Detecting texts : the metaphysical detective story from Poe to postmodernism / edited by Patricia Merivale and Susan Elizabeth Sweeney.

Format:

Book

Contributor:

Merivale, Patricia.

Sweeney, Susan Elizabeth, 1958-

Language:

English

Subjects (All):

Detective and mystery stories--History and criticism.

Detective and mystery stories.

Experimental fiction--History and criticism.

Experimental fiction.

Fiction--20th century--History and criticism.

Fiction.

Metaphysics in literature.

Fiction--Technique.

Physical Description:

x, 305 pages : illustrations ; 23 cm

Place of Publication:

Philadelphia : University of Pennsylvania Press, [1999]

Summary:

Although readers of detective fiction ordinarily expect to learn the mystery's solution at the end, there is another kind of detective story -- whose history encompasses writers as diverse as Poe, Borges, Robbe-Grillet, Auster, and Stephen King -- that ends with a question rather than an answer. The detective not only fails to solve the crime, but also confronts insoluble mysteries of interpretation and identity. As the contributors to Detecting Texts contend, such stories belong to a distinct genre, the "metaphysical detective story", in which the detective hero's inability to interpret the mystery inevitably casts doubt on the reader's similar attempt to make sense of the text and the world.

Notes:

Includes bibliographical references and index.

ISBN:

0812234693

0812216768

OCLC:

39659682