Modernism living on: periodisation and polarisation

This article is concerned with the legacy of modernism in twenty-first century literature. It asks: do contemporary experimental literatures signal a new literary epoch distinct from iterations of modernism, late modernism and postmodernism which preceded them? Or can these categories overlap in the twenty-first century novel? Tackling these questions, this article probes the critical underpinnings that structure the perceived or ignored operation of modernism in contemporary literary practice. In doing so, it subjects to scrutiny the literary critical practices of periodisation which have determined the description of twenty-first century fictional innovation as a new era of literary production (metamodernism, remodernism, post-postmodernism, postfiction). In turn, it indicates a frame of continuity and divergence that caters for the relations between the forms of modernism that have appeared over the last century, as well as the forms of modernism that will inevitably follow our current new modernisms.