Which term best describes a literary tendency that uses metafiction, intertextuality, and unreliable narrators?

Study for the Chronological Movements in American Literature Test. Explore key literary developments with multiple-choice questions, flashcards, and detailed hints. Get ready for your exam!

Postmodernism embraces self-referential techniques that call attention to the act of storytelling itself. Metafiction consciously blurs fiction and reality, intertextuality embeds references to other works within the text, and unreliable narrators undermine the assumed objectivity of narration. Together, these devices reflect postmodern playfulness and skepticism about universal meanings, making this term the best fit for a literary tendency built on those methods.

Romanticism centers on intense emotion, individual imagination, and a reverence for nature, not the experimental storytelling methods described. Realism aims for faithful depiction of everyday life and social conditions, emphasizing verisimilitude rather than metafictional awareness. Naturalism extends realism with a focus on determinism and environmental forces shaping characters, rather than self-conscious narrative techniques.