Dreams for dead bodies : blackness, labor, and the corpus of American detective fiction / M. Michelle Robinson
(Class : culture)
Material Type | E-Book |
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Publisher | Ann Arbor : University of Michigan Press |
Year | [2016] |
Language | English |
Size | 1 online resource (256 pages) |
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Media type | 機械可読データファイル |
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Contents | Introduction: The original plotmaker Reverse type The art of framing lies To have been possessed The great work remaining before us Prescription: Homicide? Conclusion: dream within a dream |
Notes | Dreams of Dead Bodies: Blackness, Labor, and Detective Fiction in American Literature argues that the detective genre's lineage lies in unexpected texts: experimental works on the margins of what we recognize as classical detective fiction today. It shows that authors like Edgar Allan Poe, Mark Twain, Pauline Hopkins, and Rudolph Fisher drew on detective fiction's puzzle-elements to wrestle with complicated questions about race and labor in the United States, such that the emergence of detective fiction is itself bound to a history of interracial conflicts and labor struggles. Unlike previous studies of detective fiction, this book foregrounds an interracial genealogy of detective fiction, building a nuanced picture of the ways that both black and white American authors appropriated and cultivated literary conventions that finally coalesced in a recognizable genre at the turn of the twentieth century. These authors tinkered with detective fiction's puzzle-elements to address a variety of historical contexts, including the exigencies of chattel slavery, the erosion of working class solidarities by racial and ethnic competition, and accelerated mass production. Dreams for Dead Bodies demonstrates that nineteenth- and early twentieth-century American literature was broadly engaged with detective fiction, and that authors rehearsed and refined its formal elements in literary works typically relegated to the margins of the genre. By looking at these margins, the book argues, we can better understand the origins and cultural functions of American detective fiction Open Access English Includes bibliographical references (pages 233-250) and index digitized 2011 HathiTrust Digital Library Print version record Master and use copy. Digital master created according to Benchmark for Faithful Digital Reproductions of Monographs and Serials, Version 1. Digital Library Federation, December 2002 |
Authors | *Robinson, Michelle, 1979- |
Subjects | LCSH:Electronic books BSH:Electronic books BSH:Electronic books FREE:Criticism, interpretation, etc FREE:Electronic books FREE:literature FREE:cultural studies LCSH:Detective and mystery stories, American -- History and criticism All Subject Search LCSH:African Americans in literature LCSH:Working class in literature LCSH:Slavery in literature LCSH:Work in literature FREE:Cultural studies FREE:Society and culture: general FREE:Society and social sciences Society and social sciences BISACSH:LITERARY CRITICISM -- American -- General All Subject Search BISACSH:LITERARY CRITICISM -- Mystery & Detective All Subject Search FREE:Working class in literature FREE:Work in literature FREE:Slavery in literature FREE:Detective and mystery stories, American FREE:African Americans in literature FREE:Literature |
Classification | DC23:813/.087209 |
ID | ED00004265 |
ISBN | 9780472121816 |