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.
Agatha Christie and New Directions in Reading Detective Fiction
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.
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.
Agatha Christie and the Guilty Pleasure of Poison
Author: Sylvia A. Pamboukian
Publisher: Springer Nature
ISBN: 3031160002
Category : Literary Criticism
Languages : en
Pages : 230
Book Description
Agatha Christie and the Guilty Pleasure of Poison examines Christie’s female poisoners in the context of Christie’s own experience in pharmacy and of detective fiction. In doing so, it uncovers an overlooked dynamic in which female poisoners deliver well-deserved comeuppance for gendered and classed wrongdoing ordinarily accepted in everyday life. While critics have long recognized male outlaws, like Robin Hood, who use crime to oppose a corrupt system, this book contends that female outlaws – witches and poisoners – offer a similar heritage of empowered femininity. Far from cozy and formulaic, Agatha Christie’s outlaw poisoners offer readers the surprising pleasures of comeuppance, and they set the stage for contemporary detective fiction writers, more recent films depicting poisoning as empowering, and even poison gardens, which are tourist destinations that offer visitors the guilty pleasure of poison.
Publisher: Springer Nature
ISBN: 3031160002
Category : Literary Criticism
Languages : en
Pages : 230
Book Description
Agatha Christie and the Guilty Pleasure of Poison examines Christie’s female poisoners in the context of Christie’s own experience in pharmacy and of detective fiction. In doing so, it uncovers an overlooked dynamic in which female poisoners deliver well-deserved comeuppance for gendered and classed wrongdoing ordinarily accepted in everyday life. While critics have long recognized male outlaws, like Robin Hood, who use crime to oppose a corrupt system, this book contends that female outlaws – witches and poisoners – offer a similar heritage of empowered femininity. Far from cozy and formulaic, Agatha Christie’s outlaw poisoners offer readers the surprising pleasures of comeuppance, and they set the stage for contemporary detective fiction writers, more recent films depicting poisoning as empowering, and even poison gardens, which are tourist destinations that offer visitors the guilty pleasure of poison.
Overture to Death
Author: Ngaio Marsh
Publisher: Felony & Mayhem Press
ISBN: 1937384225
Category : Fiction
Languages : en
Pages : 358
Book Description
A local busybody is silenced for good in this tale by “a peerless practitioner of the slightly surreal, English-village comedy-mystery” (Kirkus Reviews). In their Dorset village, neither Miss Campanula nor her friend Miss Prentice are known as lovable little old ladies. They’re waspish, gossiping snobby little old ladies, passionate only about their amateur theatrical productions, their narrowly defined opinions about how everyone else should behave . . ..and, perhaps, about the local vicar. But could one of them have been sufficiently unpleasant to provoke a murderer? For Miss Campanula has perished on her piano bench—and it’s unclear whether Miss Prentice may have been the actual intended victim . . . “A goodie.” —Kirkus Reviews “It’s time to start comparing Christie to Marsh instead of the other way around.” —New York Magazine “In her ironic and witty hands the mystery novel can be civilized literature.” —The New York Times
Publisher: Felony & Mayhem Press
ISBN: 1937384225
Category : Fiction
Languages : en
Pages : 358
Book Description
A local busybody is silenced for good in this tale by “a peerless practitioner of the slightly surreal, English-village comedy-mystery” (Kirkus Reviews). In their Dorset village, neither Miss Campanula nor her friend Miss Prentice are known as lovable little old ladies. They’re waspish, gossiping snobby little old ladies, passionate only about their amateur theatrical productions, their narrowly defined opinions about how everyone else should behave . . ..and, perhaps, about the local vicar. But could one of them have been sufficiently unpleasant to provoke a murderer? For Miss Campanula has perished on her piano bench—and it’s unclear whether Miss Prentice may have been the actual intended victim . . . “A goodie.” —Kirkus Reviews “It’s time to start comparing Christie to Marsh instead of the other way around.” —New York Magazine “In her ironic and witty hands the mystery novel can be civilized literature.” —The New York Times
Exile as a Continuum in Joseph Conrad’s Fiction
Author: Ludmilla Voitkovska
Publisher: Taylor & Francis
ISBN: 1000626474
Category : Literary Criticism
Languages : en
Pages : 190
Book Description
Joseph Conrad is famous for being an unusual, strange, and even eccentric English writer. However, despite his difference, English criticism has primarily interpreted his fiction from the perspective of the English culture. In turn, Polish criticism has portrayed Conrad as a Pole who happened to write in English. Considering Conrad’s transcultural background, neither exclusively English nor an exclusively Polish writer, this volume investigates the essential features of his expatriate writing as a form distinctly different from any writing done within a single culture. Conrad's unique contribution to English literature and sensibility stems from his ability to incorporate the complexity of the exilic condition without discussing it explicitly. Furthermore, this book establishes Conrad's expatriation archetypes and examines them as they manifest themselves not only in a realistic, but, more importantly, in a symbolic mode. Those archetypal features demonstrate themselves through Conrad’s thematic choices, narrative structure, and critical discourse that reflect his complex relationship with both the parent and the adopted reader. While the existence of these patterns in Conrad's fiction are not entirely obvious, this book aims to illuminate Conrad’s contributions to the current critical debate concerning the place of the author in his/her own narrative.
Publisher: Taylor & Francis
ISBN: 1000626474
Category : Literary Criticism
Languages : en
Pages : 190
Book Description
Joseph Conrad is famous for being an unusual, strange, and even eccentric English writer. However, despite his difference, English criticism has primarily interpreted his fiction from the perspective of the English culture. In turn, Polish criticism has portrayed Conrad as a Pole who happened to write in English. Considering Conrad’s transcultural background, neither exclusively English nor an exclusively Polish writer, this volume investigates the essential features of his expatriate writing as a form distinctly different from any writing done within a single culture. Conrad's unique contribution to English literature and sensibility stems from his ability to incorporate the complexity of the exilic condition without discussing it explicitly. Furthermore, this book establishes Conrad's expatriation archetypes and examines them as they manifest themselves not only in a realistic, but, more importantly, in a symbolic mode. Those archetypal features demonstrate themselves through Conrad’s thematic choices, narrative structure, and critical discourse that reflect his complex relationship with both the parent and the adopted reader. While the existence of these patterns in Conrad's fiction are not entirely obvious, this book aims to illuminate Conrad’s contributions to the current critical debate concerning the place of the author in his/her own narrative.
Our Henry James in Fiction, Film, and Popular Culture
Author: John Carlos Rowe
Publisher: Routledge
ISBN: 1000603539
Category : Literary Criticism
Languages : en
Pages : 357
Book Description
Our Henry James in Fiction, Film, and Popular Culture addresses the interesting revival of Henry James’s works in Anglo-American film adaptations and contemporary fiction from the 1960s to the present. James’s fiction is generally considered difficult and part of high culture, more appropriate for classroom study than popular appreciation. However, this volume focuses on the adaptation of his novels into films, challenging us to understand James’s popular reputation today on both sides of the Atlantic. The book offers two explanations for his persistent influence: James’s literary ambiguity and his reliance on popular culture. “Part I: His Times” considers James’s reliance on sentimental literature and theatrical melodrama in Daisy Miller, Guy Domville, The Awkward Age, and several of his lesser known short stories. “Part II: Our Times” focuses on how James’s considerations of changing gender roles and sexual identities have influenced Hollywood representations of emancipated women in Hitchcock’s Rear Window and Peter Bogdanovich’s The Last Picture Show, among others. Recent fiction by authors including James Baldwin and Leslie Marmon Silko also treat Jamesian notions of gender and sexuality while considering his part in contemporary debates about globalization and cosmopolitanism. Both a study of James’s works and a broad range of contemporary film and fiction, Our Henry James in Fiction, Film, and Popular Culture demonstrates the continuing relevance of Henry James to our multimedia, interdisciplinary, globalized culture.
Publisher: Routledge
ISBN: 1000603539
Category : Literary Criticism
Languages : en
Pages : 357
Book Description
Our Henry James in Fiction, Film, and Popular Culture addresses the interesting revival of Henry James’s works in Anglo-American film adaptations and contemporary fiction from the 1960s to the present. James’s fiction is generally considered difficult and part of high culture, more appropriate for classroom study than popular appreciation. However, this volume focuses on the adaptation of his novels into films, challenging us to understand James’s popular reputation today on both sides of the Atlantic. The book offers two explanations for his persistent influence: James’s literary ambiguity and his reliance on popular culture. “Part I: His Times” considers James’s reliance on sentimental literature and theatrical melodrama in Daisy Miller, Guy Domville, The Awkward Age, and several of his lesser known short stories. “Part II: Our Times” focuses on how James’s considerations of changing gender roles and sexual identities have influenced Hollywood representations of emancipated women in Hitchcock’s Rear Window and Peter Bogdanovich’s The Last Picture Show, among others. Recent fiction by authors including James Baldwin and Leslie Marmon Silko also treat Jamesian notions of gender and sexuality while considering his part in contemporary debates about globalization and cosmopolitanism. Both a study of James’s works and a broad range of contemporary film and fiction, Our Henry James in Fiction, Film, and Popular Culture demonstrates the continuing relevance of Henry James to our multimedia, interdisciplinary, globalized culture.
Postmodern, Marxist, and Christian Historical Novels
Author: Lynne W. Hinojosa
Publisher: Routledge
ISBN: 1000594491
Category : Literary Criticism
Languages : en
Pages : 140
Book Description
Postmodern, Marxist, and Christian Historical Novels: Hope and the Burdens of History argues historical novels can help readers receive the burdens of history—meaning both the burdens of the past, present, and future and the burden of living in time—and develop a more robust conception of and concrete practice of hope. Since the 1960s, historical novels have been a dominant literary genre, but they have been influenced primarily not by Christian but by postmodern and marxist thinkers and writers. This book provides a theological and literary analysis of all three types of historical novels—postmodern, marxist, and Christian—and outlines what each school of thought can learn from each other regarding historical understanding and hope. Using Jürgen Moltmann’s theology of hope and Frank Kermode’s literary criticism as a theoretical basis, the book offers readings of novels by Julian Barnes, A.S. Byatt, Kazuo Ishiguro, Margaret Atwood, Michael Ondaatje, Ian McEwan, and Ursula LeGuin, among others, and ends with an extended analysis of Marilynne Robinson’s Gilead series.
Publisher: Routledge
ISBN: 1000594491
Category : Literary Criticism
Languages : en
Pages : 140
Book Description
Postmodern, Marxist, and Christian Historical Novels: Hope and the Burdens of History argues historical novels can help readers receive the burdens of history—meaning both the burdens of the past, present, and future and the burden of living in time—and develop a more robust conception of and concrete practice of hope. Since the 1960s, historical novels have been a dominant literary genre, but they have been influenced primarily not by Christian but by postmodern and marxist thinkers and writers. This book provides a theological and literary analysis of all three types of historical novels—postmodern, marxist, and Christian—and outlines what each school of thought can learn from each other regarding historical understanding and hope. Using Jürgen Moltmann’s theology of hope and Frank Kermode’s literary criticism as a theoretical basis, the book offers readings of novels by Julian Barnes, A.S. Byatt, Kazuo Ishiguro, Margaret Atwood, Michael Ondaatje, Ian McEwan, and Ursula LeGuin, among others, and ends with an extended analysis of Marilynne Robinson’s Gilead series.
A Deadly Affair
Author: Agatha Christie
Publisher: HarperCollins
ISBN: 006314235X
Category : Fiction
Languages : en
Pages : 272
Book Description
“[We] can’t get enough of Christie’s plush and murderous thrills.” —Entertainment Weekly From the Queen of Mystery—this all-new collection of stories about love gone horribly wrong will get your heart racing. Love can propel us to our greatest heights . . . and darkest depths. In this new compendium of Agatha Christie short stories, witness the dark side of love—crimes of passion, games of the heart, and deadly deceits. This pulse-pounding compendium features beloved detectives Hercule Poirot and Miss Marple, master of charades Parker Pyne, the enigmatic Harley Quin, and the adventurous Tommy and Tuppence, all at the ready to solve tantalizing mysteries. In “The Face of Helen,” a night at the Royal Opera could reach a fatal crescendo for a woman caught in a dicey love triangle; “Finessing the King” delivers a curious ad in the personals that could mask sinister intentions; who’s in danger of getting stung in “Wasps’ Nest” depends on rounding up suspects and solving a murder—before it even happens. These are just a few of the tales in this collection featuring essential reading that Christie fans old and new will simply love to death.
Publisher: HarperCollins
ISBN: 006314235X
Category : Fiction
Languages : en
Pages : 272
Book Description
“[We] can’t get enough of Christie’s plush and murderous thrills.” —Entertainment Weekly From the Queen of Mystery—this all-new collection of stories about love gone horribly wrong will get your heart racing. Love can propel us to our greatest heights . . . and darkest depths. In this new compendium of Agatha Christie short stories, witness the dark side of love—crimes of passion, games of the heart, and deadly deceits. This pulse-pounding compendium features beloved detectives Hercule Poirot and Miss Marple, master of charades Parker Pyne, the enigmatic Harley Quin, and the adventurous Tommy and Tuppence, all at the ready to solve tantalizing mysteries. In “The Face of Helen,” a night at the Royal Opera could reach a fatal crescendo for a woman caught in a dicey love triangle; “Finessing the King” delivers a curious ad in the personals that could mask sinister intentions; who’s in danger of getting stung in “Wasps’ Nest” depends on rounding up suspects and solving a murder—before it even happens. These are just a few of the tales in this collection featuring essential reading that Christie fans old and new will simply love to death.
Ernest Hemingway and the Fluidity of Gender
Author: Tania Chakravertty
Publisher: Taylor & Francis
ISBN: 1000726576
Category : Literary Criticism
Languages : en
Pages : 208
Book Description
Ernest Hemingway and the Fluidity of Gender presents fresh insight into the gender issues and sexual ambiguities that have always been present in Hemingway’s work, utilising a variety of historical, socio-cultural and biographical contexts. Offering a close analysis of the gender issues and sexual ambiguities present in Hemingway’s work, this book provides insight into the position of white middle-class women in America from the mid-nineteenth to the mid-twentieth century, illuminating Hemingway’s androgynous impulses and the attitudinal changes that occurred during Ernest Hemingway’s lifetime. Women and gender were Hemingway’s steady concern; his fictional females are drawn with the same kind of complexity and individuality like his fictional males, manifesting endurance, stoic courage and grace under pressure. This volume highlights Hemingway’s textual world’s resistance of patriarchal phallocratism and his abolition of the binaries of masculinity/femininity, passivity/activity and the like, dismantling binary oppositions involving gender and sexuality. Exploring the metamorphosis of American social and cultural history, this volume unravels the stereotypical myths associated with womanhood and the complexity of women in Ernest Hemingway’s novels. Tania Chakravertty is the Dean of Students’ Welfare, Diamond Harbour Women’s University, West Bengal, India. Chakravertty has a Ph.D. from Calcutta University on “Gender Representations in the Fiction of Ernest Hemingway”. Chakravertty visited the US to participate in the academic group project “Strengthening and Widening the Scope of American Studies: The U.S. Experience” in 2010 as part of the prestigious International Visitor Leadership Program. Her monographs have appeared in national and international journals.
Publisher: Taylor & Francis
ISBN: 1000726576
Category : Literary Criticism
Languages : en
Pages : 208
Book Description
Ernest Hemingway and the Fluidity of Gender presents fresh insight into the gender issues and sexual ambiguities that have always been present in Hemingway’s work, utilising a variety of historical, socio-cultural and biographical contexts. Offering a close analysis of the gender issues and sexual ambiguities present in Hemingway’s work, this book provides insight into the position of white middle-class women in America from the mid-nineteenth to the mid-twentieth century, illuminating Hemingway’s androgynous impulses and the attitudinal changes that occurred during Ernest Hemingway’s lifetime. Women and gender were Hemingway’s steady concern; his fictional females are drawn with the same kind of complexity and individuality like his fictional males, manifesting endurance, stoic courage and grace under pressure. This volume highlights Hemingway’s textual world’s resistance of patriarchal phallocratism and his abolition of the binaries of masculinity/femininity, passivity/activity and the like, dismantling binary oppositions involving gender and sexuality. Exploring the metamorphosis of American social and cultural history, this volume unravels the stereotypical myths associated with womanhood and the complexity of women in Ernest Hemingway’s novels. Tania Chakravertty is the Dean of Students’ Welfare, Diamond Harbour Women’s University, West Bengal, India. Chakravertty has a Ph.D. from Calcutta University on “Gender Representations in the Fiction of Ernest Hemingway”. Chakravertty visited the US to participate in the academic group project “Strengthening and Widening the Scope of American Studies: The U.S. Experience” in 2010 as part of the prestigious International Visitor Leadership Program. Her monographs have appeared in national and international journals.
The Life and Works of Korean Poet Kim Myŏng-sun
Author: Jung Ja Choi
Publisher: Taylor & Francis
ISBN: 1000775186
Category : Literary Criticism
Languages : en
Pages : 219
Book Description
The Life and Works of Korean Poet Kim Myŏng-sun offers an introduction to Korea’s first modern woman writer to publish a collection of creative works, Kim Myŏng-sun (1896–ca. 1954). Despite attempts by male contemporaries to assassinate her character, Kim was an outspoken writer and an early feminist, confronting patriarchal Korean society in essays, plays, poems, and short stories. This volume is the first to offer a detailed analysis in English of Kim’s poetry. The poems examined in this volume can be considered early twentieth-century versions of #MeToo literature, mirroring the harrowing account of her sexual assault, and also subversive challenges to traditional institutions, dealing with themes such as romantic free love, same-sex love, single womanhood, and explicit female desire and passion. The Life and Works of Korean Poet Kim Myŏng-sun restores a long-neglected woman writer to her rightful place in the history of Korean literature, shedding light on the complexity of women’s lives in Korea and contributing to the growing interest in modern Korean women’s literature in the West.
Publisher: Taylor & Francis
ISBN: 1000775186
Category : Literary Criticism
Languages : en
Pages : 219
Book Description
The Life and Works of Korean Poet Kim Myŏng-sun offers an introduction to Korea’s first modern woman writer to publish a collection of creative works, Kim Myŏng-sun (1896–ca. 1954). Despite attempts by male contemporaries to assassinate her character, Kim was an outspoken writer and an early feminist, confronting patriarchal Korean society in essays, plays, poems, and short stories. This volume is the first to offer a detailed analysis in English of Kim’s poetry. The poems examined in this volume can be considered early twentieth-century versions of #MeToo literature, mirroring the harrowing account of her sexual assault, and also subversive challenges to traditional institutions, dealing with themes such as romantic free love, same-sex love, single womanhood, and explicit female desire and passion. The Life and Works of Korean Poet Kim Myŏng-sun restores a long-neglected woman writer to her rightful place in the history of Korean literature, shedding light on the complexity of women’s lives in Korea and contributing to the growing interest in modern Korean women’s literature in the West.
Talking About Detective Fiction
Author: P. D. James
Publisher: Vintage
ISBN: 0307743136
Category : Literary Criticism
Languages : en
Pages : 210
Book Description
P. D. James, the undisputed queen of mystery, gives us an intriguing, inspiring and idiosyncratic look at the genre she has spent her life perfecting. 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
P. D. James, the undisputed queen of mystery, gives us an intriguing, inspiring and idiosyncratic look at the genre she has spent her life perfecting. 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.