The article examines the main indicators of affect in the literature of metamodernism, as well as the signs of metamodernism itself in the literature of the last three decades. It is concluded that the emphatic differences between the poetics of metamodernism and the literature of postmodernism are: representation of empathy, sincerity, special “pragmatic romanticism”, “self-awareness”, relationality, post-irony, anti-irony and some other features of the artistic discourse of the era of the fourth stage of capitalism.