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Detective and crime fiction, as a popular genre which appeals to a wide readership, has often been left out of academic criticism and labelled as “low brow” literature. However, recent studies have called attention to the genre’s versatility and literary value, since it not only offers relevant insights on ideological, moral, and social aspects of the cultures which produce it, but its study is also important from a narratological perspective. This course introduces students to the history of British and American detective and crime fiction from the first modern detective story with E. A. Poe’s first Dupin mystery in the mid-nineteenth century to late twentieth-century crime narratives. We will do critical readings and discuss major classic and contemporary authors and their works as well as look at the most relevant subgenres and literary periods in which detective and crime fiction developed.
We will read short stories by E. A. Poe, A. C. Doyle, G. K. Chesterton, Agatha Christie and novels by Raymond Chandler (Farewell, My Lovely, 1940), Thomas Harris (Red Dragon, 1981) and Minette Walters (The Ice House, 1992).
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