Literary Manifestations of Metamodernism: Contemporary English-Language Fiction

A collection of literary essays investigating how diverse aspects of metamodernism manifest in 21st-century English-language fiction. The authors whose essays are collected in the volume analyze how various theories of metamodernism apply to contemporary fiction and thereby encourage readers to critically engage with this cultural phenomenon. The collection opens with a discussion of the original construal of metamodernism proposed by Timotheus Vermeulen and Robin van den Akker and its subsequent development by other theorists, and closes with two polemical essays asking questions about the name and status of the new cultural movement as well as its relation to postmodernism – its direct predecessor. Literary Manifestations of Metamodernism allows for a new appreciation of various aspects of contemporary fiction – such as its thematics (e.g. ethical concern with social justice and care, ecology, the real, the sense of engagement) and its form (e.g. metafiction, complex narrative structure, autofiction, hopeful tone)–while reinforcing metamodernism as a promising phenomenon that takes advantage of postmodern heritage yet surpasses it to explore the responsibility humans bear for socially-constructed reality.