ABSTRACT Title of Document: BRITISH MODERNIST ... - DRUM

order to clarify how postmodernism is different from and develops out of modernism
in the context of “literary-historical change” (7). That is, McHale distinguishes
modernism and postmodernism on a formal level while grounding that formal
definition in the historical development of both styles. McHale’s distinction between
modernism and postmodernism is thus both historically grounded and applicable to
texts outside the primary geographical and temporal limitations of these movements.
The ability to distinguish between modernism and postmodernism as distinct
movements with a definition that nevertheless can be applied to periods and
geographies outside of the original historical context, I will argue, remains highly
relevant to modernist studies. Second, McHale’s definition distinguishes the poetics
of modernist fiction from popular and traditional fictions originating from the same
time and place—even those with similar thematic concerns. This remains highly
relevant as modernist studies attempts to distinguish between any text produced under
the conditions of modernity and a specifically modernist text. Finally, in order to
provide a coherent account of postmodernism’s development out of modernism,
McHale’s definition of modernism synthesizes common stylistic and thematic
elements of modernist fiction under a single coherent concept, the epistemological
dominant. McHale contrasts his synthesizing use of the dominant with “catalogues,”
lists of stylistic or thematic features of a text (McHale 7). Even for critics and
theorists who reject definitions of modernism that are rooted in the formal features
common to canonical Anglo-American modernist texts, McHale’s definition provides
a systematic account of the formal properties of modernist fiction to which different
definitions of modernism—or different modernisms—can be more clearly contrasted.
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