Presentation Transcript
CRIME FICTION: CRIME FICTION
DEFINITION :: DEFINITION : The genre of crime fiction has mystery as its key element. The mystery and its solution by rationality and the careful accretion of evidence may be the primary focus of the text. This invites the responder’s active involvement in the deduction of the solution to the crime. The genre deals with crimes, their detection, criminals and their motives.
History of crime fiction :: History of crime fiction : Victorian Detective Fiction
American Hard-Boiled Crime Fiction, 1920s-1940s
British Noir after Golden Age
Brit Grit: the 1970s revival of the British noir thriller
Contemporary American Crime Fiction
The First Examples :: The First Examples : "The murder of machine operator Rolfsen" (1839) by Norwegian Mauritz Hansen
"The Murders in the Rue Morgue" (1841)
"The Mystery of Marie Roget" (1842)
"The Purloined Letter" (1844) by Edgar Allan Poe
“The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes” by Arthur Conan Doyle
The First Detectives :: The First Detectives : Dupin - the first ‘modern’ detective
Popular Success: Sherlock Holmes
Holmes says :
“This link, between the values of a society and the methods and values of its crime solvers, has endured in crime fiction ever since.”
The Solver As A Private Eye: The Solver As A Private Eye
American Hard-Boiled Crime Fiction, 1920s-1940s : American Hard-Boiled Crime Fiction, 1920s-1940s
Slide8: Raymond Chandler wrote that the 'smell of fear' generated by such stories was evidence of their serious response to the modern condition: ‘Their characters lived in a world gone wrong, a world in which, long before the atom bomb, civilization had created the machinery for its own destruction and was learning to use it with all the moronic delight of a gangster trying out his first machine-gun. The law was something to be manipulated for profit and power. The streets were dark with something more than night.’
An Introduction to British Noir: An Introduction to British Noir
The Conventions of Detective Fiction: The Conventions of Detective Fiction The sleuth-hero
A detailed, plausible setting
A crime or crimes to be solved
A denouement
Dangerous situations