Mashing up Jane Austen’s classics: "Pride and Prejudice and Zombies" & "Mansfield Park and Mummies"

Drawing on the remix culture techniques and on fan fiction modes of engagement, mashup literature declaredly transforms masterpieces of world’s literature into something new and unexpected ‘you’d actually want to read’, which is necessarily a way of thinking out of the box. Literary mashups, resulting from the combined action of independent publishers and imaginative contemporary writers, arouse interest in audience as well as critics. Such direct mashups as Pride and Prejudice and Zombies (2009) and Mansfield Park and Mummies (2009) include significant portions of Austen’s original novels, with a parodic touch of horror added by co-authors Seth Grahame-Smith and Vera Nazarian. Even though the two books follow different approaches – Nazarian being a passionate Janeite, while Grahame-Smith a former detractor of Austen – and may be regarded either as irreverent reshaping, respectful revival, or both, they turn out to be uncannily consistent with the narrative project of the literary classics they draw from. These mashups heavily rely on Austen’s nonreferential aesthetic, since the simultaneous denying and disclosing of crucial historical issues leave gaps in the text to be filled by far-fetched fantasy. As well as providing comic relief, zombies and mummies give shape to the authors’ and the readers’ anxieties. An analysis of the first chapter of the two mashups, with a focus on style, irony and characterization, will show how the distinctive features of the novel of manners are preserved and updated, to the benefit of a contemporary audience. At the same time, our reading will bring out the gaps that have been so incongruously filled.