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:

1 online resource (320 p.)

Edition:

1st ed.

Place of Publication:

Philadelphia : University of Pennsylvania Press, c1999.

Language Note:

English

Summary:

Although readers of detective fiction ordinarily expect to learn the mystery's solution at the end, there is another kind of detective story—the history of which 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.Detecting Texts includes an introduction by the editors that defines the metaphysical detective story and traces its history from Poe's classic tales to today's postmodernist experiments. In addition to the editors, contributors include Stephen Bernstein, Joel Black, John T. Irwin, Jeffrey T. Nealon, and others.

Contents:

Frontmatter

Contents

Preface

The Games Afoot

Chapter 1. Mysteries We Reread, Mysteries of Rereading

Chapter 2. Borgess Library of Forking Paths

Chapter 3. (De)feats of Detection

Chapter 4. Gumshoe Gothics

Chapter 5. Work of the Detective, Work of the Writer

Chapter 6. “The Question Is the Story Itself”

Chapter 7. Reader-Investigators in the Post-Nouveau Roman

Chapter 8. “A Thousand Other Mysteries”

Chapter 9. Postmodernism and the Monstrous Criminal

Chapter 10. Detecting Identity in Time and Space

Chapter 11. ”Premeditated Crimes”

Chapter 12. “Subject-Cases” and “Book-Cases”

Suggestions for Further Reading

Contributors

Index

Notes:

Description based upon print version of record.

Includes bibliographical references (p. [273]-283) and index.

ISBN:

1-283-21237-4

9786613212375

0-8122-0545-6

OCLC:

758823533