Certainty and Ambiguity in Global Mystery Fiction

Certainty and Ambiguity in Global Mystery Fiction PDF Author: John J. Han
Publisher: Bloomsbury Publishing USA
ISBN:
Category : Literary Criticism
Languages : en
Pages : 289

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Book Description
Mystery fiction as a genre renders moral judgments not only about detectives and criminals but also concerning the cultural structures within which these mysteries unfold. In contrast to other volumes which examine morality in crime fiction through the lenses of personal guilt and personal justice, Certainty and Ambiguity in Global Mystery Fiction analyzes the effect of moral imagination on the moral structures implicit in the genre. In recent years, public awareness has attended to the relationship between social structures and justice, and this collection centers on how personal ethics and social ethics are bound together amidst the shifting moral landscapes of mystery fiction. Contributors discuss the interplay between personal guilt and social guilt – considering morality and justice on an individual level and at a societal level – using frameworks of certainty and ambiguity. They show how individual characters in works by Agatha Christie, Gabriel García Márquez, Natsuo Kirino, F.H. Batacan, and Stephen King, among others, may view their moral standing with certainty but clash with the established mores of their culture. Featuring essays on Japanese, Filipino, Indian, and Colombian mystery fiction, as well as American and British fiction, this volume analyzes social guilt and justice across cultures, showing how individuals grapple with the certainty, and, at times, the moral ambiguity, of their respective cultures.

Certainty and Ambiguity in Global Mystery Fiction

Certainty and Ambiguity in Global Mystery Fiction PDF Author: John J. Han
Publisher: Bloomsbury Publishing USA
ISBN:
Category : Literary Criticism
Languages : en
Pages : 289

Get Book

Book Description
Mystery fiction as a genre renders moral judgments not only about detectives and criminals but also concerning the cultural structures within which these mysteries unfold. In contrast to other volumes which examine morality in crime fiction through the lenses of personal guilt and personal justice, Certainty and Ambiguity in Global Mystery Fiction analyzes the effect of moral imagination on the moral structures implicit in the genre. In recent years, public awareness has attended to the relationship between social structures and justice, and this collection centers on how personal ethics and social ethics are bound together amidst the shifting moral landscapes of mystery fiction. Contributors discuss the interplay between personal guilt and social guilt – considering morality and justice on an individual level and at a societal level – using frameworks of certainty and ambiguity. They show how individual characters in works by Agatha Christie, Gabriel García Márquez, Natsuo Kirino, F.H. Batacan, and Stephen King, among others, may view their moral standing with certainty but clash with the established mores of their culture. Featuring essays on Japanese, Filipino, Indian, and Colombian mystery fiction, as well as American and British fiction, this volume analyzes social guilt and justice across cultures, showing how individuals grapple with the certainty, and, at times, the moral ambiguity, of their respective cultures.

Certainty and Ambiguity in Global Mystery Fiction

Certainty and Ambiguity in Global Mystery Fiction PDF Author: John J. Han
Publisher:
ISBN:
Category : Ambiguity in literature
Languages : en
Pages : 0

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Book Description
"This essay collection explores mystery fiction as a genre that renders moral judgments not only about detectives and criminals but also concerning the cultural structures within which these mysteries unfold"--

We Must Have Certainty

We Must Have Certainty PDF Author: J. Kenneth Van Dover
Publisher: Susquehanna University Press
ISBN: 9781575910918
Category : Literary Criticism
Languages : en
Pages : 240

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Book Description
We Must Have Certainty surveys the development of the genre of the detective story from its origins in the mid-nineteenth century to its current profile in the early twenty-first century. It locates a principal appeal of the genre in the nature of the world that the detective necessarily inhabits: a world of more or less realistic violence and excitement and, at the same time, a world that always, in the end, makes sense. It suggests that there is a significance to a popular narrative formula that requires that an initial world of suspicion and uncertainty be inevitably transformed by the detective into a world of clarity and order. Though scholarship in the field is acknowledged, the author's citations are most often from detective stories themselves. The essays are written in an accessible style; those who have read a few novels in the genre, as well as those who have read many, will find the book stimulating and provocative.

Anatomy of Murder

Anatomy of Murder PDF Author: Carl Darryl Malmgren
Publisher: Popular Press
ISBN: 9780879728427
Category : Literary Criticism
Languages : en
Pages : 228

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Book Description
Mystery fiction takes place in a centered world, one whose most distinctive characteristic is motivation (of behavior and signs). Built on a faith in foundations, it insists upon the solidity of social life, the validity of social conventions, and the sanctity of signs. Mystery assures us that motives exist for both words and deeds.".

The Bible in Crime Fiction and Drama

The Bible in Crime Fiction and Drama PDF Author: Caroline Blyth
Publisher: Bloomsbury Publishing
ISBN: 0567686469
Category : Religion
Languages : en
Pages : 208

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Book Description
The Bible has always enjoyed notoriety within the genres of crime fiction and drama; numerous authors have explicitly drawn on biblical traditions as thematic foci to explore social anxieties about violence, religion, and the search for justice and truth. The Bible in Crime Fiction and Drama brings together a multi-disciplinary scholarship from the fields of biblical interpretation, literary criticism, criminology, and studies in film and television to discuss international texts and media spanning the beginning of the 20th century to the present day. The volume concludes with an afterword by crime writer and academic, Liam McIvanney. These essays explore both explicit and implicit engagements between biblical texts and crime narratives, analysing the multiple layers of meaning that such engagements can produce – cross-referencing Sherlock Holmes with the murder mystery in the Book of Tobit, observing biblical violence through the eyes of Christian fundamentalists in Henning Mankell's Before the Frost, catching the thread of homily in the serial murders of Se7en, or analysing biblical sexual violence in light of television crime procedurals. The contributors also raise intriguing questions about the significance of the Bible as a religious and cultural text – its association with the culturally pervasive themes of violence, (im)morality, and redemption, and its relevance as a symbol of the (often fraught) location that religion occupies within contemporary secular culture.

Adventure, Mystery, and Romance

Adventure, Mystery, and Romance PDF Author: John G. Cawelti
Publisher: University of Chicago Press
ISBN: 022614870X
Category : Literary Criticism
Languages : en
Pages : 344

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Book Description
In this first general theory for the analysis of popular literary formulas, John G. Cawelti reveals the artistry that underlies the best in formulaic literature. Cawelti discusses such seemingly diverse works as Mario Puzo's The Godfather, Dorothy Sayers's The Nine Tailors, and Owen Wister's The Virginian in the light of his hypotheses about the cultural function of formula literature. He describes the most important artistic characteristics of popular formula stories and the differences between this literature and that commonly labeled "high" or "serious" literature. He also defines the archetypal patterns of adventure, mystery, romance, melodrama, and fantasy, and offers a tentative account of their basis in human psychology.

The Rhetoric of Modernist Fiction

The Rhetoric of Modernist Fiction PDF Author: Morton Levitt
Publisher: UPNE
ISBN: 9781584655008
Category : Fiction
Languages : en
Pages : 222

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Book Description
A wide-ranging response to The Rhetoric of Fiction.

International Crime in the 20th Century

International Crime in the 20th Century PDF Author: P. Knepper
Publisher: Springer
ISBN: 0230342523
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 234

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Book Description
Between 1919 and 1939, crime received a prominent place on the international public agenda. This book explores the blueprint for twenty-first century international crime prevention - The League of Nations approach - which established institutions for confronting dangerous drugs, traffic in women and terrorist violence.

The Fictional World of Javier Marías

The Fictional World of Javier Marías PDF Author: Marta Pérez-Carbonell
Publisher: BRILL
ISBN: 9004310975
Category : Literary Criticism
Languages : en
Pages : 216

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Book Description
The Fictional World of Javier Marías examines the origin and meaning of uncertainty in the key works of Spain’s leading contemporary novelist by engaging with the many language-related issues common to his narrative.

An Uncertain Certainty

An Uncertain Certainty PDF Author: Graham Buxton
Publisher: Wipf and Stock Publishers
ISBN: 161097221X
Category : Religion
Languages : en
Pages : 254

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Book Description
Many people in Christian ministry are tired of simplistic certainties; what they need is permission to live with uncertainty, with mystery, ambiguity, and paradox. Because we live in a world that is far removed from the modernist version of reality, with its rational, clinical, and superficial presentation of life, we need the courage and wisdom to embrace the presence of uncertainties in the midst of certainty. In this book, the author offers snapshots of a number of central Christian topics--God, the gospel, the church, salvation, ministry--inviting us to treat them as features of a landscape to explore rather than a set of propositional statements to sign up to. Each chapter--short enough to provoke interest and curiosity--will be a catalyst for deeper reflection and enquiry, inviting us to discover a new freedom in ministry as we embrace a more generous "both-and" perspective in place of a more narrow "either-or" interpretation of the Christian faith. In the process, we may find ourselves rediscovering "the Life we have lost in living" as we imaginatively participate in the life, ministry, and mystery of the triune God of grace in our midst.