The history of detective fiction has frequently centred on three key figures: Edgar Allan Poe, Wilkie Collins and Arthur Conan Doyle. These writers hold a privileged place in the canon of detective fiction and represent key sites in a linear narrative of development which has often overlooked the complexity and variability of the detective genre. This dissertation explores the disappearance of female writers from the critical history of detective fiction. Focusing on the mystery and detective narratives of Mary Elizabeth Braddon, LT Meade, Baroness Emmuska Orczy and CL Pirkis, this project aims to restore these overlooked authors to critical view. As this dissertation will argue, the erasure of these writers (among others) from critical histories of detective fiction has led to studies of the genre being based on a limited data set. This unstable foundation has resulted in a number of problematic assumptions about the nascent detective genre; namely, that it is conservative, prescriptive and phallocentric. By exploring the work of overlooked and forgotten writers, this project aims to explore the paradigms which have governed their disappearance; at the same time, this dissertation will examine established critical models and interrogate entrenched assumptions and approaches to detective fiction. Chapter one explores the figure of the female servant as household spy in Braddon's novels and considers her role in opposition to Braddon's male detectives. Chapter two focuses on the collaboratively-authored crime fiction of LT Meade; in particular, it addresses the battle for narrative agency and control which occurs in her texts and examines the breakdown of gender and genre roles. Chapter three considers Orczy's work in the context of the anxiety of the author and explores the potentially restrictive nature of genre fiction. Finally, chapter four addresses CL Pirkis's detective fiction alongside her work in other genres and uses these texts to interrogate traditional models of detective fiction.

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Thesis advisor: John L. Mahoney / An exploration of the spirituality present in seleceted poems of William Wordsworth. Occasionally reference his personal relationship to and influence of the Anglican Church, but is a study of the way he developed his own spirituality, not an argument for or against his classification as a "Christian poet." / Thesis (BA) — Boston College, 2005. / Submitted to: Boston College. College of Arts and Sciences. / Discipline: English. / Discipline: College Honors Program.

Protagonist Curtis Dorgan was sitting on his front porch when a Sunset City mail truck delivered a letter from the Idea Salesman that would literally change his life. Suddenly thrust into an existence that never quite feels like his own, he finds himself playing the role of husband and father, and assumes a high-paying position at a downtown capping company. Disoriented and with very little knowledge of himself or the people around him he embraces his newfound life, is promoted at work, and finds himself quickly falling in love with his wife and children. But when an unknown villain invades Sunset City seeking the destruction of the Idea Salesman and begins wreaking havoc across town, with the help of a few hard-nosed detectives and some close friends, he slowly comes to learn the true reason behind his new life. Curtis Dorgan has been revised, and he has been called upon by the elusive Idea Salesman to live out his destiny and save the town from its newest and most dangerous threat. / by Daniel Kennard. / Thesis (M.F.A.)--Florida Atlantic University, 2011. / Includes bibliography. / Electronic reproduction. Boca Raton, Fla., 2011. Mode of access: World Wide Web. FboU

The purpose of this thesis is to explore the reasons why readers choose to read detective fiction. Taking Thomas De Quincey's satirical identification of the aesthetic quality of murder, I look at Edgar Allan Poe's detective fiction to find a non-satiric version of the same argument that emphasises the balancing quality of the ethical to the aesthetic. W.H. Auden's essay “The Guilty Vicarage” offers an argument concerning the reader's position in relation to these opposite components. I explore the ways in which Auden's arguments build into Freud's understanding of guilt, daydreams, the moral conscience, jokes, the uncanny and the death drive, and how these can be applied to the genre to help illustrate the reader's experience. Concurrent to this I offer an analysis of how the parallel developments in literary theory, particularly those of Barthes and Shklovsky, can be incorporated to enrich the understanding of these Freudian positions within the modern reader's experience. It is my intention to open up a field of study within the genre that differs from the traditional Marxist approach. Particular emphasis is placed on the role of the experience of pleasure found when moments of commonality between the aesthetic and the ethical are reached– how these are often unsatisfactory– necessitating a repetition of the literary experience. It is my argument that such an approach to the reader's position within the genre has not been explored in such a detailed fashion, centring as it does upon the active role of guilt in pleasure felt by the reader as the motivation to repeat. To illustrate that this is an argument that is applicable to different historical phases of detective fiction the study undertakes analysis of the following authors: Arthur Conan Doyle, Wilkie Collins, Agatha Christie, Raymond Chandler, Graham Greene and John Fowles.

Thesis (Ph. D.)--University of Chicago, Dept of East Asian Languages and Civilizations, June 2001. / Includes bibliographical references. Also available on the Internet.

Thesis (Ph. D.)--Ohio State University, 2008. / Title from first page of PDF file. Includes bibliographical references (p. 177-182).

Thesis (Ph. D.)--University of California, San Diego, 2007. / Vita. Includes bibliographical references (leaves 167-179).

Thesis (Ph. D.)--Florida State University, 2004. / Advisor: Dr. Virgil Suarez, Florida State University, College of Arts and Sciences, Dept. of English. Title and description from dissertation home page (viewed Jan. 12, 2005).

Thesis (Ph. D.)--University of Hong Kong, 2000. / Includes bibliographical references (leaves 304-317).