A clash of paradigms : is American literature still postmodern?

Abstract

The American literary world becomes more complex with each passing movement, as specific trends peak and die off, only to rise in prominence decades later. This complexity results in a muddled timeline in which there is no general consensus on when certain literary movements began and ended, such as modernism and postmodernism. While these movements apply in other disciplines in addition to literature, their characteristics differ depending on which one is under discussion and the movements do not always affect all disciplines at the same time. Analyses of For Whom the Bell Tolls (1940), Adventures of a Young Man (1962), Catch-22 (1961), Slaughterhouse-Five (1969), and Lincoln in the Bardo (2017) demonstrate that current American literary works more closely follow the principles of modernism rather than postmodernism, despite the latter occurring more recently and having more influence on other disciplines.