Detective Fiction and the Problem of Knowledge


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.




Walking in the City


Book Description

In this book, Catharina Löffler traces the psycho-physical experiences of London walkers in eighteenth-century literature. For this purpose, readings of fascinating, exciting, comical and sometimes disturbing texts grant insights into a culturally, historically and socially significant time in the history of London and make this book a tour of London as seen and heard through the eyes and ears of fictional eighteenth-century urban walkers. Uniting concepts of literary theory, urban studies and psychogeography, Löffler approaches a cross-generic range of literary texts that design uniquely subjective visions and versions of the city. A journey through the fictions and factions of eighteenth-century London, this book provides a compelling read for anyone interested in the history and literature of the English capital.




A Reader's Guide to Contemporary Literary Theory


Book Description

Unsurpassed as a text for upper-division and beginning graduate students, Raman Selden's classic text is the liveliest, most readable and most reliable guide to contemporary literary theory. Includes applications of theory, cross-referenced to Selden's companion volume, Practicing Theory and Reading Literature.




The World that is the Book


Book Description

The World that is the Book offers an in-depth analysis of Paul Auster’s fiction. It explores the rich literary and cultural sources that Auster taps into in order to create compelling stories that investigate the nature of language, the workings of chance, and the individual’s complex relations with the world at large. Whereas most Auster criticism has concentrated on readings of individual novels, this book emphasizes the continuity in Auster’s writing by discussing throughout the philosophical underpinnings that lead the author to question the boundaries separating the fictional from the factual, and the real from the imagined.




Deep Locational Criticism


Book Description

A lively series of spatial turns in literary studies since the 1990s give rise to this engaged and practical book, devoted to the question of how to teach and study the relationship between all sorts of literature and all sorts of location. Among the many concrete examples explored are texts created between the early seventeenth and the early twenty-first centuries, in genres ranging from stage drama and lyric poetry to television, by way of several studies of fiction definable in a broad way as realist. Writers and thinkers discussed include Michel de Certeau, Edward Casey, Gwendolyn Brooks, Christina Rossetti, Dickens, J. Hillis Miller, Lynne Reid Banks, Heidegger, Shakespeare, Thomas Middleton, Thomas Dekker, Stephen C. Levinson, Bernard Malamud, E.M. Forster, Thomas Burke and Samuel Beckett. The book is underpinned by the philosophical topology of Jeff Malpas, who insists that human life is necessarily and primarily located. It is aimed at students and teachers of literary place at all university levels.




Hawksmoor


Book Description

'There is no Light without Darknesse and no Substance without Shaddowe.' So proclaims Nicholas Dyer, assistant to Sir Christopher Wren and man with a commission to build seven London churches to stand as beacons of the enlightenment. But Dyer plans to conceal a dark secret at the heart of each church - to create a forbidding architecture that will survive for eternity. Two hundred and fifty years later, London detective Nicholas Hawksmoor is investigating a series of gruesome murders on the sites of certain eighteenth-century churches - crimes that make no sense to the modern mind . . . Cover art by: Barn'whether the book addresses graffiti explicitly, evoke a city from the past, or are considered cult classics, the novels all share the quality - like street art - of speaking to their time.' Guardian Gallery




Mapping Cyberspace


Book Description

Mapping Cyberspace is a ground-breaking geographic exploration and critical reading of cyberspace, and information and communication technologies. The book: * provides an understanding of what cyberspace looks like and the social interactions that occur there * explores the impacts of cyberspace, and information and communication technologies, on cultural, political and economic relations * charts the spatial forms of virutal spaces * details empirical research and examines a wide variety of maps and spatialisations of cyberspace and the information society * has a related website at http://www.MappingCyberspace.com. This book will be a valuable addition to the growing body of literature on cyberspace and what it means for the future.




Ghosts


Book Description

The second book in the acclaimed New York Trilogy--a detective story that becomes a haunting and eerie exploration of identity and deception. It is a story of hidden violence that culminates in an inevitable but unexpectedly shattering climax.




Contemporary Crime Fiction


Book Description

This unique and timely book presents nine compelling essays on contemporary crime fiction, bringing innovative and fresh perspectives to the analysis of this most popular and vibrant literary genre. Investigating contemporary crime fiction and the critical debates surrounding its reception and production, the introductory chapter sets the scene for the chaptersâ (TM) analyses of distinct crime fiction topics, themes and authors. These topics include the experimental detective narrative, race and ethnicity, historical crime fiction, domestic noir, feminism and crime, environmental crime, and the poetics of place. Authors examined here range from Ian Rankin, Gillian Flynn, Val McDermid, Denise Mina, Robert Galbraith, Nancy Bilyeau, and Martha Grimes, to Tana French, Dale Furutani and J.G. Ballard, to name but a few. Informed by the latest critical debates and theoretical perspectives in the field, this volume presents an invaluable source of information and criticism on crime fiction for students, researchers and academics alike.