Author(ity), Rewriting, and Postmodern Realism in Alasdair Gray's Poor Things

Alasdair Gray’s novel Poor Things is a rich text as it offers a variety of readings: it can be read as a fantasy novel, a science-fiction text, a fictionalize history/historicized fiction, and an autobiography, just to name a few. However, these readings provide but a limited insight, and the richness of the text can be best understood when it is examined within the frame of postmodern realism. Postmodern realism uses certain conventions such as characterization and attention to detail, yet it is painfully aware of the limitations of such conventions. In other words, postmodern realism uses the realist conventions only to point at their problematic nature, acknowledging the inevitability of the embeddedness of these conventions within the novel genre.In this respect, this paper argues that Gray’s Poor Things uses both realist and postmodern modes of writing, and that its employ of authorial intrusions as well as its rewriting of Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein makes it one of the best examples of postmodern realism