The Cambridge Introduction to Postmodernism Cambridge Introductions to Literature Series

The Cambridge Introduction to Postmodernism surveys the full spectrum of postmodern culture - high and low, avant-garde and popular, famous and obscure - across a range of fields, from architecture and visual art to fiction, poetry, and drama. It deftly maps postmodernism's successive historical phases, from its emergence in the 1960s to its waning in the first decades of the twenty-first century. Weaving together multiple strands of postmodernism - people and places from Andy Warhol, Jefferson Airplane and magical realism, to Jean-François Lyotard, Laurie Anderson and cyberpunk - this book creates a rich picture of a complex cultural phenomenon that continues to exert an influence over our present 'post-postmodern' situation. Comprehensive and accessible, this Introduction is indispensable for scholars, students, and general readers interested in late twentieth-century culture.

1. Before postmodernism; 2. Big bang; 3. The major phase: peak postmodernism, 1973–90; 4. Interregnum, 1989–2000; 5. After postmodernism.

Brian McHale is Arts and Humanities Distinguished Professor of English at Ohio State University. He is the author of Postmodernist Fiction, Constructing Postmodernism, and The Obligation Toward the Difficult Whole. His articles have appeared in such journals as Diacritics, Genre, Modern Language Quarterly, Narrative, New Literary History, Poetics Today, Style, and Twentieth-Century Literature. He is currently co-editing, with Len Platt, The Cambridge History of Postmodern Literature.