The Corpse as Narrative Object in Hardboiled Detective Fiction
Dead Ends and Red Herrings
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Beschreibung
This book examines how the representation of objects, specifically dead bodies, functions as the motivating force of hardboiled detective fiction narratives. Conducting a semi-interactive autopsy into the body in and of the genre, the author deploys several theoretical frames including narratology, body-as-text theory, object theory, reader-response theory, formalism, and genre theory to demonstrate the significance of objects, symbols, and things in narrative. While primarily focusing on the works of Dashiell Hammett and Raymond Chandler, the book references lesser-known accomplices. Chapters outline the experience of reading and writing objects as a narrative compulsion, facilitated and exemplified by the figure of a private eye as they endeavor to plausibly recreate and solve the crime, reanimating the inanimate thing on the floor through storytelling and reclaiming their own integrity and agency by asserting authority over conflicting versions of the facts.
J. Muriel Moore received her PhD in English Language and Literature at Queen's University, Canada. Her specializations include genre fiction, narratology, reader-response theory, women writers, disability studies, and popular culture.
This book examines how the representation of objects, specifically dead bodies, functions as the motivating force of hardboiled detective fiction narratives. Conducting a semi-interactive autopsy into the body in and of the genre, the author deploys several theoretical frames including narratology, body-as-text theory, object theory, reader-response theory, formalism, and genre theory to demonstrate the significance of objects, symbols, and things in narrative. While primarily focusing on the works of Dashiell Hammett and Raymond Chandler, the book references lesser-known accomplices. Chapters outline the experience of reading and writing objects as a narrative compulsion, facilitated and exemplified by the figure of a private eye as they endeavor to plausibly recreate and solve the crime, reanimating the inanimate thing on the floor through storytelling and reclaiming their own integrity and agency by asserting authority over conflicting versions of the facts.
Highlights the literary treatment of the dead body, as opposed to the living one Details how the lifelessness of the corpse disrupts by both failing to mean and ceasing to mean as a human body Focuses on an underexamined aspect of hardboiled detective fiction
Autor*in
J. Muriel Moore
Themen in »The Corpse as Narrative Object in Hardboiled Detective Fiction«
Detective Fiction Corpse Raymond Chandler American literature Narratology Object Theory Bodies Dashiell Hammett Crime Fiction