Author: Sarah J. Link Publisher: Springer Nature ISBN: 303133227X Category : Literary Criticism Languages : en Pages : 215
Book Description
This open access book examines how the form of the list features as a tool for meaning-making in the genre of detective fiction from the nineteenth to the twenty-first century. The book analyzes how both readers and detectives rely on listing as an ordering and structuring tool, and highlights the crucial role that lists assume in the reading process. It extends the boundaries of an emerging field dedicated to the study of lists in literature and caters to a newly revived interest in form and New Formalist approaches in narratological research. The central aim of this book is to show how detective fiction makes use of lists in order to frame various conceptions of knowledge. The frames created by these lists are crucial to decoding the texts, and they can be used to demonstrate how readers can be engaged in the act of detection or manipulated into accepting certain propositions in the text.
Author: Roman Alexander Barton Publisher: Springer Nature ISBN: 3031283724 Category : Literary Criticism Languages : en Pages : 143
Book Description
This book provides a concise introduction to lists in literature from the early modern period to the twenty-first century. Tracing the changing functions of the literary list across time, it offers a broad range of case studies which situate selected enumerations in their respective contexts and demonstrate the versatility and creative potential of the list form. Starting with a review of previous research on the literary list, the book discusses four main constellations of enumeration: series and the great chain of being; itemization and enumerative realism; ‘letteracettera’ and experimental list-making; ‘white noise’ and creative exploits of enumeration between formal playfulness and existential exploration. The epilogue offers an analytical toolkit for the study of literary lists based on rhetorical theory.
Author: Alistair Rolls Publisher: Taylor & Francis ISBN: 100060439X Category : Fiction Languages : en Pages : 183
Book Description
This book brings a new lens to the work of Agatha Christie through a series of close readings which challenge the official solutions by Hercule Poirot and Miss Marple. This book's approach interweaves two core ideas: first, it explores the importance of French critic Pierre Bayard’s self-styled ‘detective criticism’; second, it takes detective criticism in a new direction by refocusing on the beginnings of Agatha Christie’s novels. In this way, the book counters the end-orientation that has traditionally dominated the reading experience of, and critical response to, detective fiction by exploring the potential of the beginning to host other interpretations and stories. Offering a new way of reading detective fiction, this book is a mixture of narratology and detective criticism, and deploys it in the form of radical new readings of a number of Christie’s most famous works. This illuminating text will interest students and scholars of crime and detective fiction, literary studies and comparative literature.
Author: M. Cook Publisher: Springer ISBN: 0230313736 Category : Literary Criticism Languages : en Pages : 225
Book Description
The locked room mystery is one of the iconic creations of popular fiction. Michael Cook's critical study reveals how this archetypal form of the puzzle story has had a significant effect in shaping the immensely popular genre of detective fiction. The book includes analysis of texts from Poe to the present day.
Author: Publisher: BRILL ISBN: 900448633X Category : Literary Criticism Languages : en Pages : 339
Book Description
The essays in this collection are based on papers given at a conference on detective fiction in European culture, held at the University of Exeter in September 1997. The range of topics covered is designed to show not only the presence and variety of narratives of detection across different European countries and their different media (although there is a predictable emphasis on the novel). It also illustrates the fertility of the genre, its openness to a spectrum of readings with different emphases, formal as well as thematic. Approaches to detective fiction have often tended to confine them-selves to ‘symptomatic’ interpretation, where details of the fictional world represented are used to diagnose a specific set of social preoccupations and priorities operative at the time of writing. Such approaches can yield valuable insights. Nonetheless there is a risk of limiting the value of the genre as a whole solely to its role as a mirror held up to society. In this perspective, issues of structure and style are sidelined, or, if addressed, are praised to the extent that they approach invisibility — concision, spareness, realism are the qualities singled out for praise. The genre also gives much scope for formal innovation — and indeed has often attracted already established ‘mainstream’ writers and filmmakers for just this reason. The eclectic diversity of the detective narratives considered in this volume reveal the malleability of the traditional constraints of the genre. The essays bear rich testimony to the value of considering the interplay of thematic and structural issues, even in the most apparently unselfconscious and popular (or populist) forms of narrative. The patterns of reassurance, the triumph of intellect and the ordered, rational world ‘of old’ are now challenged by the need to foreground the problems, ambiguities and uncertainties of the self and of society. The plurality of meanings and the antithetical imperatives explored in these detective narratives confirm that the most recent forms of the genre are not mere palimpsests of their ‘golden age’ precursors. The subversion of traditional expectations and the implementation of diverse stylistic devices take the genre beyond mere homage and pastiche. The role of the reader/spectator and critic in conferring meaning is a crucial one.
Author: Jonathan Coe Publisher: Penguin UK ISBN: 0141918330 Category : Fiction Languages : en Pages : 570
Book Description
A wickedly funny take on life under the Thatcher government by the prize-winning author of Middle England. It is the 1980s and the Winshaw family are getting richer and crueller by the year: Newspaper-columnist Hilary gets thousands for telling it like it isn't. Henry's turning hospitals into car parks. Roddy's selling art in return for sex. Down on the farm Dorothy's squeezing every last pound from her livestock. Thomas is making a killing on the stock exchange; and Mark is selling arms to dictators. But once their hapless biographer Michael Owen starts investigating the family's trail of greed, corruption and immoral doings, the time growing ripe for the Winshaws to receive their comeuppance . . . __________ 'A sustained feat of humour, suspense and polemic, full of twists and ironies' Hilary Mantel, Sunday Times 'A riveting social satire on the chattering and all-powerful upper classes' Time Out 'Big, hilarious, intricate, furious, moving' Guardian Written with his signature wit, Jonathan Coe's unmissable new novel, The Proof of My Innocence is available to pre-order now!
Author: Heta Pyrhönen Publisher: Camden House (NY) ISBN: 9781879751811 Category : Literary Criticism Languages : en Pages : 134
Book Description
Dr Pyrhönen's innovative study is the first comprehensive overview and analysis of the academic reception of the eternally popular detective story; the discussion, using both a chronological and thematic approach, considers the changing views, and methods of analysis, of this fascinating genre. The author begins by tracing the development of detective fiction criticism from its beginnings, often written by its best authors, such as Dorothy L. Sayers; goes on to examine the structuralists' and narratologists' interest in the genre as a test case for various theories of reading; and finally outlines the current debates about the ideological underpinnings of detective fiction and its relationship to 'serious' literature. This book will be of interest not only to students and scholars of literature, but also to the countless devotees of the detective story. DR PYRHÖNENteaches literature at the University of Helsinki in the Department of Comparative Literature and Theatre Research.
Author: Jude Dibia Publisher: Akashic Books ISBN: 1617756482 Category : Fiction Languages : en Pages : 162
Book Description
“A stellar cast of award-winning Nigerian authors . . . a must-read for crime lovers looking for something different.”—Brittle Paper In Akashic Books’s acclaimed series of original noir anthologies, each book comprises all new stories set in a distinct neighborhood or location within the respective city. Now, West Africa enters the Noir Series arena, meticulously edited by one of Nigeria’s best-known authors. In Lagos Noir, the stories are set in “a city of more than 21 million and an amazing amalgam of wealth, poverty, corruption, humor, bravery, and tragedy. Abani and a dozen other contributors tell stories that are both unique to Lagos and universal in their humanity . . . This entry stands as one of the strongest recent additions to Akashic’s popular noir series” (Publishers Weekly, starred review, pick of the week). The anthology includes stories by Chris Abani, Nnedi Okorafor, E.C. Osondu, Jude Dibia, Chika Unigwe, A. Igoni Barrett, Sarah Ladipo Manyika, Adebola Rayo, Onyinye Ihezukwu, Uche Okonkwo, Wale Lawal, ’Pemi Aguda, and Leye Adenle. “The beauty of this book, which contains 13 stories from Nigerian writers, is that it serves as a travelogue, too.”—Bloomberg, “The Darkest Summer Reading List for Those Bright, Beachy Days” “With writers like Igoni Barrett, Leye Adenle, and E.C. Osondu contributing, Lagos Noir offers wildly different perspectives on both the city itself and the state of noir fiction. This book is almost like a world in itself, one that you’ll want to dive back into and get lost in again and again.”—CrimeReads, “One of the 10 Best Crime Anthologies of 2018”
Author: Peter Lovesey Publisher: Soho Press ISBN: 1641291826 Category : Fiction Languages : en Pages : 360
Book Description
On the 50th anniversary of the publication of his first novel, Peter Lovesey, Mystery Writers of America Grand Master and titan of the British detective novel, returns to the subject of his very first mystery—running. Through a particularly ill-fated series of events, couch potato Maeve Kelly, an elementary school teacher whose mother always assured her “curvy” girls shouldn’t waste their time trying to be fit, has been forced to sign up for the Other Half, Bath’s springtime half marathon. The training is brutal, but she must disprove her mother and collect pledges for her aunt’s beloved charity. What Maeve doesn’t know is just how vicious some of the other runners are. Meanwhile, Detective Peter Diamond is tasked with crowd control on the raucous day of the race—and catches sight of a violent criminal he put away a decade ago, and who very much seems to be up to his old tricks now that he is paroled. Diamond’s hackles are already up when he learns that one of the runners never crossed the finish line and disappeared without a trace. Was Diamond a spectator to murder?
Author: W. Chernaik Publisher: Palgrave Macmillan ISBN: 9780333746011 Category : Literary Criticism Languages : en Pages : 256
Book Description
The contributors to this volume all pay tribute to, and seek to account for, the astonishing durability of the detective story as a narrative genre. The essays range generously, taking a variety of theoretical approaches and including detective fiction in languages other than English, but particular attention is paid to the `Golden Age' of English detective story writing and to the `hard-boiled' American version on the genre. This is a collection that will appeal to the scholar and to the devotee alike, to all those, in fact, who can never resist the lure of finding out whodunnit.
Author: Sarah J. Link
Author: Roman Alexander Barton
Author: Alistair Rolls
Author: M. Cook
Author: 
Author: Jonathan Coe
Author: Heta Pyrhönen
Author: Jude Dibia
Author: Peter Lovesey
Author: W. Chernaik