The Many Pasts of Detective Fiction

2020 ◽  
Vol 1 (2) ◽  
pp. 157-172
Author(s):  
Thomas Leitch

Building on Tzvetan Todorov's observation that the detective novel ‘contains not one but two stories: the story of the crime and the story of the investigation’, this essay argues that detective novels display a remarkably wide range of attitudes toward the several pasts they represent: the pasts of the crime, the community, the criminal, the detective, and public history. It traces a series of defining shifts in these attitudes through the evolution of five distinct subgenres of detective fiction: exploits of a Great Detective like Sherlock Holmes, Golden Age whodunits that pose as intellectual puzzles to be solved, hardboiled stories that invoke a distant past that the present both breaks with and echoes, police procedurals that unfold in an indefinitely extended present, and historical mysteries that nostalgically fetishize the past. It concludes with a brief consideration of genre readers’ own ambivalent phenomenological investment in the past, present, and future each detective story projects.

2019 ◽  
Vol 43 (2) ◽  
pp. 61
Author(s):  
Joanna Kokot

<p>Even if the Gothic romance may be considered as one of the predecessors of detective fiction, the world model proposed by the latter seems to exclude what was the essence of the former: the irrational underlying the proposed world model. However, some of detective novel writers deploy Gothic conventions in their texts, thus questioning the rational order of the reality presented there. Such a genological syncretism is typical - among others - of the novels by John Dickson Carr. The paper is an analysis of Gothic conventions and their functions in four earliest novels by Carr, featuring a French detective-protagonist, Henri Bencolin. It concentrates on elements of Gothic horror, on the atmosphere of terror as well as the motif of the past intruding the present.</p>


Author(s):  
Tess Grynoch

Objective: To examine how Canadian academic medical libraries are supporting mobile apps, what apps are currently being provided by these libraries, and what types of promotion are being used. Methods: A survey of the library websites for the 17 medical schools in Canada was completed. For each library website surveyed, the medical apps listed on the website, any services mentioned through this medium, and any type of app promotion events were noted. When Facebook and Twitter accounts were evident, the tweets were searched and the past two years of Facebook posts scanned for mention of medical apps or mobile services/events. Results: All seventeen academic medical libraries had lists of mobile medical apps with a large range in the number of medical relevant apps (average=31, median= 23). A total of 275 different apps were noted and the apps covered a wide range of subjects. Five of the 14 Facebook accounts scanned had posts about medical apps in the past two years while 11 of the 15 Twitter accounts had tweets about medical apps. Social media was only one of the many promotional methods noted. Outside of the app lists and mobile resources guides, Canadian academic medical libraries are providing workshops, presentations, and drop-in sessions for mobile medical apps. Conclusion: While librarians cannot simply compare mobile services and resources between academic medical libraries without factoring in a number of other circumstances, librarians can learn from mobile resources strategies employed at other libraries, such as using research guides to increase medical app literacy.


PEDIATRICS ◽  
1959 ◽  
Vol 23 (1) ◽  
pp. 131-131
Author(s):  
SEYMOUR S. BLUESTONE

This volume collates knowledge accumulated, mainly during the past decade, by the many individuals and groups concerned with the provision of rehabilitation services. As one of the outstanding among these individuals, the author can speak authoritatively on the wide range of subjects covered. The book is well documented with references and is supplemented by an extensive classified bibliography. Intended "to form a source of reference and guidance for all those interested in (rehabilitation), particularly those at the planning level of community activity," the book should be of even wider interest as a significant contribution to the basic understanding of rehabilitation by all thinking people.


MANUSYA ◽  
2019 ◽  
Vol 22 (1) ◽  
pp. 76-89
Author(s):  
Rhys William Tyers

Many of Murakami’s novels demonstrate his appropriation of the terminology, imagery and metaphor that are found in hardboiled detective fiction. The question of Haruki Murakami’s use of the tropes from hardboiled detective stories has been discussed by scholars such as Hantke (2007), Stretcher (2002) and Suter (2008), who argue that the writer uses these features as a way to organize his narratives and to pay homage to one of his literary heroes, Raymond Chandler. However, these arguments have not adequately addressed the fact that many of Murakami’s novels fit into the definition of the metaphysical detective story, which is “a text that parodies or subverts traditional detective-story conventions” (Merivale & Sweeney 1999:2). Using this definition as a guiding principle, this paper addresses the issue of the metaphysical detective features apparent in Murakami’s third novel, A Wild Sheep Chase, and, more specifically, looks at his use of the non-solution and labyrinth as narrative devices. The main argument, then, is that Murakami’s A Wild Sheep Chase fits in with the metaphysical detective novel and uses the familiar tropes of the labyrinth and the non-solution to highlight our impossible search for meaning.


Genealogy ◽  
2019 ◽  
Vol 3 (4) ◽  
pp. 70
Author(s):  
Christine Berberich

Crime writing is not often associated with Holocaust representations, yet an emergent trend, especially in German literature, combines a general, popular interest in crime and detective fiction with historical writing about the Holocaust, or critically engages with the events of the Shoah. Particularly worthy of critical investigation are Bernhard Schlink’s series of detective novels focusing on private investigator Gerhard Selb, a man with a Nazi background now investigating other people’s Nazi pasts, and Ferdinand von Schirach’s The Collini Case (2011) which engages with the often inadequate response of the post-war justice system in Germany to Nazi crimes. In these novels, the detective turns historian in order to solve historic cases. Importantly, readers also follow in the detectives’ footsteps, piecing together a slowly emerging historical jigsaw in ways that compel them to question historical knowledge, history writing, processes of institutionalised commemoration and memory formation, all of which are key issues in Holocaust Studies. The aims of this paper are two-fold. Firstly, I will argue that the significance of this kind of fiction has been insufficiently recognised by critics, perhaps in part because of its connotations as popular fiction. Secondly, I will contend that these texts can be fruitfully analysed by situating them in relation to recent debates about pious and impious Holocaust writing as discussed by Gillian Rose and Matthew Boswell. As a result, these texts act as exemplars of Rose’s contention that impious Holocaust literature succeeds by using new techniques in order to shatter the emotional detachment that has resulted from the use of clichés and familiar tropes in traditional pious accounts; and by placing detectives and readers in a position of moral ambivalence that complicates their understanding of the past on the one hand, and their own moral position on the other.


Author(s):  
Brigitta Hudácskó

Seaside resorts frequently served as locations of murder mysteries in Golden Age detection fiction, since these destinations could provide a diverse clientele, confined to manageably small groups essential to classic detective stories. The fictional seaside town of Wilvercombe serves as the location of Dorothy L. Sayers’s detective novel Have His Carcase (1932), in which Lord Peter Wimsey and detective-story writer Harriet Vane investigate the case of a man found dead on the beach. The location of the body turns out to be a source of confusion: while the detectives expect a traditional locked-room mystery to unfold (albeit in an open-air setting), the death cannot be resolved until the detectives realize that they are working in the wrong genre: instead of a clue-puzzle mystery, they are trapped in a Ruritanian romance, with outlandish tales of intrigue, unlikely members of the Russian aristocracy, and exaggerated and oppressive performances of heterosexual romance. (BH)


2012 ◽  
Vol 8 (S287) ◽  
pp. 199-208
Author(s):  
Anita M. S. Richards

AbstractThis review summarises current observations of masers around evolved stars and models for their location and behaviour, followed by some of the many highlights from the past 5 years. Some of these have been the fruition of long-term monitoring, a vital aspect of study of stars which are both periodically variable and prone to rapid outbursts or transition to a new evolutionary stage. Interferometric imaging of masers provide the highest-resolution probes of the stellar wind, but their exponential amplification and variability means that multiple observations are needed to investigate questions such as what drives the wind from the stellar surface; why does it accelerate slowly over many tens of stellar radii; what causes maser variability. VLBI parallaxes have improved our understanding of individual objects and of Galactic populations. Masers from wide range of binary and post-AGB objects are accessible to sensitive modern instruments, including energetic symbiotic systems. Masers have been detected up to THz frequencies withHerscheland ALMA's ability to resolve a wide range of maser and thermal lines will provide accurate constraints on physical conditions including during dust formation.


2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Jeannette Kamp ◽  
Susan Legene ◽  
Matthias Rossum ◽  
Sebas Rümke

Historians not only have knowledge of history, but by writing about it and engaging with other historians from the past and present, they make history themselves. This companion offers young historians clear guidelines for the different phases of historical research; how do you get a good historical question? How do you engage with the literature? How do you work with sources from the past, from archives to imagery and objects, art, or landscapes? What is the influence of digitalisation of the historical craft? Broad in scope, Writing History! also addresses historians’ traditional support of policy makers and their activity in fields of public history, such as museums, the media, and the leisure sector, and offers support for developing the necessary skills for this wide range of professions.


Author(s):  
David Wiley ◽  
John Levi Hilton III

The term “open pedagogy” has been used in a variety of different ways over the past several decades. In recent years, its use has also become associated with Open Educational Resources (OER). The wide range of competing definitions of open pedagogy, together with its semantic overlap with another underspecified term, open educational practices, makes it difficult to conduct research on the topic of open pedagogy. In making this claim we do not mean to cast doubt on the potential effectiveness of the many pedagogical approaches labeled open. In this article, rather than attempting to argue for a canonical definition of open pedagogy, we propose a new term, “OER-enabled pedagogy,” defined as the set of teaching and learning practices that are only possible or practical in the context of the 5R permissions that are characteristic of OER. We propose criteria used to evaluate whether a form of teaching constitutes OER-enabled pedagogy and analyze several examples of OER-enabled pedagogy with these criteria.


2005 ◽  
Vol 56 (7) ◽  
pp. 645 ◽  
Author(s):  
G. B. Taylor

Hardseededness (seed coat impermeability) is the main seed dormancy mechanism for regulating germination of annual pasture legumes both within and between years. Progress made in Australia over the past 30 years towards an understanding and better utilisation of the mechanism is the subject of this review, together with relevant overseas studies. Although some legumes produce virtually no hard seeds, newly ripened seeds of most cultivated annual pasture legumes are >90% hard when produced under favourable seed maturation conditions. The pattern of seed softening (loss of impermeability) varies widely among legumes both within and between years and is one of the more important considerations in selection programs. The many factors that influence the longevity of seed hardness are described. Differences among legumes in patterns of summer and autumn seed softening, which may influence the extent of seed losses through false breaks of season, are explained in terms of a 2-stage conceptual model of the seed softening process. This model has led to the development of laboratory techniques that effectively simulate field softening behaviour in a wide range of legumes. Different rates of seed imbibition, which may be attributable to a previously unrecognised stage in the seed softening process, and which can offer some further protection against false breaks of season are also described. The wide range of seed softening characteristics that are now recognised provides opportunities for better adapting pasture legumes to particular management systems, including rotations with crops.


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