The Postmodernist Aesthetic Characteristics In Kurt Vonnegut's Slaughterhouse Five

As an important part of postmodernism and an important aesthetic trend in modern Western world, postmodernist aesthetics is expressed in many postmodernist literary works. This thesis explores the main postmodernist aesthetic characteristics expressed in Kurt Vonnegut's Slaughterhouse Five, which is considered as one of the masterpieces of postmodernism.The thesis includes five chapters. Chapter one begins with a brief introduction of postmodernist aesthetics. In the 1960s, postmodernist aesthetics got on the historical stage in the status of a negator to the Western traditional aesthetics, and totally subverted traditional aesthetics. Chapter two elaborates the main postmodernist aesthetic characteristics in Slaughterhouse Five from two aspects: black humor and depthlessness. Black humor is one of the most important aesthetic characteristics in Slaughterhouse Five, and it mainly has three ways of expression: 1.narrating a tragedy in the form of a comedy; 2.depicting a group of antiheroes to replace traditional heroes; 3.employing anti-narrative. Another important postmodernist aesthetic characteristic in Slaughterhouse Five is depthlessness. Chapter Three is the Conclusion.Through the analysis of the two aspects of postmodernist aesthetic characteristics expressed in Slaughterhouse Five, we can conclude that the novel shows a strong rebellion against the traditional aesthetic values.The results of the present thesis not only expand the study of the postmodernist aspects in Slaughterhouse Five, but also make the reader...