scholarly journals The Regional Crime Novel as Mediator of Heimat

2021 ◽  
pp. 223-234
Keyword(s):  
Crime Novel

How much Artistic Freedom is permitted when it comes to Language? - Analysis of a Crime Novel

2018 ◽  
Vol 5 (2) ◽  
pp. 50-60
Author(s):  
Manuela Svoboda ◽  
Petra Zagar-Sostaric
Keyword(s):  
Foreign Language ◽  
German Language ◽  
Direct Speech ◽  
Small Talk ◽  
Language Analysis ◽  
Crime Novel ◽  
Blood Relative ◽  
German Origin ◽  
Artistic Freedom ◽  
The One

Abstract In this article a closer look will be taken at the issue of inaccurately using a foreign language, i.e. German in this particular case, in a crime novel or thriller. Of course, in fiction the author has complete artistic freedom to invent and present things as he/she intends and it doesn`t necessarily have to be realistic or legitimate. But what happens when it comes to an existing language being quoted in fiction? For this purpose David Thomas’ thriller “Blood Relative - How well do you know the one you love?” is analysed regarding parts in which German quotes are used. As the plot is located partly in England and partly in former East Germany (GDR) and the protagonist’s wife is of German origin, direct speech, titles and names are used in German. Subsequently, they are translated into English by the author in order to be understood by the English reader. However, there are many grammar, spelling and semantic mistakes in these German expressions and common small talk quotes. This begs the question, is it justified to disregard linguistic correctness with regards to artistic freedom given the fact that we are dealing with a fictional thriller, or is it nevertheless necessary to be precise concerning foreign language usage? How far may one “test” their artistic freedom in this particular case? In order to answer these questions a detailed analysis of the thriller is performed, concerning artistic freedom and modern literature/light fiction as well as the German language used in quotes and direct speech.

Die Spur des Stoffs. Ermittlungsrausch in Friedrich Glausers Die Fieberkurve

2019 ◽  
Vol 48 (1) ◽  
pp. 57-89
Author(s):  
Mareike Schildmann
Keyword(s):  
Material Culture ◽  
Natural Resources ◽  
20Th Century ◽  
North Africa ◽  
Oil And Gas ◽  
Logical Structure ◽  
The Novel ◽  
Conservative Approach ◽  
Crime Novel ◽  
The 19Th Century

Abstract This article traces some of the fundamental poetological changes that the traditional crime novel undergoes in the work of the Swiss author Friedrich Glauser at the beginning of the 20th century. The rational-analytical, conservative approach of the criminal novel in the 19th century implied – according to Luc Boltanski – the separation of an epistemologically structured, institutionalized order of “reality” and a chaotic, unruly, unformatted “world” – a separation that is questioned, but reestablished in the dramaturgy of crime and its resolution. By shifting the attention from the logical structure of ‘whodunnit’ to the sensual material culture and “atmosphere” that surrounds actions and people, Glauser’s novels blur these epistemological and ontological boundaries. The article shows how in Die Fieberkurve, the second novel of Glauser’s famous Wachtmeister Studer-series, material and sensual substances develop a specific, powerful dynamic that dissipates, complicates, crosslinks, and confuses the objects and acts of investigation as well as its narration. The material spoors, dust, fibers, fingerprints, intoxicants and natural resources like oil and gas – which lead the investigation from Switzerland to North Africa – trigger a new sensual mode of perception and reception that replaces the reassuring criminological ideal of solution by the logic of “dissolution”. The novel thereby demonstrates the poetic impact of the slogan of modernity: matter matters.

scholarly journals Bloody Women: How Female Authors Have Transformed the Scottish Contemporary Crime Fiction Genre

2017 ◽  
Vol 28 (1) ◽  
pp. 52-71
Author(s):  
Lorna Hill
Keyword(s):  
Social Issues ◽  
Crime Fiction ◽  
Female Characters ◽  
Political Issues ◽  
The Past ◽  
Female Authors ◽  
Crime Novel ◽  
Practice Based Research ◽  
Changing Attitudes

Abstract This study will explore the role of female authors in contemporary Scottish crime fiction. Over the past thirty years, women writers have overhauled the traditionally male dominated genre of crime fiction by writing about strong female characters who drive the plot and solve the crimes. Authors including Val McDermid, Denise Mina and Lin Anderson are just a few of the women who have challenged the expectation of gender and genre. By setting their novels in contemporary society they reflect a range of social and political issues through the lens of a female protagonist. By closely examining the female characters, both journalists, in Val McDermid’s Lindsay Gordon series and Denise Mina’s Paddy Meehan series, I wish to explore the issue of gender through these writers’ perspectives. This essay documents the influence of these writers on my own practice-based research which involves writing a crime novel set in a post referendum Scotland. I examine a progressive and contemporary Scottish society, where women hold many senior positions in public life, and investigate whether this has an effect on the outcome of crimes. Through this narrative, my main character will focus on the current and largely hidden crimes of human trafficking and domestic abuse. By doing this I examine the ways in which the modern crime novel has evolved to cross genre boundaries. In addition to focusing on a crime, the victims and witnesses, today’s crime novels are tackling social issues to reflect society’s changing attitudes and values.

Unreliable Narration in Law and Fiction

2017 ◽  
Vol 30 (2) ◽  
pp. 311-338
Author(s):  
Daniel Del Gobbo
Keyword(s):  
Crime Fiction ◽  
High Court ◽  
Law System ◽  
Crime Novel ◽  
Objective Interpretation ◽  
Essential Quality ◽  
Fiction Writers ◽  
The Common ◽  
Agatha Christie ◽  
Unreliable Narration

This article revisits long-standing debates about objective interpretation in the common law system by focusing on a crime novel by Agatha Christie and judicial opinion by the Ontario High Court. Conventions of the crime fiction and judicial opinion genres inform readers’ assumption that the two texts are objectively interpretable. This article challenges this assumption by demonstrating that unreliable narration is often, if not always, a feature of written communication. Judges, like crime fiction writers, are storytellers. While these authors might intend for their stories to be read in certain ways, the potential for interpretive disconnect between unreliable narrators and readers means there can be no essential quality that marks a literary or legal text’s meaning as objective. Taken to heart, this demands that judges try to narrate their decisions more reliably so that readers are able to interpret the texts correctly when it matters most.

Face to Face: A Conversation With Vittorio Rossi

2000 ◽  
Vol 21 (2) ◽  
pp. 177-194
Author(s):  
Gregory J. Reid
Keyword(s):  
Fine Art ◽  
Film Adaptation ◽  
Main Stage ◽  
Television Show ◽  
Face To Face ◽  
Denys Arcand ◽  
Award Winning ◽  
Crime Novel ◽  
Italian Origin ◽  
Shoe Store

With productions of nine of his plays behind him (including his translation of Eduardo de Filippo's Filumena for the Stratford Festival in 1997), playwright and actor Vittorio Rossi has become one of Canada's best-known dramatists of Italian origin. He began his writing career by winning the Best New Play Award at the Quebec Drama Festival twice: for "Little Blood Brother" in 1986 and for "Backstreets" in 1987. His first full-length play, The Chain, broke attendance records at Centaur Theatre, English Quebec's main stage. His most acclaimed drama, The Last Adam, won the Canadian Authors Association Literary Award for Drama in 1996. Rossi's career as an actor, in addition to his work in his own plays, has included roles in such films as Snake Eater II: The Drug Buster (1991), Canvas: The Fine Art of Crime (1992), Le Sphinx (1995), Strip Search (1997), Suspicious Minds (1997), and the award-winning Post Mortem (1999); and televison series such as Malarek (1989), Urban Angel (1991), Bonanno: A Godfather's Story (1999) and the number-one-rated television show in Quebec for its three-year run, Omerta (1996, 1997, 1998). I met with Rossi at the Café Via Crescent on Crescent Street in Montreal, December 8, 1999. We discussed the situation of actors in Canada, the process of translation and adaptation, the background of the plays and his reaction to their critical reception, and his work in progress: the film adaptation of a crime novel for Denys Arcand, the scripting of a television series with Luc Dionne (creator of Omerta) and the film adaptation and production of Rossi's own shoe-store drama Scarpone.

World Visions in Swahili Literature

2019 ◽  
Vol 4 (1) ◽  
pp. 129-144
Author(s):  
Xavier Garnier
Keyword(s):  
Local Level ◽  
Colonial Period ◽  
Epic Poetry ◽  
Art Of Living ◽  
Literary Forms ◽  
Crime Novel ◽  
The World ◽  
The Way

Abstract Probably because of its relationship with a coastal culture, Swahili literature seems very aware of its position in the world. Through a reading of Swahili poems and novels across a range of genres, this paper explores the ways in which Swahili writers have engaged in a dialogue with the whole world, from the colonial period to the contemporary era. The evolution of well-identified literary forms such as epic poetry, ethnographic novel or crime novel will also pave the way for identifying the specificities of a Swahili cosmopolitanism anxious to cultivate an art of living in the age of a kind of globalization whose effects are often harshly felt at the local level. Because it has long developed an awareness of the world, Swahili literature has often pioneered the invention of literary forms that are able to translate locally the movements of the world.

Per una metodologia del protogiallo italiano: Problemi e proposte

2019 ◽  
Vol 53 (2) ◽  
pp. 511-531
Author(s):  
Francesca Facchi
Keyword(s):  
Short Stories ◽  
Systematic Study ◽  
Methodological Approach ◽  
Classification Problem ◽  
Crime Fiction ◽  
Detective Novel ◽  
Crime Novel ◽  
Critical Issues ◽  
Famous Trials ◽  
Methodological Difficulties

In the first systematic study about the Italian detective novel (1979), Loris Rambelli dates the beginnings of the genre to 1929, the publication year of the first of publisher Mondadori's ‘Yellow Books’ (Libri Gialli), the series of yellow-covered books which made the ‘giallo’ synonymous with a crime novel. Nonetheless, texts dealing with mysteries, criminals, police, trials and detection enthralled Italian readers from the 1850s on, complying with the modern dynamics of mass phenomena, contributing to the modern conception of the genre, and playing a crucial role in the culture and society of a recently unified Italy. Not conforming to a recognizable genre-structure, the pre-1929 period has been defined the “prehistory of Italian crime fiction” or protogiallo and has become a topic of academic interest only in recent years. The newness of the scholarship explains the methodological difficulties researchers have to face, such as the classification problem – it is very complex to establish common critical criteria for analyzing diverse materials such as feuilletons, novels, short stories and famous trials journals – and the objective delay in the development of the genre in Italy, especially compared to the British, American and French cases. Building on the recent line of investigation, this paper examines such critical issues in order to identify a methodological approach and a theoretical framework useful to study the prehistory of Italian crime fiction.

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