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Detective Fiction and the Problem of Knowledge

Perspectives on the Metacognitive Mystery Tale | Antoine Dechêne

Hardcover
2018 Springer International Publishing
Auflage: 1. Auflage
XII, 347 Seiten; XII, 347 p. 1 illus.; 21 cm x 14.8 cm
Sprache: English
ISBN: 978-3-319-94468-5

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This book establishes the genealogy of a subgenre of crime fiction that Antoine Dechêne calls the metacognitive mystery tale. It delineates a corpus of texts presenting 'unreadable' mysteries which, under the deceptively monolithic appearance of subverting traditional detective story conventions, offer a multiplicity of motifs – the overwhelming presence of chance, the unfulfilled quest for knowledge, the urban stroller lost in a labyrinthine text – that generate a vast array of epistemological and ontological uncertainties. Analysing the works of a wide variety of authors, including Edgar Allan Poe, Jorge Luis Borges, and Henry James, this book is vital reading for scholars of detective fiction.

This book establishes the genealogy of a subgenre of crime fiction that Antoine Dechêne calls the metacognitive mystery tale. It delineates a corpus of texts presenting 'unreadable' mysteries which, under the deceptively monolithic appearance of subverting traditional detective story conventions, offer a multiplicity of motifs – the overwhelming presence of chance, the unfulfilled quest for knowledge, the urban stroller lost in a labyrinthine text – that generate a vast array of epistemological and ontological uncertainties. Analysing the works of a wide variety of authors, including Edgar Allan Poe, Jorge Luis Borges, and Henry James, this book is vital reading for scholars of detective fiction.

I. The Problem of Knowledge.- 1. From the Metaphysical Detective Story to the Metacognitive Mystery Tale.- 2. Enigmas of the Sublime and the Grotesque.- II. From the
flâneur
to the Stalker.- 3. Edgar Allan Poe's "The Man of the Crowd".- 4. Jorge Luis Borges's Textual Labyrinths.- 5. Paul Auster's
The New York Trilogy
.- III The Grotesque.- 6. Herman Melville's "Bartleby, the Scrivener: A Story of Wall Street".- 7. Samuel Beckett's
Molloy
.- 8. Roberto Bolaño's
Monsieur Pain
.
- IV. The Sublime.- 9. Henry James's "The Figure in the Carpet".-10. Horacio Quiroga's "The Pursued".- V. In Lieu of a Conclusion: Nathaniel Hawthorne's "Wakefield".

Antoine Dechêne
holds a PhD from the Université de Liège, Belgium. His research deals with all aspects of the metaphysical detective story in the USA and in France. He is co-editor with Michel Delville of the first volume dedicated to the genre in French:
Le Thriller métaphysique d'Edgar Allan Poe à nos jours
(2016).