Trailing Postmodernism

David Mitchell’s Cloud Atlas , Zadie Smith’s NW , and the Metamodern

Bibliographic Data

ID8864003
AuthorsNancy Bentley (0000-0002-3096-9002, corresponding author), Nick Bentley (Keele University)
Year2018
Volume99
Issue7
Pages723-743
Publication date2018-10-03
Peer ReviewedYes
Open AccessNo
TypeARTICLE
VenueEnglish Studies (JOURNAL)
Journal identifiersISSN: 0013-838X • E-ISSN: 1744-4217
PublisherRoutledge (PUBLISHER • GB)
DOI10.1080/0013838x.2018.1510611
OpenAlexW2898050052
LanguageEN
Citations received7
References cited19

This article examines David Mitchell's Cloud Atlas (2004) and Zadie Smith's NW (2012) against recent theories of the post-postmodern. It argues that although both texts can be seen to be gesturing towards a reconstructive relationship with the absolute cynicism and scepticism of postmodernism neither represents a sustainable discontinuity with that late-twentieth-century mode. In this context, the essay challenges readings of Mitchell and Smith as representative of a metamodernism as that term is understood by critics such as Timotheus Vermeulen, Robin van den Akker, David James and Urmila Seshagiri. By referring to models suggested by Jean-Francois Lyotard, it suggests that the metamodern, as exemplified in the cases of Mitchell and Smith, represents a subsection of the postmodern rather than a clear break with it

Art · Art history · Context (archaeology · Cynicism · Epistemology · Politics · Postmodernism · Skepticism · Contemporary Literature and Criticism · Narrative Theory and Analysis · History · Law · Philosophy

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