EWL 332 Detective Narratives
This course introduces students to the genre of detective fiction and its development in film and literature from its origins in the nineteenth century to present-day postcolonial and postmodern re-writings of the form. Students will examine the diverse national and cultural conditions that contributed to detective fiction’s emergence in nineteenth-century America and to its continued popularity around the globe today. They will also read works of psychology to explore the roots, development, and methodologies shared between psychanalysis and detective fiction. Works by Edgar Allan Poe, Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, Sigmund Freud, Alfred Hitchcock, Umberto Eco, Kazuo Ishiguro, Paul Auster, and Jamyang Norbu will be discussed, as well as selected essays in literary criticism, postcolonial theory, and narratology.