Literary Lost: Viewing Television Through the Lens of Literature

Description

From the moment that Watership Down made its appearance on screen in season one, speculation about Lost's literary allusions has played an important role in the larger discussion of the show. Fans and critics alike have noted the many references, from biblical passages and children's stories to science fiction and classic novels. Literary Lost teases out the critical significance of these featured books, demonstrating how literature has served to enhance the meaning of the show. It provides a fuller understanding of Lost and reveals how television can be used as a tool for stimulating a deeper interest in literary texts. The first chapter features an exhaustive list of "Lost books," including the show's predecessor texts. Subsequent chapters are arranged thematically, covering topics from free will and the nature of time to parenthood and group dynamics. From Lewis Carroll's creations, which appear as recurring images and themes throughout, to Slaughterhouse-Five's lessons on the nature of time, Literary Lost will help readers unravel the show's novelistic plot while celebrating its astonishing layers and nuances of text.

Sarah Clarke Stuart teaches composition, media studies and literature at the University of North Florida. She has been teaching and writing about Lost for several years.

"I've been arguing for decades that not only is television not inimical to literacy, it is a great ally of reading. Sarah Clarke Stuart's Literary Lost provides a brilliant, meticulous, soaring and satisfying proof of that proposition. Her tour-de-force analysis examines the roles of nearly a hundred books in Lost, ranging from the Holy Qu'run to the Wizard of Oz. The television series had highs and lows of narrative; Stuart's work has only highs, and is destined to become a classic in television studies." - Paul Levinson, author of New New Media, and The Plot to Save Socrates "I did not need to be convinced that the recently completed Lost was a series of great complexity and depth, one of the most narratively rich in the history of the medium, but I was not prepared to discover the Lost Sarah Clarke Stuart discovers in this important and insightful book. By diving deeper than any critic has to-date into Lost's intertextuality, by asking questions nobody so far had thought to ask, Stuart not only takes our understanding of a small-screen masterwork to a whole new level; she also builds ready-to-be crossed bridges between one-time adversaries: literature and television." - David Lavery, co-author of Lost's Buried Treasures Featured in a charming article about a high school teacher using the book to teach his Literature class. March 9, 2011 Roanoke Times. Literary Lost belongs to a new category of books on television that combine a scholarly with a fan perspective... The book is full of skilled and inspired readings of literary works and of Lost. -- Herbert Schwaab, University of Regensburg * Critical Studies in Television *