Postmodern Narrative Arts In Timequake

Kurt Vonnegut is considered as a major voice among the important postmodernist novelists in American contemporary literature. He has been lauded as one of America's most respected novelists due to his active artistic interaction with American life. Timequake, published in 1997, was claimed by Vonnegut to be his last work. In this novel, the author gives up his quest for the ultimate meaning. He neither creates the book in the light of any ideal, objective or principle nor attempts to express any distinct belief or meaning. Therefore, Timequake becomes a typical representative of postmodernist novels.In Timequake, Vonnegut adopts some typical postmodern narrative skills, which include montage, collage, parody, intrusive narrative, fragments, and metafiction etc.. The successful application of these techniques by Vonnegut in Timequake makes it a typical example of postmodern narrative. "Postmodernism" has been a very popular term in modern western society. The meaning of it has been notoriously ambiguous since its appearance in the 1960s. In literature, postmodernism has amounted to a reaction against an ordered view of the world and therefore against fixed ideas about the form and meaning of texts. Under the guidance of such thoughts, many postmodern writers try to experiment with some innovative narrative skills, which are rather different from the traditional ones, to reflect their thoughts towards reality.This thesis analyses the postmodern narrative arts of Timequake in the light of postmodern narrative theory. It consists of three chapters: Chapter One analyses the non-linear narrative art which is embodied through the application of fragmentary plot and montage. In the reading process, readers' role is changed from passive acception to active participation; Chapter Two studies the indeterminacy narrative art used in the novel. Specifically, there are three aspects of indeterminacy embodied: the indeterminacy of character images, the indeterminacy of narrative voice and the theme of indeterminacy. Chapter Three discusses the metafictional nature of the novel which can be found through the aspects of intrusive narrative, metafictional collage and historiographic metafiction.