Postmodern Narrative Theory

In this article I describe some basic features of postmodern narrative, note its differences from other, mimetic types of narrative, and identify the kind of theoretical framework necessary to comprehend such works. I begin with a general account of the distinctive nature of postmodern narrative, and then discuss the relations among authors, implied authors, and narrators in traditional and postmodern narratives. I identify characteristic postmodern strategies, including the use of multiple kinds of narrators, second-person narration, and various forms of impossible narration. I then move on to time, plot, and progression, and again identify a number of distinctive postmodern strategies, such as the use of unusual or unnatural stories, impossible chronologies, denarration, and nontraditional endings. Throughout the essay I provide examples from Salman Rushdie' s Midnight' s Children and other postmodern texts to illustrate these conceptions.