Teaching Crime Fiction by Unknown

Teaching Crime Fiction by Unknown

Author:Unknown
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9783319906089
Publisher: Springer International Publishing


Teaching the Canon

The undergraduate crime fiction course I currently teach follows a roughly chronologically organised outline, illustrating to students how the crime short story has evolved alongside, and responded to, novel-length crime fiction. Edgar Allan Poe’s Dupin stories from the 1840s are frequently taught on crime fiction course syllabi, because of the stories’ focus on central crime topics such as ratiocination and criminal psychology. Commenting on the importance and influence of Poe on crime fiction, Leitch states that “Poe is universally regarded as the father of the detective story, and his place as a pioneer of the short story is scarcely less secure”.21 Through its crime plot, Poe’s 1841 crime short story “The Murders in the Rue Morgue” calls attention to problematic themes at the heart of crime fiction, namely violence and victimisation of marginalised and disenfranchised characters. Teaching this crime short story helps in highlighting the gender-political dimensions of the genre. As Harrowitz states, “The story presents the conflict between our view of different civilizations and our desire to identify scapegoats”,22 leading in this case to the story’s preference for the grotesque plot twist of a murderous orangutan rather than confronting the problem of patriarchal violence against women. The graphic depiction of violence in “The Murders in the Rue Morgue” has become one of the staple elements of much crime fiction, as Franks also argues.23 These aspects of Poe’s crime short stories serve an important didactic purpose, highlighting the idea of patriarchal society as a crime scene, and drawing attention to the use of the female body as a site for exploitation. Poe’s Dupin stories illustrate to students the evolution of detective figures in crime fiction, including in the crime short story, while at the same time calling attention to some of the genre’s enduring problematics and thorny questions, such as the representation of violence against women. Classroom debates of important gender-political questions such as violence against women and cultural difference help to develop students’ critical vocabulary, and serve to demonstrate how crime fiction, far from being merely escapism, engages with social and cultural concerns.

Agatha Christie’s The Mysterious Mr. Quin (1930) short stories from the Golden Age period have been identified by Priestman as significant in the evolution of the crime short story.24 Specific Mr. Quin stories which I have taught include “The Coming of Mr. Quin”, “The Bird with the Broken Wing”, “The World’s End”, and “The Face of Helen”.25 As I discuss elsewhere, the Mr. Quin stories offer compelling insight into British social and cultural values in the 1920s–1930s, presenting male and female characters which problematise, challenge and disrupt gender norms.26 These investigations are used to prompt students, to help them recognise that Golden Age crime writing, far from being merely “cosy” or predictable, features moments of disruption and transgression. The Mr. Quin stories introduce students to another, less familiar but no less compelling, part of Christie’s oeuvre. In a teaching context, including these stories helps to address the problem of replicating works and repeating syllabi used on other crime fiction courses currently taught in universities .



Download



Copyright Disclaimer:
This site does not store any files on its server. We only index and link to content provided by other sites. Please contact the content providers to delete copyright contents if any and email us, we'll remove relevant links or contents immediately.