Linda Hutcheon’s book, The Canadian Postmodern: A Study of Contemporary English-Canadian Fiction, introduced readers and critics to the concept of historiographic metafiction (or at least gave the concept a name). The concept, and to a lesser extent, the book, has been very helpful in terms of my own work as a critic, but I can’t help but think that Hutcheon’s major talent lies in stating the obvious. And as many of her comments stem from her readings of postmodern writers and critics, I can’t help but think that many of these people either grossly underestimate pre-modern literature, or have never read any of it.
From the preface to Hutcheon’s book:
As a cultural practice that has actually been defined, in part, by the impact of feminism, postmodernism is of particular interest to me as a woman too. As both a reader and teacher I have been influenced by what feminist theorists have argued about the particularities of en-gendering in education. Certainly I no longer read books the way I once did: that eternal universal Truth I was taught to find has turned out to be constructed, not found—and anything but eternal and universal. Truth has been replaced by truths, uncapitalized and in the plural.
No kidding, Linda. She then goes on to describe the techniques of postmodernism (fragmentation, shifting narrative voice and perspective, irony, parody) as though Chaucer didn’t use all those techniques (he did). Writers have always known what Hutcheon claims they are just now discovering, and they have always played with it. Critics are the ones who are just now discovering these things. The cultural movement we call postmodernism is not new, and it is certainly not different. It is simply the status quo dissected and magnified.
