Crime Files: Perspectives on the Metacognitive Mystery Tale

Dechêne, Antoine

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. 

Details

Published by: Palgrave Macmillan

Publication Date: 2018-09-14

Format: Hardcover

ISBN-13: 9783319944685

DOI: 10.1007/978-3-319-94469-2

Dimensions: 210cm x148cm

Pages: 347