Egan’s A Visit from the Goon Squad as a Metamodernist Postironic Bildungsroman

The ۲۱st-century literature has experienced a shift in taste and methods of expression of ideas, as reflected in Metamodernism, introduced by Robin van den Akker and Timotheus Vermeulen to explore this shift in literary appeal. Although metamodernism is an approach in its naissance, it has drawn many twenty-first-century literary works and theorists toward itself due to its ability to connect with the contemporary audience through certain features of its artworks which have proven more incongruent with contemporary socio-cultural issues. These features are often an adjusted form of former traits used in modernism and postmodernism which have been modified to fit contemporary needs and tastes. One of the main elements undergoing change is “irony”, a trait dominating the postmodern era. Metamodernism investigates the changes that took place in ۲۱st-century’s “affect”, resulting in the literature and art leaning back toward sincerity. In order to explain a wave of new tendencies, Lee Konstantinou introduces “postironic bildungsroman” as a new strategy used in metamodern fictions. Looking at Jennifer Egan’s A Visit from the Goon Squad as a novel written in the early ۲۱st-century, various metamodern traits and tactics can be traced in it. This paper seeks to highlight Egan’s novel as a postironic bildungsroman, by proving that numerous chapters of the novel describe the rise and fall of characters in a wave of incline and decline of irony and its interrelated connection to sincerity as they are perceived in the contemporary era.

کلیدواژه ها:

A Visit from the Goon Squad ، Jennifer Egan ، Metamodernism ، Postironic Bildungsroman