Post-modernism with its self-contradictory implications, its self-conscious deployment of trickery playfulness and unexplained supernaturalism, its questioning of universal truths and its penchant for apocalyptic content and subversive strategies seems too heady a brew for readers to enjoy. The present volume isolates the key concepts of post-modernism through illustrations from the works of John Fowles, Thomas Pynchon, William Golding, Salman Rushdie, Vladimir Nabakov, Samuel Beckett, James Joyce, Malcolm Lowry, Iris Murdoch, Gabriel Garcia Marquiz, Mario Vargas Llosa and Isabel Allende. These concepts are then placed in a theoretical framework with reference to critics and thinkers ranging from Roland Barthes, Alain Robbe-Grillet, Terry Eagleton to the structuralists and the post-structuralists.
In addition, the volume incorporates incisive articles from this critical perspective analysing the novels of writers ranging from Iris Murdoch, Mark Twain, Graham Greene, Ken Kesey, Salman Rushdie and Mahasweta Devi to Rukun Advani.
Dr. Manmohan K. Bhatnagar is Professor, Department of English, M.D. University, Rohtak (Haryana), India. A distinguished scholar and a veteran teacher of more than two decades’ standing, he has been Chairman, Department of English, M.D. University, Rohtak and also Chairman, State Inter-University Common Syllabi Committee in English of Kurukshetra University, Kurukshetra and M.D. University, Rohtak. Having been selected for the prestigious Commonwealth Academic Staff Fellowship, Professor Bhatnagar has been a U.G.C.-empanelled Resource Person and part of the Guest Faculty at a number of U.G.C.-sponsored Refresher Courses for College Lecturers. He has also chaired individual sessions at National Seminars. He has been a U.G.C. Fellow at Panjab University, Chandigarh and a U.G.C. Research Associate at University of Pune, Pune. Currently, he is engaged in working as Principal Investigator in a Major U.G.C. Project on Indian English Fiction.
Professor Bhatnagar’s publications include, besides a number of research articles in prestigious journals in India and abroad, Political Consciousness in Indian English Writing, Perspectives and The Fiction of Nayantara Sahgal. His areas of interest are: Literary Theory, Comparative Literature, Commonwealth and Indian English Literature and Third World Fiction.
Dr. M. Rajeshwar teaches English at Kakatiya University, Warangal, Andhra Pradesh. He has been a university topper all through his post-graduate studies. Dr. Rajeshwar’s book, The Novels of Wole Soyinka, has been hailed as a signal contribution to the Soyinka scholarship. He has published more than twenty critical articles in reputed journals like The Commonwealth Review, The Journal of Indian Writing in English, Revaluations, Triveni, New Quest, etc. Besides scholarly works, he has written a large number of textbooks for the School of Distance Learning and Continuing Education, Kakatiya University. These books include Modern Indian Literature in Translation, Ancient and Medieval Indian Classics and Restoration and Eighteenth Century Literature.
Dr. Rajeshwar has been the Associate Editor of the prestigious Kakatiya Journal of English Studies for the past several years.
His current research interests include Indian Fiction, American Popular Fiction, Psychoanalytic Critical Theory & English Pronunciation.
