Parodistic Intertextuality and Intermediality in Postmodern American Fiction: Robert Coover and Kathy Acker

Magisterarbeit von Matthias Voller

Abstract:

Reading postmodern fiction - once a term limited to denote a decidedly US-American tendency in contemporary literature but now applicable to a whole range of works that have in recent years been published by an international group of writers - one almost invariably gets the uneasy feeling of having read it all before. Recognizing some passages, the reader feels a strong sense of deja vu and keeps wondering whether the passages he or she does not recognize are just from those books he or she has not read. Surely enough, an increasingly large number of postmodern authors tend to conceive their books as a jumble of allusions to themes, structures and scenes from earlier texts, so-called master- or parent texts. Others go even further in alluding to previously published texts. They deliberately draw an one particular, generally acknowledged and highly acclaimed master text or classical piece of world literature and read it parodically against the grain, thus re-writing and re-working a renowned classic into a new work of art. Still others overtly appropriate and even plagiarize titles, paragraphs and whole passages from a variety of literary predecessors.

However, allusions, appropriations and plagiarisms are only an the surface of postmodern fiction; beneath are other things, which are formally more interesting: parodistic intertextuality as a leitmotif central to a postmodern synthesis, challenging traditional literary concepts, such as author, genre and literary period an the one hand and originality and inventiveness an the other hand, fragmentation of literature and simultaneous presentation of literary and cinematic scenes and events from a variety of perspectives - also referred to as synchronic approach of telling a story, deconstruction and re-presentation of texts, and, ultimately, recognition of fiction as a world of its own, as a linguistic artefact which does not stand for reality any longer.

Consequently, postmodern fiction is not concerned with the process of writing as a one-to-one reproduction of reality. Quite the contrary, postmodern fiction abandons the mimetic principle of conventional narrative and severs its ties to space, time, cause-and-effect and reality and goes „back to the original springs of narrative.“ Going beyond the limits of the real world and exploring the realms of fantasy and dreams, postmodern fiction evidently manifests a turning back to fairy-tales, religious parables, and the stories of classical and popular mythology. it blends reality and imagination, replaces objectivity with subjectivity, and in doing so opens up „a great amusement park“ of an unlimited variety of possible, fictional, and subjectively true stories.

Admittedly, some of these stories might seem to pose a bit of a problem as they are not easily understandable to the average reader, and therefore unlikely to find widespread acceptance. Though there are texts that cross the boundary line between readability and incomprehensibility, postmodern fiction an the whole can certainly be said to expand the reader's conception of the world as one of limited possibilities in that it imagines an infinite number of additional worlds - potential or ideal worlds, worlds long gone or yet to come.

Gang der Untersuchung:

Die Studie untersucht anhand von drei exemplarischen Werken postmoderner amerikanischer Schriftsteller im wesentlichen zwei Aspekte, die für den postmodernen Roman charakteristisch sind: Intertextualität und Intermedialität. Basierend auf einer eingehenden Analyse der Interdependenz von Sprache, Text und der unendlich großen Anzahl von Beziehungen und Verbindungen, die Texte oder Teile von Texten untereinander haben können (intertextualität), wird zunächst herausgearbeitet, daß die Parodie diejenige literarische Form ist, in der sich Intertextualität besonders deutlich manifestiert.

Der Hauptteil der Studie befaßt sich mit zwei Werken des US-amerikanischen Schriftstellers Robert Coover (Pinocchio in Venice und A Night at the Movies Or, You Must Remember This) und analysiert unter dem Aspekt der Intertextualität bzw. dem der Verquickung von Literatur und Film (Intermedialität) in großer Detailgenauigkeit die unterschiedlichen kompositorischen Methoden und Verfahren Coovers. Den Abschluß der Studie bildet eine Analyse der von der amerikanischen Autorin Kathy Acker verfaßten Kurzgeschichte Florida, in der neben der Intermedialität weitere Aspekte des postmodernen Erzählens, die unter dem Schlagwort „Subversion von männlichen Texten“ zusammengefaßt werden können, untersucht und dargestellt werden.

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