Outi Hakola

Zombies, vampires and mummies are frequent stars of American horror films. But what does their cinematic omnipresence, and audiences’ hunger for such films, tell us about American views of death? In this book, Outi Hakola investigates the ways in which American living dead films have addressed death through different narrative and rhetorical solutions during the twentieth century. She focuses on films from the 1930s, including Dracula, The Mummy and White Zombie, films of the 1950s and 1960s such as Night of the Living Dead and The Return of Dracula, as well as more recent fare like Bram Stoker’s Dracula, The Mummy (1999) and Resident Evil. In doing so, the book frames the tradition of living dead films, discusses the cinematic processes of addressing the films’ viewers, and analyzes the films’ sociocultural negotiation with death in this specific genre.

Rhetoric of Modern Death in American Living Dead Films

Sari Kivistö

Death is an inevitable, yet mysterious event. Fiction is one way to imagine and gain knowledge of death. Death is very useful to literature, as it creates plot twists, suspense, mysteries, and emotional effects in narrations. But more importantly, stories about death seem to have an existential importance to our lives. Stories provide fictional encounters with death and give meaning for both death and life. Thus, death is more than a physical or psychological experience in literature; it also highlights existential questions concerning humanity and storytelling. This volume, entitled Death in Literature, approaches death by examining the narratives and spectacles of death, dying and mortality in different literary genres. The articles consider literary representations of death from ancient Rome to the Netherlands today, and explore ways of dealing with death and dying. The discussions also transcend the boundaries of literature by studying literary representations of such socially relevant and death-related issues as euthanasia and suicide. The articles offer a broad perspective on death’s role in literature as well as literature’s role in the social and cultural debates about death.

Outi Hakola

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