ABSTRACT
This chapter introduces and elucidates the concept of postmodernism, showing how contemporary fictional strategies relate to a broader context of contemporary thinking and culture. It explores the fruitful frictions which postmodern fiction creates. There is friction, for example, between sustaining narrative momentum and breaking it up, between projecting character and rethinking it in less realist ways. Such frictions are also cultural: postmodernist fiction sometimes explores versions of history which are in conflict with official accounts or constructs new worlds which exist in a state of tension with our own. Postmodern writers have often questioned the significance of plot. They have not totally jettisoned it, nor, even if desired, is it very easy to do so entirely, since any sequence of events can start to acquire some of the features of a plot. Broadening the concept of plot does not mean losing interest in structure or shaping the story.
