Postmodernist Elements in the Work of Robert Cormier

ISBN-13: 9783639209358 / Angielski / Miękka / 2009 / 92 str.

Robert Leblanc

Opis

This scholarly study examines postmodernist elements in the work of acclaimed novelist Robert Cormier. Though many critics have explored Cormier's place within the canon of young adult literature, few have examined the connections between his novels and the postmodernist narratives of their era. After considering various definitions and understandings of the term "postmodernist literature," later chapters discuss stylistic and thematic elements in Cormier's novels through this theoretical lens. The uses of ambiguity and obscurantism, experimental narrative forms, and varied dictions place Cormier's work in line with a postmodernist movement in literature. The study then discusses thematic elements that function similarly within Cormier's work, including emphases on institutional corruption, alienation, social fragmentation, moral ambiguity, technological fixation, and paranoia. In its conclusion, this study argues that future critical work on Cormier could benefit from reconsidering these postmodernist elements, the reception of which points to enigmatic aspects of literary postmodernism itself.

O autorze

Robert LeBlanc is currently completing a Ph.D. in English at the University of Rhode Island. His dissertation is entitled Subjectivities and Counterpublics in 20th-Century Christian Leftist Texts. His scholarly work has been published in Epiphany and CLCWeb: Comparative Literature and Culture.