Jane Austen and the phenomenon of zombie-authorship in Pride and Prejudice and Zombies

Abstract

Pride and Prejudice and Zombies, by Jane Austen and Seth Grahame-Smith, is a literary mashup, the fragmentation procedure of a classic work to graft elements of contemporary pop culture. One of the main questions raised by the novel involves the game of palimpsest inherent to its authorship, since the work was produced through the writing of a dead author (Austen) and a living author (Grahame-Smith). However, it should be noted that the English novelist of the regency period had already experienced intricate dynamics for the attribution of authorship to her own works when it was first published. In this context, the present article analyzes the game between living author and dead letter (or between living work and dead writer), so remarkable in the artistic collaboration that generated Pride and Prejudice and Zombies.