Literary Manifestations of Metamodernism

A collection of literary essays investigating how diverse aspects of metamodernism manifest in 21st century English-language fiction. Magdalena Sawa and Joanna Klara Teske analyze how various theories of metamodernism apply to fiction and how close readings of contemporary fiction encourage readers to critically engage with this cultural phenomena. Beginning with an introduction to the key aspects of metamodernism, this collection examines postmodernism, postcolonialism, and ecology through a metamodernist lens while observing metamodernist attitudes toward human experience, sensibility, and the use of antimimetic narrative strategies. Literary Manifestations of Metamodernism allows for a new appreciation of various aspects of contemporary fiction – such as its thematics (e.g. the real, ecology, ethical concern with social justice and care) and its form (e.g. use of magic realism, complex narrative structure, autofiction)–while reinforcing metamodernism as a promising phenomenon that takes advantage of postmodern heritage while surpassing it to explore the responsibility humans bear for socially-constructed reality.