Exploring Metamodern Sincerity: Postirony and Relational Affect in Sally Rooney’s Beautiful World, Where Are You?
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2025-02-10
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en
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Recent developments in various spheres of the arts have visualised the rise of Metamodernism. Perceived as an advancement to both Modernism and Postmodernism, Metamodernism seeks a new approach to an ever-changing world in crisis. This thesis sets out to analyse the manifestations of Metamodernism in contemporary literature, through the case study Beautiful World, Where Are You? by Sally Rooney.
Despite extensive literature on the theoretical underpinnings of the Metamodern structure of feeling, only a few case studies investigate this sensibility through the analysis of recent literary publications. This thesis seeks to address precisely this research gap by analysing the characters’ relationships in Beautiful World, Where Are You? using the frameworks of Postirony and relational affect to visualize new manifestations of sincerity in Metamodern works of fiction.
This thesis draws on the method of close reading to link Rooney’s novel to the theoretical frameworks of Postirony, relational affect, and Cruel Optimism. Eventually, it will conclude that Beautiful World, Where Are You? employs new modes of sincerity and relationality to explore complex and contradictory relationships to the characters’ environment in a late capitalist world.
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