Detective Fiction and the Problem of Knowledge [electronic resource] : Perspectives on the Metacognitive Mystery Tale /
Dechêne, Antoine.author.
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. .
I. The Problem of Knowledge -- 1. From the Metaphysical Detective Story to the Metacognitive Mystery Tale -- 2. Enigmas of the Sublime and the Grotesque -- II. From the flâneur to the Stalker -- 3. Edgar Allan Poe's "The Man of the Crowd" -- 4. Jorge Luis Borges's Textual Labyrinths -- 5. Paul Auster's The New York Trilogy -- III The Grotesque -- 6. Herman Melville's "Bartleby, the Scrivener: A Story of Wall Street" -- 7. Samuel Beckett's Molloy -- 8. Roberto Bolaño's Monsieur Pain -- IV. The Sublime -- 9. Henry James's "The Figure in the Carpet".-10. Horacio Quiroga's "The Pursued" -- V. In Lieu of a Conclusion: Nathaniel Hawthorne's "Wakefield". .
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. .
Literature, Modern-20th century.
America-Literatures.
British literature.
European literature.
Twentieth-Century Literature.
Contemporary Literature.
North American Literature.
British and Irish Literature.
European Literature.