ABSTRACT
Hassan created a chart with contrasting terms to distinguish modernism from postmodernism. Several of the features or concepts associated with postmodernism are applicable to discussions about postmodern picturebooks: play, chance, anarchy, text/intertext, process/performance/happening, participation, combination, scriptable (writerly), and indeterminacy (99-100). Lewis also identifi ed several key features that characterize living in the postmodern world: indeterminacy, fragmentation, decanonization, irony, hybridization, and performance and participation (88-91). Grieve wrote that, “ontological plurality or instability is the governing dynamic of postmodernism” (15). Similarly, Coles and Hall stated that one undisputed feature of postmodernism is its “rejection of unity, homogeneity, totality and closure” (114). Consistent with the spirit or tendency of postmodernism itself, many of the features identifi ed above are synergistic and interrelated in nature.
