ENGLISH POSTMODERN POETRY AND ITS LITERARY AESTHETIC CHARACTERISTICS
Keywords:
English postmodern poetry; postmodern mythology; intertextuality; fragmentation; grand narratives; polyvocality; counter-myth; collective unconscious; literary aesthetics; post-pastoral.Abstract
This research explores English postmodern poetry and its key literary-aesthetic features, focusing specifically on the evolution and reinterpretation of mythology. It examines postmodern poetry as a further development of modernist experimentation and a critique of modernism’s faith in aesthetic authority, coherent meaning, elite culture, and the poet’s power to impose order on cultural and social disarray. The research highlights key characteristics of English postmodern poetry, such as skepticism towards grand narratives, fragmentation, collage, pastiche, intertextuality, reflexivity, metafictional self-awareness, polyvocality, revision, counter-myth, and the challenge to cultural universals.
Significant focus is given to the evolving role of myth. In contrast to traditional and modernist approaches that view myth as a fixed or cohesive structure, postmodern poetry considers myth as diverse, changeable, debatable, and imbued with political significance. Poets reimagine classical, biblical, national, folkloric, and cultural stories from different viewpoints, often questioning traditional portrayals of gender, identity, history, power, and authority. The research additionally examines the connection between mythology and psychoanalytic as well as structuralist theories, emphasizing Carl Jung's notion of the collective unconscious and the concept of myth as a "shared dream of the community," in conjunction with the theories linked to Freud, Lévi-Strauss, and Nietzsche.
A crucial aspect of the research is the portrayal of nature and ecology in postmodern poetry. The shift from pastoral traditions to post-pastoral and eco-aware forms illustrates an increasing recognition of ecological degradation, industrial development, and the evolving connection between human and nonhuman realms. The research contends that postmodern poetic reinterpretations of myth generate alternative meanings and offer chances to challenge prevailing cultural narratives, established power structures, and so-called universal views of human experience.
References
Lyotard, J.-F. The Postmodern Condition: A Report on Knowledge / Trans. by G. Bennington and B. Massumi – Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1984. – 144 p.
Hutcheon, L. A Poetics of Postmodernism: History, Theory, Fiction – London: Routledge, 1988. – 288 p.
Genette, G. Palimpsests: Literature in the Second Degree / Trans. by C. Newman and C. Doubinsky – Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 1997. – 508 p.
Barthes, R. Mythologies / Trans. by A. Lavers – New York: Noonday Press, 1972. – 158 p.
Rich, A. When We Dead Awaken: Writing as Re-Vision // College English. – 1972. – Vol. 34. – No. 1. – P. 18–30.
Jung, C. G. The Archetypes and the Collective Unconscious / Trans. by R. F. C. Hull – Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1969. – 451 p.
Jung, C. G. Psychology of the Unconscious: A Study of the Transformations and Symbolisms of the Libido / Trans. by B. M. Hinkle – New York: Moffat, Yard and Company, 1916. – 555 p.
Salas, A. M. Race, Human Empathy, and Negative Capability: The Poetry of Yusef Komunyakaa // College Literature. – 2003. – Vol. 30. – No. 4. – P. 32–53.
Gifford, T. Pastoral – London: Routledge, 1999. – 186 p.
Glotfelty, C., Fromm, H. (eds.). The Ecocriticism Reader: Landmarks in Literary Ecology – Athens: University of Georgia Press, 1996. – 415 p.
