Persepolis_post_modern_novel_memoir

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• Leerjaar 5

Persepolis a postmodern semi-fiction

What makes Persepolis a Postmodern fiction? 

Marjane Satrapi's Persepolis is one of the most palatable examples of a postmodern genre, a semi-autobiographical novel in form of a comic book which tells the history of Iran from Marjane's point of view.  Persepolis is a postmodern graphic novel that blurs the boundaries between popular culture and high art by mixing political history and autobiography in a comic-book version. Marjane uses the medium of a graphic novel to share her own story. 

Throughout the story the reader watches Marjane's highs (love, family, and friends) and lows (break ups, deaths, fears) and Satrapi continuously narrates how her past, her life through the Iranian revolution shaped the person she has become.

Persepolis can be categorized as a memoir as it focuses on a series of related events, includes a sense of higher emotional levels, and have descriptions of events that show they are significant. 

POSTMODERN LITERATURE

Persepolis: a postmodern fiction / memoir

Postmodern literature:

• reflects radical changes the world underwent after the end of WW 2;

• tends to conceptualize the world as being impossible to strictly define or understand;

• argues that knowledge and facts are always relative to particular situations and that it is both futile and impossible to attempt to locate any precise meaning to ideas, concepts, or events.
  

POSTMODERN LITERATURE

Postmodern

literature

Pastiche

Intertextuality

Magical realism

Reader's involvement

Temporal distortion

Deconstruction

Ambiguity

Black humour

Irony

Emphasis on subjective views

Truth is a matter of perspective

   Persepolis                                                            1 German expressionism

   Pastiche                                                               2 Persian Miniature Painting

                                                                                  3 Shadow puppetry

German Expressionism is a cultural movement that is challenging to define as it is not distinguished by a singular style or method of creation, but rather is better described by both the mindset of the artist creating the work and the generation he or she lived in. The German Expressionists were artists, writers, and thinkers who were of age in Germany prior to World War II, and lived during Wilhelm II’s reign. 

A Persian miniature  is a small Persian painting on paper, whether a book illustration or a separate work of art intended to be kept in an album of such works called a muraqqa. The techniques are broadly comparable to the Western Medieval and Byzantine traditions of miniatures in illuminated manuscripts. 

Shadow play, also known as shadow puppetry, is an ancient form of storytelling and entertainment which uses flat articulated cut-out figures (shadow puppets) which are held between a source of light and a translucent screen or scrim. ... Various effects can be achieved by moving both the puppets and the light source.

German Expressionism developed as a result of the younger generation’s reaction against the bourgeois culture of Germany during this time period.

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German Expressionism is a cultural movement that is challenging to define as it is not distinguished by a singular style or method of creation, but rather is better described by both the mindset of the artist creating the work and the generation he or she lived in. The German Expressionists were artists, writers, and thinkers who were of age in Germany prior to World War II, and lived during Wilhelm II’s reign. German Expressionism developed as a result of the younger generation’s reaction against the bourgeois culture of Germany during this time period.

Temporal distortion. Non-linear timelines. 

Temporal distortion: use of non-linear timelines and narrative techniques in a story.

In contrast to linear narratives, non-linear narratives are those in which the author has chosen to jump around in time, and the order in which events are portrayed does not correspond to the order in which things happened. These might also be referred to as disrupted or disjointed narratives.

Magical realism. Reader's involvement.

Magical realism: introduction of impossible or unrealistic events without clearly defining what is factual or what is fictional.

Reader’s involvement: often through direct address to the reader and the open acknowledgement of the fictional nature of the events being described.

Deconstruction. 

Deconstruction. Death of the author and Birth of the Reader. 

Deconstruction is a challenge to the attempt to establish any ultimate or secure meaning in a text. It is based on the premise that much of human history, in trying to understand, and then define reality has led to various forms of domination - of nature, of people of colour, of the poor, of homosexuals, etc. Like postmodernism, deconstructionism finds concrete experience more valid than abstract ideas and, therefore, refutes any attempts to produce a history, or a truth.

Breaking the fourth wall. Mixture of high & law culture. 

Breaking the fourth wall: means to break the illusion of separation between the audience and the fiction itself, either intentionally or unintentionally. Taken originally from theatre, in which the fourth wall describes the invisible "wall" that stands between the audience and the stage. 

Mixture of high and popular culture (Pulp Fiction). 

Ambiguity. Black humour. Irony.

Truth is a matter of perspective. 

Postmodernism sees history as something that was socially constructed, determined by signifying practices. Deconstruction holds that there are many truths and that there are ‘no grand narratives*’ or a single unifying ‘Truth’.

Histories are shaped by those in power, they are skewed. Postmodernism favours local narrative as alternative. The accounts of events coming from marginalised are more close to real history. In Persepolis, we see a girl Marji who actually existed in history, was marginalised by Revolution in Iran, the story coming from her is her actual experience. In this way Marji questions the established history textbooks that portray Iran or East as threat or danger in Western discourse. She gives a totally different apparent in Persepolis, that Iran is not all about fundamentalism or terrorism.

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Intertextuality

Intertextuality: acknowledgement of previous literary works with another literary work; the relationship between texts. 

' the writer is a reader of texts ... before s/he is a creator of texts, and therefore the work of art is inevitable shot through with references, quotations, and influences of every kind. ' (Frankenstein, or the Modern Prometheus)

Pastiche

Pastiche: taking of various ideas from previous writings and literary / art  styles and pasting them together to make new styles.

The  pleasingly simple, hand-drawn characters and flat abstractly patterned backgrounds show the influence of 1) German Expressionism, 2) Persian miniature painting and 3) shadow puppetry.