This thesis provides the first extensive queer reading of a 'Golden Age' British detective fiction writer. The aim of this thesis is to assess queer potential in texts published by Agatha Christie between 1920 and 1952. Human identity can be read as self-consciously constructed in Christie's novels, which were written in a context of two world wars, advances in technology and communication, and what Michel Foucault called the 'medicalization' of Western culture. The self-conscious stereotyping in Christie's prose undermines her texts' conservative appeal to the status quo. Chapter One justifies this project's critique of identity essentialism in the texts by considering the manufacturing of 'Agatha Christie' as a widely-read celebrity author. Reading Christie's authorial identity as something established and refined through a market-driven response to readers' expectations and a conscious engagement with earlier forms of detective fiction provides space for reading identity itself as a stylized, performative, and sometimes parodic theme within the texts. In subsequent chapters, employing theoretical insights from Eve Kosofsky Sedgwick, Judith Butler, and Lee Edelman, I explore Christie's participation in contemporary debates surrounding masculinity, femininity, and the importance of the family in shaping individual identity. Finally, I consider Christie's reputation in the twenty-first century by exploring nostalgic television adaptations of her work. Comparing the presentation of 'queer' characters in the literary texts to the adaptations' use of explicit homosexual themes and characters, I conclude that there is a stronger potential for 'queering' identity in the former. As the first full queer reading of a 'Golden Age' detective novelist, this thesis expands queer notions of archive and canonicity: few scholars to date have considered mainstream literary texts without overt LGBTQ+ themes or characters from a queer perspective. Given Christie's global reach and appeal, locating queerness in her texts means understanding queerness as fundamental to everyday culture. This means engaging with a subversive potential in twentieth century middlebrow conservatism.

The article discusses the adaptation of the Poirot novel Appointment with Death, comparing the original novel with the respective adaptations for television, the cinema, and the theatre. While all adaptations share certain elements with the original source, it is shown that the motion picture starring Peter Ustinov remains most faithful to the novel despite changing some plot details and Ustinov’s performance that is unlike Christie’s original vision of the detective’s appearance. On the other hand, the television series – though retaining the general plot structure – deviates significantly from the novel in many ways, including adding new characters, altering the entire backstories, and altering the murderer’s motifs and approach. Eventually, the theatre version (adapted by Christie herself) is a radical rework of the novel by eliminating the Poirot character completely from the story as well as changing the murderer’s identity.

Agatha Christie set a number of her popular novels in British colonies in the Middle East, Africa and the Caribbean. While there is a lot of research about the portrayal of the colonised in the Middle East, there is only little to be found on those of Africa and the Caribbean. Therefore, this thesis aims to compare the portrayals of the Middle Eastern, African and Caribbean colonised by analysing Christie's The Man in the Brown Suit, Murder in Mesopotamia, Appointment with Deah, and A Caribbean Mystery.

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Enid Blyton and Agatha Christie were the most successful British women writers of their time. Christie and Blyton were contemporaries, living and writing in the United Kingdom during the first half of the twentieth century. This study takes into consideration these similarities in its examination of the depiction of dominant discourses in relation to emergent, alternative and oppositional discourses in their writing. This thesis suggests that while Enid Blyton and Agatha Christie offer alternatives to the dominant patriarchal discourses of the British Empire in the first half of the twentieth century, they show allegiance, too, to the dominant discourses of their time. Specific consideration is given to the portrayal of discourses concerned with gender, feminism, classism, British colonialism, racism, and xenophobia in their writing. The work of Enid Blyton and Agatha Christie was extremely popular in their time and still is today. Their important contribution to popular literature in England in the early twentieth century justifies a study of a selection of their work in relation to detective fiction and children’s literature as well as to studies of social history that include the investigation of how dominant discourse is both endorsed and challenged. / Thesis (DLitt)--University of Pretoria, 2010. / English / unrestricted

阿嘉莎•克莉絲蒂一般被視為是一位傳統及經典的偵探小說作家。此類小說家通常會在小說裡強調「最後的真相」以及一個穩定社會秩序的回歸。然而，在此論文中，我將試著去證明克莉絲蒂的作品其實已超越了傳統偵探小說家的境界。由於她另類地在小說裡鋪陳「不確定真相」並且展現了一個介於工業社會以及後工業「風險社會」現代化變遷過程中的不穩定社會秩序，她甚至可以說是一位「反身性」的現代主義作家(“reflexive” modernist)呈現「高度現代性」(high modernity)的社會寫實。 本論文共分為六個章節；主要探討了克莉絲蒂對英國工業社會的「現代化進程」(modernizing process)的反身性及批判性的思維。在她的小說裡，所呈現的所謂「現代化進程」，包含了對理性真理的建構、規律化的時間及空間實踐以及國家之各法制機關的運作。在克莉絲蒂的小說裡，此過程與深受資本主義所影響下的工業化以及都市化的英國社會的關係是密不可分的。 因此，貝克(Ulrich Beck)對「風險社會」(risk society)以及「反身性現代化」(reflexive modernization)的見解，被用來廣泛地討論克莉絲蒂的作品。此外，其他談論「現代性」的幾位學者，例如哈維(David Harvey)、列菲弗爾(Henri Lefebvre)、瑟鐸(Michel de Certeau)以及班雅明(Walter Benjamin)的理論也被運用來解析她的文本。之所以涉及到這幾位學者的學說的原因，主要是他們都對工業社會下的理性化及紀律化的日常生活提出他們的質疑，也對現代科技及都市生活影響下的全新空間/時間的感知，發表了他們的見解。這些都有助於以文化研究的方法來暸解克莉絲蒂在其小說裡所呈現的社會情景。 總之，本論文的主要目標是要探討克莉絲蒂的小說文本與小說的社會背景兩者的關係。以「高度現代性」的理論架構，而非以傳統結構主義以及文類研究的方式，來審視她的小說。藉此，我期盼克莉絲蒂的小說能在英美現代文學作品的研究裡，能夠被重視並且能有重新的評價。 / Agatha Christie is often regarded as a traditional and classic detective writer who accentuates an ultimate truth and promotes the restoration of a stable social order in her novels. Yet, my study attempts to evidence that, with her writings transcending the limits of traditional detective fiction, she acted as a “reflexive” modernist by alternatively dealing with an uncertainty truth and demonstrating a shaky social order in a transitive changing reality from an industrial society to a post-industrial risk society. My dissertation is divided into six chapters, which focus on examining her reflexive and critical consciousness of a modernizing process, including the construction and deconstruction of a rational truth, disciplinary spatiotemporal practices, and legal institutions in her contemporary society of industrialization and urbanization under the impact of capitalism. The study of Christie’s works will be based on Ulrich Beck’s notions of ‘risk society” and “reflexive modernization.” The theories of other modernist scholars, including those of David Harvey, Henri Lefebvre, Michel de Certeau, and Walter Benjamin, are also applied to witness Christie’s transformation from a conventional detective writer to a modernist one. These four theorists interrogate the rational and disciplinary control of everyday life in an industrial society and deal with brand new spatio-temporal perceptions rising from the development of advanced technologies and modern city life. Their theoretical perspectives are helpful to analyze Christie’s texts. Christie’s writings exhibit a changing social reality, a change from an early modernity to a later development of high modernity. Other than applying traditional approaches like structuralism and genre study, I employ a high-modernist perspective to discuss the interactions between Christie’s literary texts and their social background. My study is expected to relocate Christie as an experimental writer in the literary history of detective fiction.

This comparative study focuses on the detective genre and is conducted through literary analysis with a feminist critical perspective of two of its most iconic protagonists, Sherlock Holmes and Miss Marple, created by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle in 1887 and Agatha Christie in 1930 respectively. The purpose is to attempt to establish the effect of the gender differences on these two protagonists. Both Holmes and Miss Marple are deemed as iconic in the detective genre, but the protagonists do not have similar experiences and are created by authors of different genders. Thus, the focus is to explore how gender differences are represented in the literary texts A Study in Scarlet (1887), “A Scandal in Bohemia” (1891), and The Murder at the Vicarage (1930) when it comes to their work as detectives. By using a feminist critical perspective and with the help of previous research, the differences in three central issues, that is, work methods, attitudes and method of disguise, are established. The most prominent result from the analysis is that Miss Marple has to work independently from the police force and trust another character, Leonard Clement, with what she knows hoping that Clement will use her observations to make the case move forward. By contrast, Holmes is approached by clients and even assists the police force in investigations, while Miss Marple is dismissed because of gender discrimination and ageism when she reaches out to the police force. Miss Marple is clearly a victim of gender discrimination and ageism, while Holmes is seen as eccentric but fully competent as a detective. Holmes is even described as having “extraordinary powers” while Miss Marple is described as an “old pussy” in a derogatory manner. Therefore, the results are that there is a significant difference in attitude where Holmes as a man encounters more positive attitudes and Miss Marple as a woman encounters more negative attitudes, all because of gender discrimination and ageism. These results are of great importance as it reveals what gender differences Holmes and Miss Marple encounter in their literary texts. It opens up the opportunity for more research in gender differences and gender discrimination in comparisons between protagonists. That Miss Marple is successful in the end, however, functions as a feminist statement.

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