Detection and Its Designs

Narrative and Power in Nineteenth-Century Detective Fiction

By: Peter Thoms

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Hardcover | 15 April 1998

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Hardcover
190 Pages

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21.59 x 13.97 x 1.27

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Detective fiction is usually thought of as genre fiction, a vast group of works bound together by their use of a common formula. But, as Peter Thoms argues in his investigation of some of the most important texts in the development of detective fiction in the nineteenth century, the very works that establish the genre's formulaic structure also subvert that structure. Detection and Its Designs reads early detective fiction as a self-conscious form that is suspicious of the detective it ostensibly celebrates, and critical of the authorial power he wields in attempting to reconstruct the past and script a narrative of the crime.

In readings of Godwin's Caleb Williams, Poe's Dupin stories, Dickens's Bleak House, Collins's The Moonstone, and Doyle's The Hound of the Baskervilles, Thoms argues that the detective's figurative writing emerges out of a desire to exert control over others and sometimes over himself.

Detection and Its Designs demonstrates that, far from being a na¯ve form, early detective fiction grapples with the medium of storytelling itself. To pursue these inward-turning fictions is to uncover the detective's motives of controlling the representation of both himself and others, a discovery that in turn significantly undermines the authority of his solutions.

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You Can Find This Book In

Non-Fiction Literature, Poetry & Plays History & Criticism of Literature Literary Studies of Fiction General Literary Studies Literary Studies from 1800 to 1900

Acknowledgments
Introduction	p. 1
Telling Stories: Narrative and Power in Caleb Williams	p. 13
The Stories of Poe's Dupin	p. 44
"The Narrow Track of Blood": Detection and Storytelling in Bleak House	p. 71
The Detection of Innocence in The Moonstone	p. 93
A "Paralysing Spectacle": Authority and Submission in The Hound of the Baskervilles	p. 121
Conclusion	p. 145
Notes	p. 151
Works Cited	p. 169
Index	p. 175
Table of Contents provided by Blackwell. All Rights Reserved.

Detection and Its Designs

Narrative and Power in Nineteenth-Century Detective Fiction

At a Glance

Hardcover

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How to return your order

Defective items

You Can Find This Book In

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