Menu
Home
People
Places
Arts
History
Plants & Animals
Science
Life & Culture
Technology
Reference.org
Literary fragment
open-in-new
<p>A literary fragment is a piece of text that may be part of a larger work, or that employs a 'fragmentary' form characterised by physical features such as short paragraphs or sentences separated by white space, and thematic features such as discontinuity, ambivalence, ambiguity, or lack of a traditional narrative structure. </p><p>While it is difficult to classify literary fragments, a number of critics agree on a basic taxonomy of two types of fragment: those who intentionally use fragmentation as a form in their writing, and those that are fragmented because they are incomplete or because parts have been lost over time. </p><p>As a form, the literary fragment has been employed during the Romantic, Modernist, Postmodern and Contemporary literary periods as a way to reckon with the challenges of modernity. </p>