University at Buffalo 3 credits English
For decades, mystery novels have been dismissed as “potboilers,” not worthy of serious critical attention. Whatever one may think of the literary merits of mysteries, there is no denying the fact that they have proved to be a remarkably resilient and diverse form of popular fiction. This course surveys a selection of both the most important examples of mystery writing and recent attempts to update the genre. Our focus will be on the narrative techniques used by these writers to create character, structure plot, and maintain suspense. We can tell a lot about a society from the way it discusses crime and punishment. Therefore, we will also study how novels and short stories by Edgar Allan Poe, Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, Agatha Christie, Dashiell Hammett, Thomas Harris and others provide miniature social histories of the periods in which they were written. For example: Prof. D. Schmid, Mystery Novel as Cultural Artifact For decades, mystery novels have been dismissed as “potboilers,” not worthy of serious critical attention. Whatever one may think of the literary merits of mysteries, there is no denying the fact that they have proved to be a remarkably resilient and diverse form of popular fiction. This course will survey a selection of both the most important examples of mystery writing and recent attempts to “update” the genre. Our focus will be on the narrative techniques used by these writers to create character, structure plot, and maintain suspense. We can tell a lot about a society from the way it discusses crime and punishment. Therefore, we will also study how these novels and short stories provide miniature social histories of the periods in which they were written.
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