Description
Book Synopsis Challenging the human understanding of life and death, the zombie figure represents a fragmentation of personhood. From its earliest appearances in literature, the zombie characterized a human being that was no longer an indivisible whole, embodying the ontological debate over which elements of personhood are most uniquely human.
Through its literary evolution, the zombie''s missing element gradually approached a finer definition, as narratives moved beyond highlighting metaphysically opaque concepts like soul or will. Studying over a century of American literary history, this book explores how zombies translate cultural concepts and definitions of personhood. Chapters detail how literary zombies have long presented narratives of American cultural self-examination.
Trade ReviewWith
Reading the Great American Zombie, Stone dives deep into the surprisingly complex history of zombie literature, unearthing some forgotten or overlooked texts and stories and asking us to reconsider what the 'living dead' are or can be."—Kyle Bishop, author of
The Written Dead: Essays on the Literary ZombieTable of Contents
- Table of Contents
- Acknowledgments
- A Note on Terminology viii
- Preface: I, Millennial
- Introduction: Zombie Ontology
- One. From the Islands to the States, from the Nineteenth Century to the Twentieth
- Two. Zombies in Pulp Fiction: Scary Stories to Tell Scientific Materialists
- Three. Estrangement Among the "Community of Self"
- Four. Tech Zombies: Zombified Art, Zombified Masses
- Five. Present Absence: Reality and the Future of Humanity
- Conclusion. Zombies Never Die: A Look at Some of the Most Persistent Zombies
- Chapter Notes
- Bibliography
- Index
