Zbrodnicze umysły i muzyczne harmonie. „Tajemnica Edwina Drooda” Charlesa Dickensa jako utwór protodetektywistyczny

The paper analyses the role of music in Dickens’ last, unfinished novel and its relation to the criminal puzzle which — for obvious reason — was left unsolved. Contrary to the traditional cultural associations (harmony, beauty, order), music in The Mystery of Edwin Drood is related to darkness, which shrouds the places where it is performed (the cathedral, Jasper’s room); it also functions as the background of various disharmonies (physical indisposition, quarrel, signs of hatred, fear). The theme of the only two religious songs that are referred to is sin and wickedness. On the one hand, considering the fact that music is John Jasper’s domain, the discordance not only functions as an “ethical metaphor” and externalization of the man’s character, but also points to him as the murderer of his nephew. On the other hand, the aforementioned songs foreground the motif of repentance or turning away from sin, which undermines the ostensibly obvious conclusions concerning Jasper’s guilt. Similarly to the detective novel of the (much later) Golden Age period, the hints prompting the puzzle’s solution are provided here, though they are not univocal, leaving a shadow of doubt as to the guilt of the most obvious suspect. Yet, contrary to the genre conventions, the clues appear mainly on the implied level of communication, available to the implied reader deciphering textual patterns and not merely “observing” the presented reality.

Text Fragmentation in the novel “Troubled Blood” by Robert Galbraith

The article examines specifics of fragmentation in contemporary works of fiction. Identifying elements that connect heterogeneous episodes or fragments can reshape readers’ experience and serve as a key for interpretation. The analysis of the detective novel “Troubled Blood” by R. Galbraith has demonstrated that fragmentation is realized at different text levels and in different compositional and stylistic forms, namely, within the categories of temporality and locality, in the development of plot lines, within the categories of description and reasoning, in dialogues, polylogues, internal monologues. The category of intertextuality plays a special role in the fragmentation of the novel under study. Non-linear narrative, intended lack of chronological and psychological sequence serve to effectively introduce the main focus of detective fiction – suspense and puzzle-solving; these literary devices also contribute to its unique narrative perspective.

The symbolism of space in the novel the chronicle of the provincial theatre by Pavao Pavličić

The paper analyses the shaping of space in the novel The Chronicle of the Provincial Theatre by Pavao Pavličić. Postmodern giving priority to marginal categories is manifested in the following ways: national and world history reflect the life of the provincial town of Varoš; a theatre was built on the edge of the town close to the Danube River; the caretaker’s family lives in the theatrical building, whereby the boundaries of public and private space are wiped off; instead of the cultural heterotopia, the theatre of Varoš became an institution with numerous inartistic functions; the family and historical chronicle contains the elements of a detective novel (a stolen angel from the theatrical dome was being sought for almost a century, as long as the main character’s search for his personal identity lasted). Geographic figures form the symbolic layer of the novel: the theatre as a cultural and social figure of the mainland, the Danube River as a link with the countries of the Central and Eastern Europe and the aerial image which redefines the landscape of Varoš. Given these characteristics, Pavličić’s novel belongs to the variant of the new historical novel in Croatian literature.

Detecting Post-Nuclear Crisis in Hanna Jameson’s The Last

Hanna Jameson’s post-apocalyptic detective novel, The Last (2019), addresses contemporary issues that affect us on both a collective and an individual level. The author diagnoses the denial of nuclearism and calls for an awareness of the nuclear age combined with the looming threat of climate change. The novel negotiates alternative strategies for the treatment of crisis brought about by the nuclear attack and borrows many of the thematic and structural elements from twentieth-century nuclear fictions in which the apocalypse is not necessarily regarded in negative terms but as a chance for regeneration. The events of the post-nuclear months in a Swiss hotel are narrated by an American historian whose written account serves several goals. It gives the illusion of delaying crisis, but it also reveals his fears and traumas conjured up by radioactive spectres. There are two different types of narratives at work, the narrative of the crisis and that of the investigation. The narrator-protagonist becomes obsessed with finding the solution to a murder mystery, which in a metaphorical sense is to give a soothing answer to the death of millions. However, this attempt keeps failing, and thus the narrative of the crisis devours all kinds of rational initiatives to resolve chaos. In order to elaborate on the psychological impact of the post-nuclear crisis in subject construction, I do not only examine the character of the amateur detective of the whodunit whose intervention aims to restore order, but I also apply Gabriele Schwab’s concepts of post-nuclear subjectivity and nuclear hauntology.

O funcionamento discursivo dos textos de contracapa da “Coleção Vampiro”

The present article presents a comprehensive study on the discursive functioning of the detective novels back cover texts of the Coleção Vampiro (CV), published every month in Portugal between 1947 and 2008. From a descriptive and linguistic perspective which assumes the discourse types (Bronckart 1997, 2008) as a category of analysis, they are analysed the back cover texts of 104 volumes from the CV (14,6% of the collection), adopting a mixed methodology which integrates both quantitative and qualitative methods. It is concluded that, in the first part of the collection, the book cover texts present a predominantly expositive dimension as well as a strong implication of both the speaker and the receiver, which contributes to the dissemination and popularization of the detective novel genre. In the second part, the texts present a predominantly narrative dimension and they are marked by the erasure of the speaker and the receiver, corresponding almost entirely to the synopsis of the detective novel in question

Randomness and Political Complexity in the Contemporary Arab Novel

This essay examines the concept of randomness in three novels by contemporary Arab novelists, employing chaos theory and complexity theory. The three novels are Lebanese Rabie Gaber's dystopian novel Beirutus: Underground City ( Beirutus: Madīna Taḥt al-Arḍ, 2005), Egyptian Ezzedine Choukri Fishere's realistic novel Exit ( Bāb al-Khurūj, 2012), and Algerian Yasmina Khadra's detective novel What are Monkeys Waiting for? ( Qu'attendent les singes, 2014). Although they belong to different genres, all three are speculative novels and present different forms of political-security complexity and chaos in the contemporary Arab world. They represent unpredictable, random events that both resonate with and anticipate forthcoming events and political changes in the Arab world. Exit, for instance, represents the unexpected downfall of the Muslim Brotherhood in Egypt and the return of the military rule after the 2011 revolution, and Beirutus the unexpected rubbish and environmental crisis in 2016 in Lebanon, while What are Monkeys Waiting for? anticipates the contemporary political turmoil in Algeria. Randomness and unpredictability in the three novels are used as a means of political projection and prediction, and as narrative strategies of literary activism against repressive realities and authoritarianism. By representing the unpredictable, Gaber, Fishere and Khadra implicitly incite resistance by warning of appalling forthcoming realities.

Efrem Podgaits: “Music Must be Written Like a Detective Novel”

Один из ведущих московских композиторов Ефрем Иосифович Подгайц поделился с Ольгой Булычёвой воспоминаниями о годах детства и юности, а также рассказал о своих методах сочинения музыки

‘Not at all afraid’: Queer Temporality and the School Detective Story

Kate Haffey has recently argued that if queer time can be seen as a turning away from narrative coherence, it suggests new possibilities for considering narrative structures more generally. Combining the narratively rigid structures of the school story and the detective novel, the four novels discussed in this article – Gladys Mitchell’s Laurels are Poison (1942), Josephine Tey’s Miss Pym Disposes (1946), Shirley Jackson’s Hangsaman (1951), and Joan Lindsay’s Picnic at Hanging Rock (1967) – disrupt conventional understandings of linear time. Depicting not only queer, or potentially queer, characters, but a queer phenomenological perspective, they challenge reader expectations with a focus on aporias and gaps, whether in terms of trauma (Jackson), the blurring of fact and fiction (Lindsay), or the prolonged delay of both crime and resolution (Tey). These novels draw attention to the insufficiency of texts to capture experience, and the inadequacy of textual authority. As such, they reveal the extent to which mid-twentieth-century women’s fiction was able to challenge the genres and narrative structures with which it was most closely associated.