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Book Synopsis

How to Do Things with Dead People studies human contrivances for representing and relating to the dead. Alice Dailey takes as her principal objects of inquiry Shakespeare''s English history plays, describing them as reproductive mechanisms by which living replicas of dead historical figures are regenerated in the present and re-killed. Considering the plays in these terms exposes their affinity with a transhistorical array of technologies for producing, reproducing, and interacting with dead thingstechnologies such as literary doppelgängers, photography, ventriloquist puppetry, X-ray imaging, glitch art, capital punishment machines, and cloning.

By situating Shakespeare''s historical drama in this intermedial conversation, Dailey challenges conventional assumptions about what constitutes the context of a work of art and contests foundational models of linear temporality that inform long-standing conceptions of historical periodization and teleological ord

How to Do Things with Dead People

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    A Paperback by Alice Dailey

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      Book details

      Publisher Cornell University Press
      Published 4/15/2024
      ISBN-13 9781501775895
      978-1501775895
      ISBN-10 1501775898
      Also in:
      ELT & Literary Studies Literary studies: plays and playwrights

      Description

      Book Synopsis

      How to Do Things with Dead People studies human contrivances for representing and relating to the dead. Alice Dailey takes as her principal objects of inquiry Shakespeare''s English history plays, describing them as reproductive mechanisms by which living replicas of dead historical figures are regenerated in the present and re-killed. Considering the plays in these terms exposes their affinity with a transhistorical array of technologies for producing, reproducing, and interacting with dead thingstechnologies such as literary doppelgängers, photography, ventriloquist puppetry, X-ray imaging, glitch art, capital punishment machines, and cloning.

      By situating Shakespeare''s historical drama in this intermedial conversation, Dailey challenges conventional assumptions about what constitutes the context of a work of art and contests foundational models of linear temporality that inform long-standing conceptions of historical periodization and teleological ord

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