Modernism, postmodernism, poststructuralism, postcolonialism and posthumanism . . . and don’t let me forget neorealism and narratology.
Yes, I’m doing Theory of Writing at uni.
The upside of all these isms is that I have to understand the texts on the subject reading list.
Virgina Woolf, James Joyce (never got him, maybe this time I will), Helen Garner (my hot favourite), Flaubert’s Madame Bovary (someone strangle Emma please), Ted Hughes and Sylvia Plath, Edgar Allan Poe, Kurt Vonnegut (weird, weird but wonderful) and Eva Homung with her strangely poignant Dog Boy, about a boy living with wild dogs.
As long as the theory doesn’t get in the way of a good story.
I know at uni, at least, we need to understand where the literature fits in the grand scheme of things. We learn to label stories and see how they are a reflection of the times in which they were written.
A good story is a good story – whether it was written yesterday or in another century.
Words travel through time and while we study the influence of literature at universities the reason these words of the authors I mentioned have survived is because they mean something to us even now- despite what ism they fall under.
