The Language and Imagery of Coma and Brain Injury: Representations in Literature, Film and Media

What occurs within coma? What does the coma patient experience? How does the patient perceive the world outside of coma, if at all?

The simple answer to these questions is that we don't know. Yet the sheer volume of literary and media texts would have us believe that we do. Examining representations of coma and brain injury across a variety of texts, this book investigates common tropes and linguistic devices used to portray the medical condition of coma, giving rise to universal mythologi...