Beginning with an analysis of Northrop Frye’s concept of modal progression (i.e.,
the cycle from myth to irony—and back again) and an application of modal theory to
an analysis of postmodern narrative forms, the need to revise Frye’s concept of
modal progression becomes apparent. Rather than following the cyclical pattern Frye
proposes, the course of modal progression appears to be fixed to an axis of
experience: a certain normative threshold which describes the narrator’s and/or the
narrative protagonist’s power of action relative to an assumed neutral audience. How
the narrative depiction of the narrator and/or the fictional protagonist relates to this
threshold determines the characteristics of the literary mode. As argued in this
dissertation, the increase in the hero’s power of action (typical of late modern and
postmodern literature) does not necessarily indicate an abrupt return to the mythic
mode (as predicted by Frye). Instead, what is seen to emerge is a decidedly advanced
species of narrative irony, or, “high irony” that, while maintaining its distinctly
ironic qualities, displays a remarkable tendency to disassemble/reassemble precedent
narrative forms (e.g., myth, nonfiction, realistic fiction) into a self-reflexive, highly
metafictional form of parody. As the absurd, parodic chaos of the high ironic mode
shares several significant traits with both myth and nonfiction, these overlapping,
parodic relationships are of great literary importance and theoretical interest. These
modal connections and disconnections are what this dissertation attempts to explore
and clarify. To that end, this dissertation charts the various ways that myth and
nonfictional forms have been put to parodic use in the high ironic metafictions of
Donald Barthelme, Robert Coover and Ishmael Reed, three writers whose seminal
mid-20th century works did much to shape and direct the course of contemporary
American literature. Of special emphasis in this study is the American postmodern
preoccupation with revision and the politics of literary subversion that attends this
revisionary impulse. The final hypothesis reached by this dissertation is that the
literary repercussions of these mid-20th century excursions into ironic, metafictional
abstraction have not led to a return to myth, but rather to a discernable tendency
among 21st century American writers to return to previously eschewed forms of nonironic
narrative. This trajectory thus marks a movement away from forms of
narrative irony (as well as away from the mode of myth) and an emerging tendency
towards more referential, less fantastic forms of narrative fiction