Reading Donald Barthelme’s short story “The Glass Mountain” is a most puzzling and mind-boggling experience for anybody who has not done research on the author and the background of his fiction. A variety of astonishing ideas and concepts in terms of structure and content are present in the short story and raise questions on meaning, form or intention of the story. The predominant conventions of narrative order, closure and mimetic fidelity are questioned and challenged by an entirely new approach to storytelling in America.
The following research paper will first try to raise awareness of the time and present some basic ideas of postmodernist literature. It will then pay closer attention to Barthelme’s “The Glass Mountain” and try to give answers to questions which presumably every reader will ask. The 4th chapter of this paper is dedicated to the role of symbols and the differences between the world as the reader sees it and the way the narrator perceives it.
Inhaltsverzeichnis (Table of Contents)
- Introduction
- About Donald Barthelme and “The Glass Mountain”: Representatives of Postmodernism
- Questions on “The Glass Mountain”: Disorientation Attributable to Fragmentation
- The Gap between Conventional Reality and the Constructed World: Language and Symbols Split and Unite
- Conclusion
Zielsetzung und Themenschwerpunkte (Objectives and Key Themes)
This research paper examines Donald Barthelme's short story "The Glass Mountain" as an exemplary work of postmodernist literature. It aims to analyze the story's unique approach to narrative, language, and meaning, focusing on the way Barthelme disrupts conventional expectations and challenges traditional notions of reality. Key themes explored include: * **Postmodernist aesthetics and the questioning of traditional narrative conventions:** The paper analyzes how Barthelme challenges linear storytelling, mimetic fidelity, and the traditional relationship between author and reader. * **The role of language and symbols in creating fragmented and ambiguous meaning:** The study explores how Barthelme utilizes language to deconstruct and reconstruct reality, playing with symbols and metaphors in a way that creates multiple interpretations and disorients the reader. * **The relationship between the constructed world of the story and the reader's perception of reality:** The paper examines how Barthelme blurs the lines between fiction and reality, forcing the reader to confront the subjective nature of perception and the limitations of language in representing the world. * **The use of absurdity and fragmentation to disrupt conventional expectations and challenge established meanings:** The study analyzes how Barthelme's narrative techniques, including the fragmented structure and the juxtaposition of seemingly disparate elements, contribute to the story's unsettling and thought-provoking nature.Zusammenfassung der Kapitel (Chapter Summaries)
- Introduction: This chapter introduces Donald Barthelme's "The Glass Mountain" and outlines the paper's objective to analyze the story's postmodernist approach to narrative and meaning. The introduction highlights the story's challenging and unconventional nature.
- About Donald Barthelme and “The Glass Mountain”: Representatives of Postmodernism: This chapter explores the emergence of postmodernism in literature, highlighting key features of the movement and situating Barthelme within this context. The chapter analyzes how Barthelme's "The Glass Mountain" embodies postmodernist aesthetics and challenges traditional narrative conventions.
- Questions on “The Glass Mountain”: Disorientation Attributable to Fragmentation: This chapter delves into the story's fragmented structure and the questions it raises for the reader. The chapter examines how Barthelme uses fragmentation to create a sense of disorientation and challenge conventional notions of narrative order and closure.
Schlüsselwörter (Keywords)
This research paper explores the themes of postmodernism, narrative fragmentation, symbolic meaning, language and reality, and the subjective nature of perception. It focuses on analyzing the unique aesthetics and thought-provoking nature of Donald Barthelme's "The Glass Mountain," a short story that exemplifies postmodernist literature's challenge to traditional literary conventions and its exploration of the relationship between language, meaning, and reality.- Citar trabajo
- Tobias Reiche (Autor), 2006, Metafiction in American Short Stories - Readers' Perception of Language and Symbols in Shattered Realities., Múnich, GRIN Verlag, https://www.grin.com/document/132323
