It Didn't Mean Anything: A Psychoanalytic Reading of American Detective Fiction - Brossura

Howe, Alexander N.

Brossura

ISBN 10: 0786434546 ISBN 13: 9780786434541

Casa editrice: McFarland Publishing, 2008

Riassunto

This critical study of American detective fiction examines the history and development of the detective genre through the lens of psychoanalysis. Applying the ideas of French psychoanalyst Jacques Lacan, the author identifies and categorizes popular works according to the fictional protagonist’s hysteria, obsessive neurosis, perversion or psychosis. The first chapter identifies several instances of hysteria within the fiction of two of the genre’s pioneers, Edgar Allan Poe and Arthur Conan Doyle. Chapter Two traces the development of the hard-boiled detective’s code of honor through the works of Dashiell Hammett, Raymond Chandler, and Mickey Spillane, identifying the often-paradoxical nature of this code and its origins in obsessive neurosis. Chapter Three analyzes the anti-detective fiction of Philip K. Dick in terms of paranoid psychosis, and the final chapter returns to the question of hysteria, taking up the female hard-boiled detectives of author Marcia Muller.

Su questo libro

L'autore:

Alexander N. Howe is an assistant professor of English at the University of the District of Columbia. He has written on Raymond Chandler, Mickey Spillane, and Marcia Muller. He lives in Wheaton, Maryland.

Product Description:

Book by Alexander N Howe

Su questa edizione

• Editore: McFarland Publishing
• Data di pubblicazione: 2008
• ISBN 10: 0786434546
• ISBN 13: 9780786434541
• Rilegatura: Copertina flessibile
• Numero di pagine: 285