Frederic Jameson’s Determinism and Modern Antiheros: A Case Study of Theodore Dreiser’s Novels

Abstract

Frederic Jameson one of the greatest philosophers with so many ideas about postmodern society, determinism and social situations has a great influence on the modern and postmodern literary criticism which have mingled and mixed with social, psychological, and economic views. The theme of determinism and existence of antihero are not separable from socialistic, Marxist ,postmodern literary criticism since these elements are the main structures of modern and postmodern literatures which their heroes are adoptable with Aristotelian views about traditional and cliché heroes such as Oedipus ,Ulysses and others. The characters of T. Dreiser’s masterpieces (An American Tragedy and Sister Carrie) can be analyzed for showing that these characters in modern literature do not follow Aristotelian patterns and frameworks about traditional and cliché heroes and they are dominated and social, psychological, economical and ethical restrictions and can be called gods’ modern puppets