| CODE | ENG1276 | ||||||
| TITLE | The Detective Story | ||||||
| UM LEVEL | 01 - Year 1 in Modular Undergraduate Course | ||||||
| MQF LEVEL | 5 | ||||||
| ECTS CREDITS | 2 | ||||||
| DEPARTMENT | English | ||||||
| DESCRIPTION | Objective The unit reviews the history of the detective story’s development and its generic traits, and examines issues relating to the relations between popular culture and high culture. Description The study-unit will initially examine the origins of the detective story in English and American literature, focusing particularly on the fictions of Edgar Allan Poe, Wilkie Collins, Arthur Conan Doyle, and G.K. Chesterton. Attention will be given to the emergence of different types of detective fiction, and the importance in this regard of writers like Raymond Chandler and Dorothy L. Sayers will be discussed. More recent developments in crime fiction, which are marked by a gradual distancing from the pure ‘whodunnit’ and by a greater concern with disciplines ranging from archaeology to forensics, as well as by an increasing interest in psychological and sociocultural commentary, will also be reviewed. Finally, the unit will discuss three areas which have been influential in the detective story gaining critical responsibility and even canonical status in recent years: (1) the interest recently generated in what literary criticism has termed ‘the analytical detective story’ (2) the parodic appearance, within contemporary narratives which do not belong to the genre of the detective story, of motifs lifted from crime fiction (3) the tale of ‘literary detection’. The work of the following writers will be referred to: Edgar Allan Poe, Arthur Conan Doyle, G. K. Chesterton, Agatha Christie, Dorothy L. Sayers, Raymond Chandler, P.D. James, Patricia Cornwell, Vladimir Nabokov, Lawrence Norfolk, Peter Ackroyd, Thomas Pynchon. Reading List Useful critical studies include: - Benstock, Bernard, ed., Essays on Detective Fiction (London: Macmillan, 1983). - Irwin, John T., The Mystery to a Solution: Poe, Borges, and the Analytic Detective Story (Baltimore, MD: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1997). - Merivale, Patricia, and Susan Elizabeth Sweeney, Detecting Texts: The Metaphysical Detective Story from Poe to Postmodernism (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 1998). - Priestman, Martin, Crime Fiction: From Poe to the Present (Plymouth: Northcote, 1997). - Rzepka, Charles J., Detective Fiction (London: Polity, 2005). - Symons, Julian, Bloody murder: From the Detective Story to the Crime Novel: A History, rev. ed. (London: Viking, 1985). - Yale French Studies 108 (2005) [special issue on Crime Fictions]. |
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| STUDY-UNIT TYPE | Lecture | ||||||
| METHOD OF ASSESSMENT |
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| LECTURER/S | Aaron Aquilina |
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The University makes every effort to ensure that the published Courses Plans, Programmes of Study and Study-Unit information are complete and up-to-date at the time of publication. The University reserves the right to make changes in case errors are detected after publication.
The availability of optional units may be subject to timetabling constraints. Units not attracting a sufficient number of registrations may be withdrawn without notice. It should be noted that all the information in the description above applies to study-units available during the academic year 2023/4. It may be subject to change in subsequent years. |
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