后现代主义是当代美英等国某些理论批评家用来概括五六十年代以来某些文学、文化现象的词语。它所包含的具体内容和意义目前还有很多争议。一般地说,它是指与二十年代以艾略特和乔伊斯为代表的正统现代主义有明显不同的一些文学现象的。例如在美国诗歌领域,五十年代以来以威廉斯为代表的、强调用美国口语抒写本地经验和重视即兴创作的直露的诗风,与二十年代艾略特那种依靠象征手段、广征博引的隐晦的诗风是不同的;美法两国的新小说也与乔伊斯、伍尔夫的很不相同;注意文学与外界联系的“上下文批评”(Contextual Criticism)与把作品视为绝缘体的新批评也颇不一样。由于各个批评家所注意的现象不同,他 Postmodernism is a term used by some contemporary theoretical critics in the United States and Britain to sum up certain literary and cultural phenomena since the 1950s and 1960s. It contains the specific content and meaning there are still many controversies. In general, it refers to some literary phenomena that are significantly different from orthodox modernism represented by Eliot and Joyce in the 1920s. For example, in the field of American poetry, represented by Williams since the 1950s, the straightforward poetic style that emphasizes the use of American spoken language to express local experience and emphasis on improvisation is similar to that of Eliot’s method of relying on symbols in the 1920s. The obscure poetic style is different; the new novels of the United States and France are also very different from Joyce and Woolf; the “contextual criticism” that links the literature with the outside world and the work which regards the work as the insulator The new criticism is quite different. Because of the different phenomenon that every critic pays attention to, he