Villwock

Coping with Postmodernity Villwock

Examination Thesis from the year 2008 in the subject English - Pedagogy, Didactics, Literature Studies, grade: 1,3, University of Cologne (Englisches Seminar), language: English, comment: How do postmodern men and women deal with their complex situation? Which factors contribute to make the individual feel its impact? What effects does the disorientation have on an individual and what can be done to regain orientation? The Canadian author Douglas Coupland in a large number of his fictional writings has made an attempt to address these fundamental issues. This paper will examine the construction of Disorientation and Reorientation in Coupland's fiction in the light of postmodern theory. , abstract: In the following chapter of this paper, an outline of the present ontological crisis in terms of Lyotard's 'postmodern condition' will be given. Throughout the discussion of Coupland's fiction, this concept will be relevant for its influence on the characters' thoughts and emotions. Furthermore, the chapter will analyze the importance and self-referentiality of narrative structures in Coupland's work. The characters in Coupland's novels often come up with a plentitude of more or less successful strategies in order to deal with the semantic void they experience. For this chapter, material will be presented predominantly from the novels All Families are Psychotic, Generation X and Microserfs. The third chapter will focus on the presentation of working life in Coupland's prose. His novels reveal that work today has lost its former function as a source of orientation. In this analysis, the concept of alienation as introduced by Karl Marx will be used in order to grasp the nature of the conflict that the characters experience in their working lives in Coupland's novels. The chapter will focus on the presentation of working life in Generation X, Microserfs and Shampoo Planet. A fourth chapter will introduce yet a further source of disorientation - the hyperreality constituted b