Preview

The Real Inspector Hound: a Discourse of Postmodernism

Good Essays
Open Document
Open Document
819 Words
Grammar
Grammar
Plagiarism
Plagiarism
Writing
Writing
Score
Score
The Real Inspector Hound: a Discourse of Postmodernism
The Real Inspector Hound: A discourse of postmodernism
In this essay we will try to explain why The Real Inspector Hound is a Postmodernist play. To do this First we must decide on what Postmodernism actually is. As many critics have written many definitions on this subject overlapping and contradicting each other it is hard to find a single definition of postmodernism. So first to embark on this journey, we are going to find and state a single definition of postmodernism and afterwards we shall apply this to The Real Inspector Hound. What is postmodernism? As Robert Struble Jr. states in the introduction to his book Treatise to Twelve Lights "The postmodernist worldview dismisses all forms of absolutism from eras past, especially Judeo-Christian faith and morals; yet the postmodernists idolize absolutely their new secular trinity of tolerance–diversity–choice." (Struble). As stated before, many critics have different views of postmodernism. One of the most famous critics, David Lodge, has stated a guideline for postmodernist discernment. David Lodge, writing about postmodern fiction identifies five basic postmodern characteristics as contradiction, discontinuity, randomness, excess and short circuit. Educational technologists may initially react to the considering such characteristics within instructional design. Indeed, it might be argued that the five represent the antithesis of a well thought out instructional design system. For an instructional system to tolerate characteristics of contradiction, discontinuity, randomness, excess and short circuit is certainly not a traditional view. So let's take David Lodge's characteristics as a standard and elaborate on those while comparing them to The Real Inspector Hound. Contradiction: Contradiction in postmodernism is mainly between what's being said and what's being intended. An ‘hit you in the head'-obvious example, when one thinks about it, is the Title of the story. "the real inspector Hound" isn't even the

You May Also Find These Documents Helpful

  • Good Essays

    Post Modernism, on the other hand, is ‘after modernism’, and in many ways postmodernism constitutes an attack on modernist claims about the existence of truth and value, claims that come from the European enlightenment of the 18th century. In disputing past assumptions postmodernists generally display a preoccupation with the inadequacy of language as a mode of communication. One such famous postmodernist theorist is French philosopher Jacques…

    • 526 Words
    • 3 Pages
    Good Essays
  • Good Essays

    As said before, postmodernism is something hard to define and spot. There are several examples of postmodernism and they are: fragmentation, paradox, metanarratives, irony/black humor, and many more. Relating to Slaughterhouse-Five, I did a soundtrack that showed postmodernism within it. My soundtrack shows fragmentation because time leaps from one song to another and while it’s at that, the songs talk about different events My soundtrack includes the songs: War by Edwin Starr, Stuck in Moment by U2, and Freewill by Rush. I chose these songs because these songs symbolizes or are the key events in the novel. The song war is about how war is pointless, there is nothing beautiful about it, and no one wants to die because of a mass…

    • 426 Words
    • 2 Pages
    Good Essays
  • Good Essays

    Drawing comparisons between oral and literate cultures. Doing so highlights a crucial connection between oral and literate cultures, as well as past and present. Oral is inherent, literacy is not. Oral is personal and involved. Speaker and audience must be in close proximity and the audience can ask for clarity if there is confusion. Written language is impersonal and detached. This can lead to confusion or miss iteration of information. This would indicate societies can modernize without a high level of literacy. Writing creates detachment by making it possible to view a word as a thing Modernism and postmodernism focus too heavily on reading and writing, prompting artists to focus heavily on concepts and labels to describe aesthetic experience. Dissanayke argues that you cannot describe or purposely elicit another’s aesthetic understanding to be the same as yours. Each viewer experiences a different aesthetic experience based of their perception and past. There may be commonalities, but ultimately, each’s aesthetic is…

    • 608 Words
    • 3 Pages
    Good Essays
  • Powerful Essays

    Year of Wonders Study Notes

    • 16401 Words
    • 66 Pages

    ©2000-2007 BookRags, Inc. ALL RIGHTS RESERVED. The following sections of this BookRags Premium Study Guide is offprint from Gale's For Students Series: Presenting Analysis, Context, and Criticism on Commonly Studied Works: Introduction, Author Biography, Plot Summary, Characters, Themes, Style, Historical Context, Critical Overview, Criticism and Critical Essays, Media Adaptations, Topics for Further Study, Compare & Contrast, What Do I Read Next?, For Further Study, and Sources. ©1998-2002; ©2002 by Gale. Gale is an imprint of The Gale Group, Inc., a division of Thomson Learning, Inc. Gale and Design® and Thomson Learning are trademarks used herein under license. The following sections, if they exist, are offprint from Beacham's Encyclopedia of Popular Fiction: "Social Concerns", "Thematic Overview", "Techniques", "Literary Precedents", "Key Questions", "Related Titles", "Adaptations", "Related Web Sites". © 1994-2005, by Walton Beacham. The following sections, if they exist, are offprint from Beacham's Guide to Literature for Young Adults: "About the Author", "Overview", "Setting", "Literary Qualities", "Social Sensitivity", "Topics for Discussion", "Ideas for Reports and Papers". © 1994-2005, by Walton Beacham. All other sections in this Literature Study Guide are owned and copywritten by BookRags, Inc. No part of this work covered by the copyright hereon may be reproduced or used in any form or by any means graphic, electronic, or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, taping, Web distribution or information storage retrieval systems without the written permission of the publisher.…

    • 16401 Words
    • 66 Pages
    Powerful Essays
  • Better Essays

    Ray Bradbury’s classic dystopian novel, Fahrenheit 451, depicts a futuristic American society where conformity, censorship and technological obsession is commonplace. Published in 1953, the novel follows Guy Montag, a fireman who, instead of putting out fires, burns books. Montag, in an unhappy marriage and hiding forbidden books, eventually meets former English professor Faber. With Faber’s help, Montag begins his journey to reprint and reproduce books, however, he is caught and is forced to escape the city for the countryside. Exploring Montag’s descent from a fireman to rebel and outcast in society, Bradbury’s work depicts the impact of Western society’s enslavement by the media, technology and conformity. Utilising the environment as a…

    • 1440 Words
    • 6 Pages
    Better Essays
  • Powerful Essays

    Coming of Age in Mississippi

    • 16769 Words
    • 68 Pages

    ©2000−2005 BookRags, Inc. ALL RIGHTS RESERVED. The following sections of this BookRags Premium Study Guide is offprint from Gale's For Students Series: Presenting Analysis, Context, and Criticism on Commonly Studied Works: Introduction, Author Biography, Plot Summary, Characters, Themes, Style, Historical Context, Critical Overview, Criticism and Critical Essays, Media Adaptations, Topics for Further Study, Compare &Contrast, What Do I Read Next?, For Further Study, and Sources. ©1998−2002; ©2002 by Gale. Gale is an imprint of The Gale Group, Inc., a division of Thomson Learning, Inc. Gale and Design® and Thomson Learning are trademarks used herein under license. The following sections, if they exist, are offprint from Beacham's Encyclopedia of Popular Fiction: "Social Concerns", "Thematic Overview", "Techniques", "Literary Precedents", "Key Questions", "Related Titles", "Adaptations", "Related Web Sites". © 1994−2005, by Walton Beacham. The following sections, if they exist, are offprint from Beacham's Guide to Literature for Young Adults: "About the Author", "Overview", "Setting", "Literary Qualities", "Social Sensitivity", "Topics for Discussion", "Ideas for Reports and Papers". © 1994−2005, by Walton Beacham. All other sections in this Literature Study Guide are owned and copywritten by BookRags, Inc. No part of this work covered by the copyright hereon may be reproduced or used in any form or by any means graphic, electronic, or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, taping, Web distribution or information storage retrieval systems without the written permission of the publisher.…

    • 16769 Words
    • 68 Pages
    Powerful Essays
  • Powerful Essays

    The social critic, Neil Postman, created six assertions he believed supported Huxley’s visions in, Brave New World. Out of the six, the three most relevant ones regarded the fear of the truth being drowned in a sea of irrelevance, a trivial culture preoccupied with some equivalent of the feelies, the orgy porgy, and centrifugal bumblepuppy, and the loving of technology in order to make us think less.…

    • 1150 Words
    • 5 Pages
    Powerful Essays
  • Good Essays

    Postmodernism affects the way that we read a text, but why is that more important than reading a text for its own individual merit. Postmodernism as a movement is only the current movement in literature, and if we look into the past we can see that all the movements can be used to characterise some of the texts of the era in which they were written, but also there are other factors that go into analysing a text, such as historical and social context. During those times texts were analysed by using the movement of the time, however there is nothing to say that previous movements can’ be used to analyse contemporary texts, it doesn’t necessarily have to be the current movement. For example Romanticism or Modernism could still be used as a valid theory to analyse texts that are currently being published; because some of the ideas used to create the basis of these movements are still valid in today’s society, as Postmodernism is still just the progression of Modernism. It is all dependant on what the author has intended to convey with his or her story, as in any case the ideas and theories that have influenced postmodernism are those of the previous movements and societies.…

    • 855 Words
    • 4 Pages
    Good Essays
  • Good Essays

    Elinor Fuchs starts her argument by questioning the matter of “subjectivity” in postmodern theatre (6). She points out that “the subject was no longer an essence” and postmodern attempts to de-substantiate character on stage (3). Fuchs explains that “the burden of signification” and the act of questioning character might still fail to de-centralize subject because modernists tended to deal with “a humanistic problem” (35). What Fuchs illustrates throughout her book is to tell us that postmodern “character is dead” (176).…

    • 419 Words
    • 2 Pages
    Good Essays
  • Powerful Essays

    Many readers enjoy books and stories that go outside of the social norm because they like to “stick it to the man” or maybe they just don’t like that people who lived before them developed to make the boundaries that we live by in our society. Who gives the authority to inscribe an entire generation with their beliefs? This is because, for years, those same people also had to follow a set of rules they probably did not believe in themselves. This is how I think postmodernism came to be with the original disobedience in writing came. The point of postmodernism is to go against traditional classifications to question the objective truth associated with the enlightenment, and to prove that there are no social truths but social constructs that our society to all of its actions.…

    • 1709 Words
    • 7 Pages
    Powerful Essays
  • Powerful Essays

    Silent Spring - Rachel Carson

    • 30108 Words
    • 121 Pages

    ©2000-2007 BookRags, Inc. ALL RIGHTS RESERVED. The following sections of this BookRags Premium Study Guide is offprint from Gale's For Students Series: Presenting Analysis, Context, and Criticism on Commonly Studied Works: Introduction, Author Biography, Plot Summary, Characters, Themes, Style, Historical Context, Critical Overview, Criticism and Critical Essays, Media Adaptations, Topics for Further Study, Compare & Contrast, What Do I Read Next?, For Further Study, and Sources. ©1998-2002; ©2002 by Gale. Gale is an imprint of The Gale Group, Inc., a division of Thomson Learning, Inc. Gale and Design® and Thomson Learning are trademarks used herein under license. The following sections, if they exist, are offprint from Beacham's Encyclopedia of Popular Fiction: "Social Concerns", "Thematic Overview", "Techniques", "Literary Precedents", "Key Questions", "Related Titles", "Adaptations", "Related Web Sites". © 1994-2005, by Walton Beacham. The following sections, if they exist, are offprint from Beacham's Guide to Literature for Young Adults: "About the Author", "Overview", "Setting", "Literary Qualities", "Social Sensitivity", "Topics for Discussion", "Ideas for Reports and Papers". © 1994-2005, by Walton Beacham. All other sections in this Literature Study Guide are owned and copywritten by BookRags, Inc. No part of this work covered by the copyright hereon may be reproduced or used in any form or by any means graphic, electronic, or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, taping, Web distribution or information storage retrieval systems without the written permission of the publisher.…

    • 30108 Words
    • 121 Pages
    Powerful Essays
  • Powerful Essays

    Time to Kill Outline

    • 50814 Words
    • 204 Pages

    ©2000-2007 BookRags, Inc. ALL RIGHTS RESERVED. The following sections of this BookRags Premium Study Guide is offprint from Gale's For Students Series: Presenting Analysis, Context, and Criticism on Commonly Studied Works: Introduction, Author Biography, Plot Summary, Characters, Themes, Style, Historical Context, Critical Overview, Criticism and Critical Essays, Media Adaptations, Topics for Further Study, Compare & Contrast, What Do I Read Next?, For Further Study, and Sources. ©1998-2002; ©2002 by Gale. Gale is an imprint of The Gale Group, Inc., a division of Thomson Learning, Inc. Gale and Design® and Thomson Learning are trademarks used herein under license. The following sections, if they exist, are offprint from Beacham's Encyclopedia of Popular Fiction: "Social Concerns", "Thematic Overview", "Techniques", "Literary Precedents", "Key Questions", "Related Titles", "Adaptations", "Related Web Sites". © 1994-2005, by Walton Beacham. The following sections, if they exist, are offprint from Beacham's Guide to Literature for Young Adults: "About the Author", "Overview", "Setting", "Literary Qualities", "Social Sensitivity", "Topics for Discussion", "Ideas for Reports and Papers". © 1994-2005, by Walton Beacham. All other sections in this Literature Study Guide are owned and copywritten by BookRags, Inc. No part of this work covered by the copyright hereon may be reproduced or used in any form or by any means graphic, electronic, or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, taping, Web distribution or information storage retrieval systems without the written permission of the publisher.…

    • 50814 Words
    • 204 Pages
    Powerful Essays
  • Satisfactory Essays

    seems strange why Barthelme uses the notion death in his story, but I think the…

    • 572 Words
    • 3 Pages
    Satisfactory Essays
  • Better Essays

    Sociology Behind Tattoos

    • 2355 Words
    • 10 Pages

    References: Bauman, Z 1995, Life in Fragments: Essays in Postmodern Morality, Oxford, Cambridge: Blackwell, pp. 114-122.…

    • 2355 Words
    • 10 Pages
    Better Essays
  • Better Essays

    Everyday Use

    • 1394 Words
    • 6 Pages

    Handbook of Critical Approaches to Literature. Wilfred L. Guerin, Earle Labor, Lee Morgan, Jeanne C. Ressmen, John R. Willingham. Oxford University Press. New York. 1999 (230-233)…

    • 1394 Words
    • 6 Pages
    Better Essays

Related Topics