This dissertation examines detective fiction as a form which has evolved in close relation to the modern city from the nineteenth century to the present. The argument runs that the link between the urban setting and the detective story is an essential characteristic of the form which has been undervalued in the study of detective fiction. The importance of this relationship to the genre is delineated and emphasized through the use of representative examples, beginning with Edgar Allan Poe and then moving to Arthur Conan Doyle, Dashiell Hammett and finally a number of later writers in the field, all of whom use the city as setting for the narrative, as well as a problematizing element. The city can be a comfortably known environment wherein the detective operates, but it can also be a labyrinth of confusing forces and misleading clues. For the detective, whose goal is the solution of the puzzle, this environment causes by turn reassurance and distress. In a comparison between these authors, fundamental differences pertaining to the detective as individual and his interaction with the city are explored, and a development is described which sees the detective becoming increasingly unsure of the city and of his position within it. In terms of the genre, this relation shows how the detective becomes a figure who has to be dealt with in ever more complex terms, a shedding of the sureties of the past. On the personal level, the detective becomes a symbol of the modern individual in the city, who tries to make some sense of the living environment which the city offers, and the difficulties which the city creates for perception of the environment and the development of self-realization in terms of this environment. The study therefore operates on three levels: the formal, where the epistemology of the detective form is traced from early confidence to later manifestations of disruption of these confidences; the socio-urban, where the representation of the city is described as it changes; and the linked concern operating on the individualistic level, the development of the detective as unitary individual and "hero".
| Identifer | oai:union.ndltd.org:netd.ac.za/oai:union.ndltd.org:uct/oai:localhost:11427/18264 |
| Date | January 1993 |
| Creators | Rossouw, Jean-Pierre |
| Contributors | Marx, Lesley |
| Publisher | University of Cape Town, Faculty of Humanities, Department of English Language and Literature |
| Source Sets | South African National ETD Portal |
| Language | English |
| Detected Language | English |
| Type | Master Thesis, Masters, MA |
| Format | application/pdf |
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