The Cambridge Introduction to Literary Posthumanism

At a time when scholars in both literary and scientific disciplines are advancing the term posthumanism, this book offers a through-line. Beginning with Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein and continuing into the post-print, born-digital excursions of Shelley Jackson’s Patchwork Girl, this literary introduction defines posthumanism and provides a summary account of the key literary and cultural theorists in the field. It embraces humanist refusals from Melville’s Bartelby to Thomas Pynchon’s authorial surrogation, and more recent evasions and avoidances in the writing of William Gibson, Tom McCarthy, Coleson Whitehead, Jeanette Winterson, and Claire-Louise Bennett. This book also provides close readings of key posthuman fiction, poetry, and conceptual approaches that help ground the discipline.