Mash-up Novels In The Postmodern Era:a Comparative Study On Pride And Prejudice And Zombies With Pride And Prejudice

The publication of Pride and Prejudice and Zombies in2009witnesses a new trend in literature that a classical novel is mashed up with elements from the popular culture. Dozens of such novels have been made available in the book market with many more to come, the phenomenon of which has attracted quite a few criticisms online and on the newspapers, but few serious studies have been conducted so far.Labeled by the producer of Pride and Prejudice and Zombies as mash-ups, such novels, as this thesis contends, are in essence typical products of postmodernism. This thesis approaches the issue with a bottom-up method. Taking Pride and Prejudice and Zombies as an example, this thesis argues that mash-up novels interact creatively with the literary canon, which disrupt and enliven the canon within the contemporary society. The term "mash-up" is clarified against the postmodern background by comparing it with other terms concerning intertextuality in Chapter One. Chapter Two then takes on a textual comparison between Grahame-Smith’s mash-up and Austen’s canonical work in light of the play of the Austen brand, so as to illustrate the creative interaction between them two. The following two chapters conduct contextual analyses in terms of two conspicuously added elements, the power of zombies and the connection with the Orient. By examining the functions of zombies in the mash-up, Chapter Three shows how this mash-up disrupts as well as enlivens Austen’s text. The similar argument can also be found in Chapter Four with a scrutiny of the mash-up’s exhibited connection with the Orient; moreover, the limitations of the mash-up are detected that it cannot go beyond the stereotyped ideology in the American popular culture. Based on the findings from the previous chapters, the fifth chapter puts the mash-up novel back to the popular culture where it belongs, and make sense of the popularity of mash-ups in resort to the theories of postmodernism and consumer culture, especially those of the Western Marxist. The conclusion chapter summarizes the features and trends of the mash-up novels in the postmodern era in general in the hope of making contributions to the study of postmodernistic literature and sociology of culture; furthermore, it points out more topics for future studies in the relevant field.