Postmodern Realism in Late Twentieth and Early Twentieth-First Century Anglo-American Fiction

Abstract

This dissertation discusses examples of Anglo-American realist fiction from the end of twentieth and the beginning of twentieth-first century. Since the 1990s, literary scholars have been acknowledging a waning of postmodernism as a literary aesthetic. Amidst the succeeding post-postmodern developments in literary fiction of the last few decades, there appears to be an increased interest in literary realism’s forms, techniques, and thematic concerns. This diachronic study argues that literary realism has been a strong current in Anglo-American fiction even at the peak of postmodern literature’s heyday; this dissertation traces realism’s recalibration through the influence of postmodern aesthetic and cultural phenomena beginning with Joan Didion’s late 1970s’ work, continuing through the late 1990s and the late David Foster Wallace’s writing, and, finally, an early twentieth-first century novel by Zadie Smith. The goal of this dissertation is to elucidate the ways in which these prominent writers from the Anglo-American literary tradition negotiate their relationship with postmodernism via realism-associated forms, techniques, and thematic concerns.