William Gass's The Tunnel: The Work in Progress as Post-Modern Genre

Unsworth, John

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https://hdl.handle.net/2142/196 Copy

Description

Title

William Gass's The Tunnel: The Work in Progress as Post-Modern Genre

Author(s)

Unsworth, John

Issue Date

1992

Keyword(s)

• post-modernism
• Gass, William
• work in progress
• The Tunnel

Abstract

"In Le Postmoderne expliqué aux enfants, Jean-François Lyotard says that, like myths, the ""metanarratives"" of modernity -- the work-ethic, faith in technological progress, the Christian doctrine of salvation -- . . . have as a purpose the legitimation of social and political institutions and practices, of laws, of ethics, and of modes of thought. But in contrast to myths, they do not look to the act of an original founder for this legitimacy, but to a future yet to come -- in other words, to an Idea yet to be realized. (38, my translation) If, as Lyotard suggests, prolepsis is the characteristic mode of modern metanarrative, then in the realm of fictional narrative the work-in-progress might be regarded as a paradigmatic literary genre of modernity, since the published portions of a work in progress always imply a metanarrative -- that of the performance which has not yet taken place, the edifice which is still under construction."

Type of Resource

text

Language

en

Permalink

• http://www3.isrl.uiuc.edu/~unsworth/arizona.quarterly.48.1.html
• http://hdl.handle.net/2142/196

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