University of Toronto

Graduate Department of English

ENG5520Y: Narrative, Narratology , and Modernist Fiction

An exercise in relational definition:

Early comparisons between modernism and postmodernism tended to explain differences in terms of oppositional binaries. (Compare the earlier constructions of binary oppositions between the Victorian and modernist novels. How does the nature of the modernist novel "flip," depending on the form to which it is being compared?)

From Ihab Hassan, The Dismemberment of Orpheus (1982):

Modernism	Postmodernism
Form (conjunctive/closed)	Antiform (disjunctive/open)
Purpose	Play
Design	Chance
Hierarchy	Anarchy
Mastery/Logos	Exhaustion/Silence
Art Object/Finished Work	Process/Performance
Distance	Participation
Creation/Totalization	Deconstruction
Synthesis	Antithesis
Presence	Absence
Centering	Dispersal
Paradigm	Syntagm
Hypotaxis	Parataxis
Selection	Combination
Root/Depth	Rhizome/Surface
Interpretation/Reading	Misreading
Signified	Signifier
Readerly	Writerly
Grand Narrative	Little History
Master Code/sociolect	ideolect
Genital/Phallic	Polymorphous/Androgynous
Paranoia	Schizophrenia
Origin/Cause Difference	Differance/Trace
Metaphysics	Irony
Determinacy	Indeterminacy
Transcendence	Immanence