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.
Contents: Introduction. FICTION, FILM, TELEVISION. Alan CORNELL: Series, Location, and Change: National Reunification as Reflected in German Television Detective Series. Helen TROUILLE: Modes of Detection in the Crime Reality Show. Xavier MENDIK: A (Repeated) Time to Die: The Investigation of Primal Trauma in the Films of Dario Argento. Christopher LLOYD: Eliminating the Detective: Boileau-Narcejac, Clouzot, and Diaboliques ne YOUNG: A Continuous Spiral: Boileau-Narcejac's Sueurs froides and Hitchcock's Vertigo. Edmund SMYTH: Parodying the polar: Robbe-Grillet and the Detective Story. MARGINS AND IDENTITIES. Mark CHU: Someone Else's Southerner: Opposed Essences in the 'Italian' Novels of Michael Dibdin, Magdalen Nabb, and Tim Parks. Anne MULLEN: Leonardo Sciascia's Detective Fiction and Metaphors of Mafia. Paul DIFFLEY: The Figure of the Detective in the Novels of Antonio Tabucchi. Charlotte WHITTINGHAM: Christian Ritual and Creed in Ake Edwardson's Ga ut min själ. Steve SMITH: Between Detachment and Desire: Léo Malet's French roman noir. Sue STACEY: Pierre Magnan: Crime and Complicity in 'la France profonde'. NARRATIVE STRATEGIES. Sophie BEAULÉ: Function and Meaning of the fait divers in French Detective Fiction. Pedro GARCÍA-CARO: Behind the Canvas: The Role of Paintings in Peter Ackroyd's Chatterton and Arturo Pérez-Reverte's The Flanders Panel. Heather MAWHINNEY: Death by Jigsaw: La Vie mode d'emploi by Georges Perec. Emer O'BEIRNE: From Traffic to Jamming: Cars, Music, and Improvisation in Jean Echenoz's Cherokee. Akane KAWAKAMI: Patrick Modiano's Unreliable Detectives. WRITING AND GENDER. Judith BRYCE: The Perfect Crime? Paternal Perpetrators in Dacia Maraini's Voci. Shelley GODSLAND and Anne M. WHITE: Investigating Fictions of Identity: Contemporary Catalan Crime Fiction by Women. Deborah E. HAMILTON: The roman noir and the Reconstruction of National Identity in Postwar France. Sabine VANACKER: 'As Befits Men': The Creation of Masculinity in the Crime Fiction of Jef Geeraerts. Merja MAKINEN: Feminism and the 'Crisis of Masculinity' in Contemporary British Detective Fiction. HISTORY, SOCIETY, POLITICS. Josiane PELTIER: Didier Daeninckx and Michel de Certeau: A Historiography of Affects. Claire GORRARA: Tracking down the Past: The Detective as Historian in Texts by Patrick Modiano and Didier Daeninckx. Alba CHAPARRO: Detectives in Transition: From Plinio to Carvalho. Susana BAYÓ BELENGUER: Montalban's Carvalho Series as Social Critique. Adrian R. YOUNG: Montalbán's Carvalho: Spanish Society, Identity, and the Detective. Notes on Contributors. Bibliography.
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.
Contents: Introduction. FICTION, FILM, TELEVISION. Alan CORNELL: Series, Location, and Change: National Reunification as Reflected in German Television Detective Series. Helen TROUILLE: Modes of Detection in the Crime Reality Show. Xavier MENDIK: A (Repeated) Time to Die: The Investigation of Primal Trauma in the Films of Dario Argento. Christopher LLOYD: Eliminating the Detective: Boileau-Narcejac, Clouzot, and Diaboliques ne YOUNG: A Continuous Spiral: Boileau-Narcejac's Sueurs froides and Hitchcock's Vertigo. Edmund SMYTH: Parodying the polar: Robbe-Grillet and the Detective Story. MARGINS AND IDENTITIES. Mark CHU: Someone Else's Southerner: Opposed Essences in the 'Italian' Novels of Michael Dibdin, Magdalen Nabb, and Tim Parks. Anne MULLEN: Leonardo Sciascia's Detective Fiction and Metaphors of Mafia. Paul DIFFLEY: The Figure of the Detective in the Novels of Antonio Tabucchi. Charlotte WHITTINGHAM: Christian Ritual and Creed in Ake Edwardson's Ga ut min själ. Steve SMITH: Between Detachment and Desire: Léo Malet's French roman noir. Sue STACEY: Pierre Magnan: Crime and Complicity in 'la France profonde'. NARRATIVE STRATEGIES. Sophie BEAULÉ: Function and Meaning of the fait divers in French Detective Fiction. Pedro GARCÍA-CARO: Behind the Canvas: The Role of Paintings in Peter Ackroyd's Chatterton and Arturo Pérez-Reverte's The Flanders Panel. Heather MAWHINNEY: Death by Jigsaw: La Vie mode d'emploi by Georges Perec. Emer O'BEIRNE: From Traffic to Jamming: Cars, Music, and Improvisation in Jean Echenoz's Cherokee. Akane KAWAKAMI: Patrick Modiano's Unreliable Detectives. WRITING AND GENDER. Judith BRYCE: The Perfect Crime? Paternal Perpetrators in Dacia Maraini's Voci. Shelley GODSLAND and Anne M. WHITE: Investigating Fictions of Identity: Contemporary Catalan Crime Fiction by Women. Deborah E. HAMILTON: The roman noir and the Reconstruction of National Identity in Postwar France. Sabine VANACKER: 'As Befits Men': The Creation of Masculinity in the Crime Fiction of Jef Geeraerts. Merja MAKINEN: Feminism and the 'Crisis of Masculinity' in Contemporary British Detective Fiction. HISTORY, SOCIETY, POLITICS. Josiane PELTIER: Didier Daeninckx and Michel de Certeau: A Historiography of Affects. Claire GORRARA: Tracking down the Past: The Detective as Historian in Texts by Patrick Modiano and Didier Daeninckx. Alba CHAPARRO: Detectives in Transition: From Plinio to Carvalho. Susana BAYÓ BELENGUER: Montalban's Carvalho Series as Social Critique. Adrian R. YOUNG: Montalbán's Carvalho: Spanish Society, Identity, and the Detective. Notes on Contributors. Bibliography.