Postmodernism: "The French Lieutenant's Woman", by John Fowles - Structured Essay.

a. Read and summarise at least two critical accounts of postmodern fiction. Explain the term "self-reflexive."

Postmodernism in literature, as a response to modernism, can be described as the questioning and challenging of the fundamental principles and assumptions about the nature of texts. Subverting or challenging the `master-narrative' through the use of techniques such as pastiche, irony, distortions of narrative time and discontinuity, anachronisms, blurring of genres, and ambivalence, results in exploding the traditional values of the text by offering different perspectives. Another important way of rupturing the traditional text is authorial intrusion. Rejecting the omniscient (or perhaps omnipotent) author is achieved through an emphasis on how the work is constructed, and constant reminders that the story and characters are merely fictional.

The above description, adapted from the critical account of Dr. Mary Klages of...