'Hearts ripe, brains aglow': Narrative, subjectivity, and feeling in post-postmodernism.

摘要

This thesis focuses on defining the formal and thematic elements of post-postmodern literature with emphasis on how the structures of such texts compel reader participation and affective response. In focusing on contemporary American fiction that addresses themes of suffering and emotional redemption through the use of metafictional formal elements, my research explores the possibility of interrogating, dismantling, and positively reconstructing readers' subjective relationship to others, fictional or real. I explore the work of David Foster Wallace and Dave Eggers as symptomatic of this literary moment, addressing both non-fictional and fictional texts. Building on Wallace's argument that television, as a manifestation of postmodernity, engenders an inherently solipsistic and passive existence, I argue in my thesis that post-postmodernism implies the reclamation of emotion and sentimentality with the intention of reinvigorating human connection.;Keywords: contemporary American fiction; David Foster Wallace; Dave Eggers; post-postmodernism; subjectivity; feeling.