As MatthewA. Taylor's incisive readings reveal, the heterodox cosmologies of Edgar Allan Poe,Henry Adams, Charles Chesnutt, and Zora Neale Hurston reject the anthropocentricfantasy that sees the universe as a kind of reservoir of self-realization. Taylorshows how posthumanist theory can illuminate American literary texts and how thosetexts might, in turn, prompt a reassessment of posthumanist theory.