Literature of Reconstruction

Wolfgang Funk is Lecturer in English Literature at Johannes Gutenberg-Universität Mainz, Germany.

• AcknowledgementsList of Abbreviations1) Postmodernism’s Wake: From Deconstruction to Reconstruction2) “To thine own self be true”: Eight Theses on AuthenticityThesis One: It is impossible to clearly define authenticityThesis Two: The History of Authenticity is a History of LossThesis Three: Authenticity both presupposes and generates a notion of selfThesis Four: Authenticity is both the antithesis to postmodern simulation and the ultimate simulacrum itselfThesis Five: Recent media transformations necessitate a rethinking of authenticityThesis Six: Authenticity is an emergent phenomenonThesis Seven: Authenticity functions as a black box which sublates discursivedichotomiesThesis Eight: Metareference constitutes an appropriate formal approach to authenticity 3) Holding the Mirror up to Fiction: Metareference in ArtThe Truth and Nothing But: Does Realism Still Matter?A Framework for Reconstruction: The Metareferential TurnEssentially Strange Loops: Metareference as Tangled Hierarchy4) From Innocence to Ignorance: Julian Barnes’s England, England5) Reconstructing the Author: Dave Eggers’s A Heartbreaking Work of Staggering Genius6) Reconstructing Literary Influence: Jasper Fforde’s Thursday-Next SeriesRevisitations and Revisions: The Eyre AffairInside Literature: Reconstructing Thursday Next7) Reconstructing Narration: Jennifer Egan’s A Visit from the Goon Squad and Julian Barnes’sThe Sense of an EndingNarrative Assemblage: Jennifer Egan’s A Visit from the Goon SquadImplicit Narrative: Julian Barnes’s The Sense of an Ending8) RemainderReferencesIndex

The demise of postmodernism might be said to be a long time coming, as scholars in the last few years have begun to characterise a transformation in literary and cultural production since the early 1990s. ... Within this new wave of literary criticism that reflects on a new body of writing, Wolfgang Funk’s The Literature of Reconstruction persuasively argues that recent literary fiction has moved away from the postmodern project through formal innovation.