascribing attributes of postmodern fiction to a given work can at times, prove to be a task of both challenging and controversial nat ure, Calvino’s novel exhibits several notable literary devices that employ “key characteristics” postmodern fiction as described in parameters outlined by Tim Woods in his publication Beginning Postmodernism.1 With this stated, the following discussion will attempt to illuminate some of the postmodern characteristics present within Calvino’s novel, as well as examine the author’s application and execution of themes such as gender and identity.
Before discussing Calvino’s novel, it seems appropriate to provide a brief sketch of the criterion which Tim Woods describes as embodying the key characteristics of post modernism.
According to Woods, a work of postmodern fiction often demonstrates a preoccupation with the viability of systems of representation, the decentering of the subject by discursive system, the inscription of multiple fictive selves, along with narrative fragmentation and reflexivity, narratives which self-consciously allude to their own artifice, and interrogations of the ontological bases of and connections between narrative and subjectivity. 2 Woods also describes additional postmodern characteristics such as the abolition between the cultural divide of high and popular culture, explorations of how narratives mediate and construct history, and finally the displacement of
Essay 3
Examining characteristics of postmodern fiction depicted within Italo Calvino’s novel If on a
Winter’s Night a Traveler
Casey Robertson (202306117) crobertson25@toromail.csudh.edu HUX 581: Key Periods and Movements, Philosophy: Philosophy and Postmodernism
07 27 2012
When discussing the genre of postmodern literature, Italian author Italo Calvino’s 1979 novel titled If on a Winter’s Night a Traveler is definitely a work worthy of examination within this realm. While ascribing attributes of postmodern fiction to a given work can at times, prove to be a task of both challenging and controversial nat ure, Calvino’s novel exhibits several notable literary devices that employ “key characteristics” postmodern fiction as described in parameters outlined by Tim Woods in his publication Beginning Postmodernism.1 With this stated, the following discussion will attempt to illuminate some of the postmodern characteristics present within Calvino’s novel, as well as examine the author’s application and execution of themes such as gender and identity.
Before discussing Calvino’s novel, it seems appropriate to provide a brief sketch of the criterion which Tim Woods describes as embodying the key characteristics of post modernism.
According to Woods, a work of postmodern fiction often demonstrates a preoccupation with the viability of systems of representation, the decentering of the subject by discursive system, the inscription of multiple fictive selves, along with narrative fragmentation and reflexivity, narratives which self-consciously allude to their own artifice, and interrogations of the ontological bases of and connections between narrative and subjectivity. 2 Woods also describes additional postmodern characteristics such as the abolition between the cultural divide of high and popular culture, explorations of how narratives mediate and construct history, and finally the displacement of