Universes without Us: Posthuman Cosmologies in American Literature

(Paperback)

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As Matthew A. Taylor's incisive readings reveal, the heterodox cosmologies of Edgar Allan Poe, Henry Adams, Charles Chesnutt, and Zora Neale Hurston reject the anthropocentric fantasy that sees the universe as a kind of reservoir of self-realization. Taylor shows how posthumanist theory can illuminate American literary texts and how those texts might, in turn, prompt a reassessment of posthumanist theory.

Reviews

"Universes without Us provides incisive and illuminating readings of a wide range of nineteenth- and early-twentieth-century American literature. This book helps us to reconceive American literature through its compelling connections and intersections and to rethink the place of the human in American literature through its reconstruction of both pessimistic visions of a universe without us in Poe and Adams and potentially more livable posthuman existences through African-American literature."Paul Gilmore, author of The Genuine Article: Race, Mass Culture, and American Literary Manhood

Author Bio

Matthew A. Taylor is assistant professor of English and comparative literature at the University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill.