Preface 1
Directions for Teaching 1
The Abbreviations of the Works'Titles 1
Chapter 1 The Aesthetic Dimensions of Postmodernist Fiction 1
A．The Core Concepts of Postmodernist Thought 1
B．The Evolvement of Fiction:Realism→Modernism→Postmodemism 4
C．The Aesthetic Dimensions of Postmodernist Fiction 8
1．Metafiction 8
2．Anti-genre 18
3．Language Games and the Reader's Interpretation 21
4．Tendency towards Popularization 25
5．Parody,Collage,Montage,Black Humor,and Labyrinth 27
6．Language Subject,Fragmented Narrative,Shifting Signifiers,and Writing Zero 38
Chapter 2 The Deconstructive and Reconstructive Tendencies of Postmodernism in Snow White 53
A．The Deconstructive Tendency of Postmodernism 55
1．Indeterminacy 55
2．Fragmentation 57
3．Decanonization 60
4．Selflessness and Depthlessness 64
5．The Unpresentable and the Unrepresentable 70
B．The Reconstructive Tendency of Postmodernism 72
1．Irony 72
2．Hybridization 75
3．Carnivalization 77
4．Performance and Participation 79
5．Constructionism 81
6．Immanence 82
Chapter 3 The Absurd Social Reality and the Grotesque Fictional World in Catch-22 and Closing Time 90
A．The Absurd Social Reality 90
1．The Catch-22 in the 1960s 90
2．The Catch-22 in the 1990s 95
B．The Grotesque Fictional World 99
1．Black Humor 100
2．Language Games 106
3．The Tendency towards Popularization 112
Chapter 4 The Nonlinear Narrative,the Death of the Author,and Black Humor in Slaughterhouse-Five 117
A．The Combination of the Significant Theme and the Innovative Form 119
B．The Nonlinear Narrative 124
1．Combining History with Imagination 124
2．Combining Reality with Fantasy 129
3．Combining the Diachronic with the Simultaneous 133
C．The Death of the Author 138
D．Black Humor 146
Chapter 5 The Labyrinth Composed of Entropy,Polysemy and Indeterminacy in The Crying of Lot 49 152
A．Entropy 155
1．Demon and Oedipa 156
2．Entropy and the Society 160
3．Entropy and Information 164
B．Polysemy 170
C．Indeterminacy 174
Chapter 6 The Comic Nightmare and the Dishevelled Structure in Second Skin 182
A．The Comic Nightmare 184
1．The Comic Elements 185
2．The Nightmarish Elements 205
B．The Dishevelled Structure 211
1．The Unsymmetrical Space 212
2．The Discontinuous Time 214
3．The Blanks 218
C．Metafiction 220
Chapter 7 The Transcendental Realities and the Unusual Techniques in Pale Fire 227
A．The Transcendental Realities 229
1．The Subjective Reality 230
2．The Imaginative Reality 231
3．The Consciousness of Death 232
4．Solitude 234
5．Alienation 236
B．The Unusual Techniques 240
1．Intertextuality 242
2．Parody 251
3．A Game of Worlds 254
Chapter 8 The Parody of Philosophical Texts and Metafiction in The End of the Road 268
A．The Parody of Philosophical Texts 269
1．The Parody of Existentialism 270
2．The Parody of Freudianism 281
B．Metafiction 292
Chapter 9 The Literary Code of Postmodernism in The Public Burning 301
A．What Is a Literary Code? 302
B．The Semantic Characteristics of the Literary Code of Postmodernism 305
1．The Prominent and Very Frequently Used Lexemes 305
2．The Prominent Semantic Fields 306
C．The Syntactic Characteristics of the Literary Code of Postmodernism 311
1．The Characteristics of the Sentence Structures 312
2．The Characteristics of the Text Structures 317
Glossary 336
Bibliography 342
The Readings for the Study of American Postmodernist Fiction 357
Postscript 361