ABSTRACT
In the 1990s, biofiction was legitimized by the intellectual establishment, the Pulitzer Prize committee in this instance, and became a dominant aesthetic form. Why did this happen during this particular decade? I show that the rise of postmodernism mandated a new type of literary symbol, one more anchored in the historical and the empirical. I briefly examine a development in Joyce Carol Oates’s work to illuminate the postmodern shift in the literary symbol.
