Postmodernist Poetics in Jeanette Winterson’s Sexing the Cherry
Pooja Sancheti
Publication: Volume 1 Issue 4
Abstract
This paper explores some of the key features of postmodernism, exemplified in how truth, history, and realism are treated within its contexts. These are connected to integral aspects of the postmodernist ethos such as deconstruction of binaries or dichotomies, disregard for metanarratives, and discursive realities, the theoretical underpinnings for much of postmodernist thought. The paper also highlights certain elements of postmodernist fiction such as self-reflexivity, intertextuality, pastiche, and historiographic metafiction, and these are then discussed extensively through a close analysis of Jeanette Winterson’s novel Sexing the Cherry (published in 1989).
Keywords: Sexing the Cherry, postmodernism, hybridity, dichotomy, construct, pastiche, truth, history, realism.
Pooja Sancheti (pooja.sancheti@gmail.com) is a faculty member in the Humanities and Social Sciences (HSS) Programme at the Indian Institute of Science Education and Research (IISER), Pune. She was awarded her PhD in English Literature from The English and Foreign Languages University (EFLU; formerly CIEFL) in 2014. Her research interests include Postmodern Fiction, Magical Realism, Myth, Postmodernism, Indian Writing in English and Narrative Theories.