Syntax of Shadows of the Unwritten Text in Postmodern Narratives.
DOI:
https://doi.org/10.32792/tqartj.v51i6.851Keywords:
Reader-Response Theory, Deconstruction, Intertextuality, The Handmaid’s Tale, Texts for Nothing, White Noise,Abstract
Using three main theoretical frameworks, this essay investigates the postmodern literature's instability of meaning and diversity of interpretation: Deconstruction, Intertextuality, and Reader-Response Theory. With an emphasis on Margaret Atwood's The Handmaid's Tale, Samuel Beckett's Texts for Nothing, and Don DeLillo's White Noise, this study explores the interaction of Reader-Response Theory, Wolfgang Iser's idea of the "implied reader," the research looks at how Beckett's Texts for Nothing emphasizes textual silences and gaps, encouraging readers to actively contribute to meaning-making, Margaret Atwood's The Handmaid's Tale is examined using Jacques Derrida's deconstructive method, which reveals meaning as essentially erratic and postponed while also upholding and undermining patriarchal and ideological discourses, last but not least, intertextual analysis, which draws inspiration from Mikhail Bakhtin, Roland Barthes, and Julia Kristeva, shows how Don DeLillo's White Noise enacts the postmodern state of textual plurality by incorporating institutional language, cultural slogans, and media fragments into its story.
By emphasizing the reader's active involvement, Reader-Response Theory shows how Beckett's minimalist prose's indeterminacy and textual gaps force readers to co-create meaning. By revealing the underlying inconsistencies in Atwood's dystopian rhetoric, deconstruction shows how language simultaneously creates and undermines power structures. By using DeLillo's narrative collage of media pieces, academic jargon, and historical allusions blurs the line between original invention and cultural quotation, as demonstrated by intertextuality.
By combining these viewpoints, the research makes the case that postmodern literature encourages readers to accept ambiguity, fragmentation, and multiplicity while resisting closure. Moreover, these ideas emphasize the postmodern decentering of the author, the rejection of fixed meaning, and the value placed on variety and interpretive openness. The concept emphasizes that postmodern literature recognizes meaning as a dynamic, interactive, and intertextual process and encourages readers to stay in uncertainty rather than seek conclusion.
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