Literature after literature: theory and praxis of the postliterary verbal art in the 21st century

Abstract

A series of attempts has occurred since the beginning of the new century in the light of a mutant poetics of the literature, which requires an approach from perspectives different to the usual one. Such approaches break and do not come to term most of the time with the principles coming from the literary modernity and whose origin we find in Aristotelian Poetics. However, the sign of a new literary age is not only regarded from the mutant avant-garde: the narrative by Pilar Adón or Julio José Ordovás, despite of its conventional aspect, are equally examples of a new conceptual consolidation of the writing as verbal art beyond the literary idea. This new poetic concept is characterized by clearly breaking the usual poetic norm and responding to an alternative model of criticism. Therefore, the objective of this article is to highlight the main avatars and dilemmas that affect criticism today in order to analyse the drift of the theory and practice of literature in the 21st century.