"Introduction: encrypting the body -- "It was better to get her underground": the modernist burial plot -- "I advise you not to dig into it": metaphor, metonymy, and the modern novel -- "To pierce and shred those unblemished bodies": corpses, theory, and the postmodern novel -- "Someone was hanging there": the postmodern Book of the dead -- "Bone by bone": Alice Walker's exhumation of Zora Neale Hurston's Their eyes were watching God -- Conclusion: in theory."