Tim Lanzendörfer
- Published in print:
- 2018
- Published Online:
- September 2019
- ISBN:
- 9781496819062
- eISBN:
- 9781496819109
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- University Press of Mississippi
- DOI:
- 10.14325/mississippi/9781496819062.003.0005
- Subject:
- Literature, 20th-century and Contemporary Literature
This chapter discusses Seth Grahame-Smith’s Pride and Prejudice and Zombies and its prequels. It suggests that critical disdain of mashup fiction to the contrary, the three novels deserve close ...
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This chapter discusses Seth Grahame-Smith’s Pride and Prejudice and Zombies and its prequels. It suggests that critical disdain of mashup fiction to the contrary, the three novels deserve close attention to the things they do, and to foreground their work as parody. In engaging their original text’s complicated relation to race, class, and gender issues, they act directly on Jane Austen’s fiction; but at the same time, they also foreground the limits of the contemporary engagement with Austen. What the novels do is reflect simultaneously on the historical Austen text, the reception of Austen, and the contemporary moment’s systemic exclusions and violences.Less
This chapter discusses Seth Grahame-Smith’s Pride and Prejudice and Zombies and its prequels. It suggests that critical disdain of mashup fiction to the contrary, the three novels deserve close attention to the things they do, and to foreground their work as parody. In engaging their original text’s complicated relation to race, class, and gender issues, they act directly on Jane Austen’s fiction; but at the same time, they also foreground the limits of the contemporary engagement with Austen. What the novels do is reflect simultaneously on the historical Austen text, the reception of Austen, and the contemporary moment’s systemic exclusions and violences.
Margo Collins and Elson Bond
- Published in print:
- 2011
- Published Online:
- January 2012
- ISBN:
- 9780823234462
- eISBN:
- 9780823241255
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Fordham University Press
- DOI:
- 10.5422/fordham/9780823234462.003.0013
- Subject:
- Literature, Mythology and Folklore
This chapter probes the depiction of zombies in such contemporary novels as World War Z, Zombie Haiku, and the revisionist classic Pride and Prejudice and Zombies. Authors Margo Collins and Elson ...
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This chapter probes the depiction of zombies in such contemporary novels as World War Z, Zombie Haiku, and the revisionist classic Pride and Prejudice and Zombies. Authors Margo Collins and Elson Bond argue that the zombie is uniquely appealing to today's technologically savvy, fast-paced generation and, as such, can serve as a mirror for some of Generation Y's values and notions of identity. New millennium zombie-ism demonstrates an apparent divergence into what initially appears to be two distinct categories: zombie-as-comedy and zombie-as-threat, but as the chapter argues, time and again those two categories overlap in intriguing and symbolic ways. Ultimately, depictions of both kinds of zombies come to function as monstrous placeholders for potentially dangerous human interactions in an anomic society. Accustomed to instant communication with virtual strangers, insulated from the natural world and dependent on fragile transportation, communication, and power networks, millennial audiences have good reason to fear the chaotic anonymity of zombies.Less
This chapter probes the depiction of zombies in such contemporary novels as World War Z, Zombie Haiku, and the revisionist classic Pride and Prejudice and Zombies. Authors Margo Collins and Elson Bond argue that the zombie is uniquely appealing to today's technologically savvy, fast-paced generation and, as such, can serve as a mirror for some of Generation Y's values and notions of identity. New millennium zombie-ism demonstrates an apparent divergence into what initially appears to be two distinct categories: zombie-as-comedy and zombie-as-threat, but as the chapter argues, time and again those two categories overlap in intriguing and symbolic ways. Ultimately, depictions of both kinds of zombies come to function as monstrous placeholders for potentially dangerous human interactions in an anomic society. Accustomed to instant communication with virtual strangers, insulated from the natural world and dependent on fragile transportation, communication, and power networks, millennial audiences have good reason to fear the chaotic anonymity of zombies.
