Literature Glossary
Don’t be an oxymoron. Know your literary terms.
Over 200 literary terms, Shmooped to perfection.
Avant-garde
Definition:
You know that challenge in Project Runway where the designers are given a basketful of playing cards and gummy worms and told to make an evening gown in forty-five minutes?
Totally avant-garde.
And here's why: Avant-garde refers to works that are experimental and push boundaries. Avant-garde writers and artists reject mainstream culture and conventions; they make like Fleetwood Mac and go their own way. For them, innovation and thinking differently are the fastest routes to social change and making a statement.
As totally radical as the avant-garde is, it's still a pretty broad term. Scores of literary techniques, genres, and movements all fall under its inventive umbrella. We're talking about techniques like concrete and flarf poetry, genres like magical realism and bizarro fiction, and movements like the Beats and the Theater of the Absurd.
Ready to dip your toes into the wide world of the avant-garde? Then put on your gummy worm dress and try these tomes on, Shmooper:
- Ulysses by James Joyce
- One Hundred Years of Solitude by Gabriel Garcia Marquez
- If on winter's night a traveler by Italo Calvino