Author: Casey Cothran
Publisher: Routledge
ISBN: 1317435230
Category : Literary Criticism
Languages : en
Pages : 418
Book Description
This collection establishes new perspectives on the idea of mystery, as it is enacted and encoded in the genre of detective fiction. Essays reclaim detective fiction as an object of critical inquiry, examining the ways it shapes issues of social destabilization, moral ambiguity, reader complicity, intertextuality, and metafiction. Breaking new ground by moving beyond the critical preoccupation with classification of historical types and generic determinants, contributors examine the effect of mystery on literary forms and on readers, who experience the provocative, complex process of coming to grips with the unknown and the unknowable. This volume opens up discussion on publically acclaimed, modern works of mystery and on classic pieces, addressing a variety of forms including novels, plays, graphic novels, television series, films, and ipad games. Re-examining the interpretive potential of a genre that seems easily defined yet has endless permutations, the book closely analyzes the cultural function of mystery, the way it intervenes in social and political problems, as well as the literary properties that give the genre its particular shape. The volume treats various texts as meaningful subjects for critical analysis and sheds new light on the interpretive potential for a genre that creates as much ambiguity as it does clarity. Scholars of mystery and detective fiction, crime fiction, genre studies, and cultural studies will find this volume invaluable.
New Perspectives on Detective Fiction
Author: Casey Cothran
Publisher: Routledge
ISBN: 1317435230
Category : Literary Criticism
Languages : en
Pages : 418
Book Description
This collection establishes new perspectives on the idea of mystery, as it is enacted and encoded in the genre of detective fiction. Essays reclaim detective fiction as an object of critical inquiry, examining the ways it shapes issues of social destabilization, moral ambiguity, reader complicity, intertextuality, and metafiction. Breaking new ground by moving beyond the critical preoccupation with classification of historical types and generic determinants, contributors examine the effect of mystery on literary forms and on readers, who experience the provocative, complex process of coming to grips with the unknown and the unknowable. This volume opens up discussion on publically acclaimed, modern works of mystery and on classic pieces, addressing a variety of forms including novels, plays, graphic novels, television series, films, and ipad games. Re-examining the interpretive potential of a genre that seems easily defined yet has endless permutations, the book closely analyzes the cultural function of mystery, the way it intervenes in social and political problems, as well as the literary properties that give the genre its particular shape. The volume treats various texts as meaningful subjects for critical analysis and sheds new light on the interpretive potential for a genre that creates as much ambiguity as it does clarity. Scholars of mystery and detective fiction, crime fiction, genre studies, and cultural studies will find this volume invaluable.
Publisher: Routledge
ISBN: 1317435230
Category : Literary Criticism
Languages : en
Pages : 418
Book Description
This collection establishes new perspectives on the idea of mystery, as it is enacted and encoded in the genre of detective fiction. Essays reclaim detective fiction as an object of critical inquiry, examining the ways it shapes issues of social destabilization, moral ambiguity, reader complicity, intertextuality, and metafiction. Breaking new ground by moving beyond the critical preoccupation with classification of historical types and generic determinants, contributors examine the effect of mystery on literary forms and on readers, who experience the provocative, complex process of coming to grips with the unknown and the unknowable. This volume opens up discussion on publically acclaimed, modern works of mystery and on classic pieces, addressing a variety of forms including novels, plays, graphic novels, television series, films, and ipad games. Re-examining the interpretive potential of a genre that seems easily defined yet has endless permutations, the book closely analyzes the cultural function of mystery, the way it intervenes in social and political problems, as well as the literary properties that give the genre its particular shape. The volume treats various texts as meaningful subjects for critical analysis and sheds new light on the interpretive potential for a genre that creates as much ambiguity as it does clarity. Scholars of mystery and detective fiction, crime fiction, genre studies, and cultural studies will find this volume invaluable.
New Perspectives on Detective Fiction
Author: Casey Cothran
Publisher: Routledge
ISBN: 1317435249
Category : Literary Criticism
Languages : en
Pages : 264
Book Description
This collection establishes new perspectives on the idea of mystery, as it is enacted and encoded in the genre of detective fiction. Essays reclaim detective fiction as an object of critical inquiry, examining the ways it shapes issues of social destabilization, moral ambiguity, reader complicity, intertextuality, and metafiction. Breaking new ground by moving beyond the critical preoccupation with classification of historical types and generic determinants, contributors examine the effect of mystery on literary forms and on readers, who experience the provocative, complex process of coming to grips with the unknown and the unknowable. This volume opens up discussion on publically acclaimed, modern works of mystery and on classic pieces, addressing a variety of forms including novels, plays, graphic novels, television series, films, and ipad games. Re-examining the interpretive potential of a genre that seems easily defined yet has endless permutations, the book closely analyzes the cultural function of mystery, the way it intervenes in social and political problems, as well as the literary properties that give the genre its particular shape. The volume treats various texts as meaningful subjects for critical analysis and sheds new light on the interpretive potential for a genre that creates as much ambiguity as it does clarity. Scholars of mystery and detective fiction, crime fiction, genre studies, and cultural studies will find this volume invaluable.
Publisher: Routledge
ISBN: 1317435249
Category : Literary Criticism
Languages : en
Pages : 264
Book Description
This collection establishes new perspectives on the idea of mystery, as it is enacted and encoded in the genre of detective fiction. Essays reclaim detective fiction as an object of critical inquiry, examining the ways it shapes issues of social destabilization, moral ambiguity, reader complicity, intertextuality, and metafiction. Breaking new ground by moving beyond the critical preoccupation with classification of historical types and generic determinants, contributors examine the effect of mystery on literary forms and on readers, who experience the provocative, complex process of coming to grips with the unknown and the unknowable. This volume opens up discussion on publically acclaimed, modern works of mystery and on classic pieces, addressing a variety of forms including novels, plays, graphic novels, television series, films, and ipad games. Re-examining the interpretive potential of a genre that seems easily defined yet has endless permutations, the book closely analyzes the cultural function of mystery, the way it intervenes in social and political problems, as well as the literary properties that give the genre its particular shape. The volume treats various texts as meaningful subjects for critical analysis and sheds new light on the interpretive potential for a genre that creates as much ambiguity as it does clarity. Scholars of mystery and detective fiction, crime fiction, genre studies, and cultural studies will find this volume invaluable.
Detective Fiction and the Problem of Knowledge
Author: Antoine Dechêne
Publisher: Springer
ISBN: 331994469X
Category : Literary Criticism
Languages : en
Pages : 348
Book Description
This book establishes the genealogy of a subgenre of crime fiction that Antoine Dechêne calls the metacognitive mystery tale. It delineates a corpus of texts presenting 'unreadable' mysteries which, under the deceptively monolithic appearance of subverting traditional detective story conventions, offer a multiplicity of motifs – the overwhelming presence of chance, the unfulfilled quest for knowledge, the urban stroller lost in a labyrinthine text – that generate a vast array of epistemological and ontological uncertainties. Analysing the works of a wide variety of authors, including Edgar Allan Poe, Jorge Luis Borges, and Henry James, this book is vital reading for scholars of detective fiction.
Publisher: Springer
ISBN: 331994469X
Category : Literary Criticism
Languages : en
Pages : 348
Book Description
This book establishes the genealogy of a subgenre of crime fiction that Antoine Dechêne calls the metacognitive mystery tale. It delineates a corpus of texts presenting 'unreadable' mysteries which, under the deceptively monolithic appearance of subverting traditional detective story conventions, offer a multiplicity of motifs – the overwhelming presence of chance, the unfulfilled quest for knowledge, the urban stroller lost in a labyrinthine text – that generate a vast array of epistemological and ontological uncertainties. Analysing the works of a wide variety of authors, including Edgar Allan Poe, Jorge Luis Borges, and Henry James, this book is vital reading for scholars of detective fiction.
The Dying Detective
Author: Leif GW Persson
Publisher: Vintage Crime/Black Lizard
ISBN: 0307907643
Category : Fiction
Languages : en
Pages : 434
Book Description
***WINNER OF THE CRIME WRITERS' ASSOCIATION'S INTERNATIONAL DAGGER 2017*** ***WINNER OF THE DANISH ACADEMY OF CRIME WRITERS' PALLE ROSENKRANTZ PRIZE (Best Crime Novel 2012)*** ***WINNER OF THE FINNISH ACADEMY OF CRIME WRITERS' AWARD (Best Crime Novel 2012)*** ***WINNER OF THE GLASS KEY (Best Scandinavian Crime Novel 2011)*** ***WINNER OF THE SWEDISH ACADEMY OF CRIME WRITERS' AWARD (Best Crime Novel of the Year 2010)*** LARS MARTIN JOHANSSON is a living legend. Cunning and perceptive, always one step ahead, he was known in the National Criminal Police as “the man who could see around corners.” But now Johansson is retired, living in the country, his police days behind him. Or so he thinks. After suffering a stroke, Johansson finds himself in the hospital. Tests show heart problems as well. And the only thing that can save him from despair is his doctor’s mention of an unsolved murder case from years before. The victim: an innocent nine-year-old girl. Johansson is determined to solve the case, no matter his condition. With the help of his assistant, Matilda, an amateur detective, and Max, an orphan with a personal stake in the case, he launches an informal investigation from his hospital bed. Racing against time, he uncovers a web of connections that links sex tourism to a dead opera singer and a self-made millionaire. And as Johansson draws closer to solving the crime, he finds that he will have to confront not just a mystery but his own mortality as well.
Publisher: Vintage Crime/Black Lizard
ISBN: 0307907643
Category : Fiction
Languages : en
Pages : 434
Book Description
***WINNER OF THE CRIME WRITERS' ASSOCIATION'S INTERNATIONAL DAGGER 2017*** ***WINNER OF THE DANISH ACADEMY OF CRIME WRITERS' PALLE ROSENKRANTZ PRIZE (Best Crime Novel 2012)*** ***WINNER OF THE FINNISH ACADEMY OF CRIME WRITERS' AWARD (Best Crime Novel 2012)*** ***WINNER OF THE GLASS KEY (Best Scandinavian Crime Novel 2011)*** ***WINNER OF THE SWEDISH ACADEMY OF CRIME WRITERS' AWARD (Best Crime Novel of the Year 2010)*** LARS MARTIN JOHANSSON is a living legend. Cunning and perceptive, always one step ahead, he was known in the National Criminal Police as “the man who could see around corners.” But now Johansson is retired, living in the country, his police days behind him. Or so he thinks. After suffering a stroke, Johansson finds himself in the hospital. Tests show heart problems as well. And the only thing that can save him from despair is his doctor’s mention of an unsolved murder case from years before. The victim: an innocent nine-year-old girl. Johansson is determined to solve the case, no matter his condition. With the help of his assistant, Matilda, an amateur detective, and Max, an orphan with a personal stake in the case, he launches an informal investigation from his hospital bed. Racing against time, he uncovers a web of connections that links sex tourism to a dead opera singer and a self-made millionaire. And as Johansson draws closer to solving the crime, he finds that he will have to confront not just a mystery but his own mortality as well.
The Double, the Labyrinth and the Locked Room
Author: Ilana Shiloh
Publisher: Peter Lang
ISBN: 9780820468433
Category : Literary Criticism
Languages : en
Pages : 200
Book Description
The present book explores detective and crime-mystery fiction and film from the perspective of their entrenched metaphors of paradox. --Book Jacket.
Publisher: Peter Lang
ISBN: 9780820468433
Category : Literary Criticism
Languages : en
Pages : 200
Book Description
The present book explores detective and crime-mystery fiction and film from the perspective of their entrenched metaphors of paradox. --Book Jacket.
Noir
Author: Robert Coover
Publisher: Abrams
ISBN: 1590204557
Category : Fiction
Languages : en
Pages : 100
Book Description
“Metafiction lustily mates with hard-boiled mystery in this hilarious homage to Raymond Chandler and company.” —Publishers Weekly (starred review) You are Philip M. Noir, Private Investigator. A mysterious young widow hires you to find her husband's killer—if he was killed. Then your client is killed and her body disappear—if she was your client. Your search for clues takes you through all levels of the city, from classy lounges to lowlife dives, from jazz bars to a rich sex kitten’s bedroom, from yachts to the morgue. The Case of the Vanishing Black Widow unfolds over five days aboveground and three or four in smugglers’ tunnels, though flashback and anecdote, and expands time into something much larger. You don’t always get the joke, though most people think what’s happening is pretty funny. “As his dazzling career continues to demonstrate, Mr. Coover is a one-man Big Bang of exploding creative force.” —The New York Times “Like Thomas Pynchon in 2009’s Inherent Vice, Coover pops off laughs on every page.” —Publishers Weekly (starred review) “[An] absurdist take on the hard-boiled detective novel . . . depraved and amusing.” —Kirkus Reviews
Publisher: Abrams
ISBN: 1590204557
Category : Fiction
Languages : en
Pages : 100
Book Description
“Metafiction lustily mates with hard-boiled mystery in this hilarious homage to Raymond Chandler and company.” —Publishers Weekly (starred review) You are Philip M. Noir, Private Investigator. A mysterious young widow hires you to find her husband's killer—if he was killed. Then your client is killed and her body disappear—if she was your client. Your search for clues takes you through all levels of the city, from classy lounges to lowlife dives, from jazz bars to a rich sex kitten’s bedroom, from yachts to the morgue. The Case of the Vanishing Black Widow unfolds over five days aboveground and three or four in smugglers’ tunnels, though flashback and anecdote, and expands time into something much larger. You don’t always get the joke, though most people think what’s happening is pretty funny. “As his dazzling career continues to demonstrate, Mr. Coover is a one-man Big Bang of exploding creative force.” —The New York Times “Like Thomas Pynchon in 2009’s Inherent Vice, Coover pops off laughs on every page.” —Publishers Weekly (starred review) “[An] absurdist take on the hard-boiled detective novel . . . depraved and amusing.” —Kirkus Reviews
Death and the Seaside
Author: Alison Moore
Publisher: Biblioasis
ISBN: 1771962763
Category : Fiction
Languages : en
Pages : 161
Book Description
Nearing thirty, with an abandoned literature degree and half-hearted dreams of becoming a writer, Bonnie Falls gives in to her parents’ insistence that she finally move out of their home and takes up residence in a shabby first-floor flat with a concrete garden. When her landlady takes an uncommon interest in her—and one of her unfinished stories—Bonnie’s aspirations are rekindled, and when Sylvia suggests the two of them take a summer holiday to a seaside town oddly similar to the one in which the story is set, Bonnie is quickly persuaded to accompany the enigmatic older woman. A tense exploration of power and vulnerability, obsession and manipulation, Death and the Seaside is a masterpiece of form and gripping psychological novel about the stories that we tell ourselves.
Publisher: Biblioasis
ISBN: 1771962763
Category : Fiction
Languages : en
Pages : 161
Book Description
Nearing thirty, with an abandoned literature degree and half-hearted dreams of becoming a writer, Bonnie Falls gives in to her parents’ insistence that she finally move out of their home and takes up residence in a shabby first-floor flat with a concrete garden. When her landlady takes an uncommon interest in her—and one of her unfinished stories—Bonnie’s aspirations are rekindled, and when Sylvia suggests the two of them take a summer holiday to a seaside town oddly similar to the one in which the story is set, Bonnie is quickly persuaded to accompany the enigmatic older woman. A tense exploration of power and vulnerability, obsession and manipulation, Death and the Seaside is a masterpiece of form and gripping psychological novel about the stories that we tell ourselves.
Talking About Detective Fiction
Author: P. D. James
Publisher: Vintage
ISBN: 0307743136
Category : Literary Criticism
Languages : en
Pages : 210
Book Description
In a perfect marriage of author and subject, P. D. James—one of the most widely admired writers of detective fiction—gives us a personal, lively, illuminating exploration of the human appetite for mystery and mayhem, and of those writers who have satisfied it. “An avid book-length essay on the roots, ethics and methods of the detective story . . . Her opinions are often surprising and determinedly contrary . . . Refreshingly outspoken.”—The New York Times Examining mystery from top to bottom, beginning with such classics as Charles Dickens's Bleak House and Wilkie Collins's The Woman in White, and then looking at such contemporary masters as Colin Dexter and Henning Mankell, P. D. James goes right to the heart of the genre. Along the way she traces the lives and writing styles of Arthur Conan Doyle, Agatha Christie, Dashiell Hammett, and many more. Here is P.D. James discussing detective fiction as social history, explaining its stylistic components, revealing her own writing process, and commenting on the recent resurgence of detective fiction in modern culture. It is a must have for the mystery connoisseur and casual fan alike.
Publisher: Vintage
ISBN: 0307743136
Category : Literary Criticism
Languages : en
Pages : 210
Book Description
In a perfect marriage of author and subject, P. D. James—one of the most widely admired writers of detective fiction—gives us a personal, lively, illuminating exploration of the human appetite for mystery and mayhem, and of those writers who have satisfied it. “An avid book-length essay on the roots, ethics and methods of the detective story . . . Her opinions are often surprising and determinedly contrary . . . Refreshingly outspoken.”—The New York Times Examining mystery from top to bottom, beginning with such classics as Charles Dickens's Bleak House and Wilkie Collins's The Woman in White, and then looking at such contemporary masters as Colin Dexter and Henning Mankell, P. D. James goes right to the heart of the genre. Along the way she traces the lives and writing styles of Arthur Conan Doyle, Agatha Christie, Dashiell Hammett, and many more. Here is P.D. James discussing detective fiction as social history, explaining its stylistic components, revealing her own writing process, and commenting on the recent resurgence of detective fiction in modern culture. It is a must have for the mystery connoisseur and casual fan alike.
Fictions of Dementia
Author: Susanne Katharina Christ
Publisher: Walter de Gruyter GmbH & Co KG
ISBN: 3110789809
Category : Literary Criticism
Languages : en
Pages : 540
Book Description
Taking its cues from both classical and post-classical narratologies, this study explores both forms and functions of the representation of dementia in Anglophone fictions. Initially, dementia is conceptualised as a narrative-epistemological paradox: The more those affected know what it is like to have dementia, the less they can tell about it. Narrative fiction is the only discourse that provides an imaginative glimpse at the subjective experience of dementia in language. The narratological modelling of four ‘narrative modes’ elaborates how the paradox becomes productive in fiction: Depending on the narrative perspective taken, but also on the type of narration, the technique for representing consciousness and the epistemic strategy of narrating dementia, the respective narrative modes come with different prerequisites and possibilities for narrating dementia. The analysis of four contemporary Anglophone dementia fictions based on the developed model reveals their potential functions: Fiction allows readers to learn about the challenges of dementia, grants them perspective-taking, it trains cognitive flexibility, and explores the meaning of memory, knowledge, narrative and imagination, and thus also offers trajectories of a cultural coping with dementia.
Publisher: Walter de Gruyter GmbH & Co KG
ISBN: 3110789809
Category : Literary Criticism
Languages : en
Pages : 540
Book Description
Taking its cues from both classical and post-classical narratologies, this study explores both forms and functions of the representation of dementia in Anglophone fictions. Initially, dementia is conceptualised as a narrative-epistemological paradox: The more those affected know what it is like to have dementia, the less they can tell about it. Narrative fiction is the only discourse that provides an imaginative glimpse at the subjective experience of dementia in language. The narratological modelling of four ‘narrative modes’ elaborates how the paradox becomes productive in fiction: Depending on the narrative perspective taken, but also on the type of narration, the technique for representing consciousness and the epistemic strategy of narrating dementia, the respective narrative modes come with different prerequisites and possibilities for narrating dementia. The analysis of four contemporary Anglophone dementia fictions based on the developed model reveals their potential functions: Fiction allows readers to learn about the challenges of dementia, grants them perspective-taking, it trains cognitive flexibility, and explores the meaning of memory, knowledge, narrative and imagination, and thus also offers trajectories of a cultural coping with dementia.
The Detective's Companion in Crime Fiction
Author: Lucy Andrew
Publisher: Springer Nature
ISBN: 3030749894
Category : Fiction
Languages : en
Pages : 314
Book Description
This book aims to establish the position of the sidekick character in the crime and detective fiction literary genres. It re-evaluates the traditional view that the sidekick character in these genres is often overlooked as having a small, generic or singular role—either to act as the foil to the detective in order to accentuate their own abilities at solving crimes, or else to simply tell the story to the reader. Instead, essays in the collection explore the representations and functions of the detective’s sidekick across a range of forms and subgenres of crime fiction. By incorporating forms such as children’s detective fiction, comics and graphic novels and film and television alongside the more traditional fare of novels and short stories, this book aims to break down the boundaries that sometimes exist between these forms, using the sidekick as a defining thread to link them together into a wider conceptual argument that covers a broad range of crime narratives.
Publisher: Springer Nature
ISBN: 3030749894
Category : Fiction
Languages : en
Pages : 314
Book Description
This book aims to establish the position of the sidekick character in the crime and detective fiction literary genres. It re-evaluates the traditional view that the sidekick character in these genres is often overlooked as having a small, generic or singular role—either to act as the foil to the detective in order to accentuate their own abilities at solving crimes, or else to simply tell the story to the reader. Instead, essays in the collection explore the representations and functions of the detective’s sidekick across a range of forms and subgenres of crime fiction. By incorporating forms such as children’s detective fiction, comics and graphic novels and film and television alongside the more traditional fare of novels and short stories, this book aims to break down the boundaries that sometimes exist between these forms, using the sidekick as a defining thread to link them together into a wider conceptual argument that covers a broad range of crime narratives.