Proseminar Transformations of Crime Fiction

Crime fiction has long outgrown its status as a cliched pulp genre. In recent years it has gained increasing recognition in literary studies and current TV formats such as True Detective and Sherlock show the genre to be complex, sophisticated and more popular than ever. In this seminar we will have a look at the development of the crime fiction genre and how its tropes are treated in contemporary British and American literature. Edgar Allan Poe’s classic The Murders in the Rue Morgue constitutes the blueprint text from which we will derive the general theoretical framework behind crime fiction. In a second step, we will trace the genre’s structural properties across three contemporary novels from varying genres: Paul Auster’s The New York Trilogy translates the genre’s tropes into metafictional anti-detective stories which explore questions of identity, language and reality. China Mieville’s The City and The City presents us with the police procedural sub-genre, albeit in a speculative fiction setting. And while Thomas Harris’The Silence of the Lambs could be considered a conventional crime fiction text, its elements from the thriller and horror sub-genres constitute a dark deviation from formulaic fiction. Over the course of this seminar we will learn how to do close reading, what constitutes a genre and which narrative strategies can be used to relocate archetypical traits of crime fiction in other genres. In this context you will also learn about concepts of genre hybridity, recontextualization and the structuralist perspective on texts. Additionally, the course will engage with the history of the crime fiction genre and its various subtypes. Paul Auster. The New York Trilogy. Thomas Harris. The Silence of the Lambs. China Mieville. The City & The City. Edgar Allan Poe. The Murders in the Rue Morgue. Voraussetzungen All interested students must have completed the Orientierungskurs -Introduction to English and American History and Literature-. Prior to the first session, students must have read Edgar Allan Poe’s The Murders in the Rue Morgue, as well as the first chapter of Vera Nunning’s (ed.) Der amerikanische und britische Kriminalroman. Both texts will be available on the reserve shelf in the library. If there are more than 25 students, there will be a quiz on Poe’s short story. It is mandatory that you attend the first session, no exceptions. Leistungsnachweis In order to receive credit for this course, students are required to participate regularly and actively and contribute to the class by means of a short oral presentation. Term papers ca. 10-15 pages, depending on your MPO. FB 02 Institut für Anglistik / Amerikanistik All interested students must have completed the Orientierungskurs -Introduction to English and American History and Literature-. Prior to the first session, students must have read Edgar Allan Poe’s The Murders in the Rue Morgue, as well as the first chapter of Vera Nunning’s (ed.) Der amerikanische und britische Kriminalroman. Both texts will be available on the reserve shelf in the library. If there are more than 25 students, there will be a quiz on Poe’s short story. It is mandatory that you attend the first session, no exceptions. In order to receive credit for this course, students are required to participate regularly and actively and contribute to the class by means of a short oral presentation. Term papers ca. 10-15 pages, depending on your MPO. Uni Kassel SoSe 2014 Anglistik/Englisch Anglistik/Englisch Mutschler Franz