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Dorothy L. Sayers was one of the "Queens of Crime." Alongside
writers like Agatha Christie, she perfected the whodunnit, but also
used the genre to explore social, ethical, and emotional matters.
Her characters, particularly Lord Peter Wimsey and his
investigative partner Harriet Vane, struggle with the complexities
of life and love in a rapidly changing world while solving some of
the most intricate and complex mysteries ever offered to the
reading public. Sayers was also an important theoretician of
detective fiction, a religious dramatist, a public intellectual,
and one of the 20th century's most important translators of Dante.
While focusing on her mystery fiction, this companion offers a full
view of all aspects of Sayers's career. It is an ideal introduction
for readers new to Sayers's diverse and rewarding body of work, and
an invaluable companion for her many fans.
Crime fiction is one of the most popular literary genres and has
been for more than a century. At the heart of almost all forms of
mysteries-from the Golden Age puzzler to the contemporary police
procedural, from American hardboiled fiction to the Japanese
timetable mystery-is the investigator. He-or, increasingly, she-can
be a private eye, a police officer, or a general busybody. But
whatever forms these investigators take, they are the key element
of crime fiction. Criminals and their crimes come and go, while our
attention is captured by these fascinating characters who exist at
the intersection of so many different literary and social roles.
100 Greatest Literary Detectives offers a selection of the most
influential, important, and intriguing fictional sleuths-amateur or
professional-from around the world. From Sherlock Holmes to Harry
Hole, Kinsey Millhone to Kiyoshi Mitarai, the detectives profiled
here give readers a broader picture of one of fiction's most
popular genres. Each entry summarizes the distinctive features of
notable investigators and their approaches to crime, provides a
brief outline of major features of their fictional careers, and
makes a case for their importance based on literary-historical
impact, novelty, uniqueness, aesthetic quality, or cultural
resonance. The characters profiled here include Lew Archer, Martin
Beck, Father Brown, Brother Cadfael, Adam Dalgliesh, Mike Hammer,
Miss Jane Marple, Hercule Poirot, Ellery Queen, Ezekiel "Easy"
Rawlins, Kay Scarpetta, Sam Spade, Phillip Trent, V. I. Warshawski,
Lord Peter Wimsey, Nero Wolfe, and many others. Readers will find
some of their favorite detectives here, learn more about their
literary and cultural significance, and discover other great
sleuths-old and new, local and international-in this engaging
volume. 100 Greatest Literary Detectives provides a fascinating
look into some of the most intriguing fictional characters of all
time.
This book explores the intersection between adaptation studies and
what James F. English has called the "economy of prestige," which
includes formal prize culture as well as less tangible expressions
such as canon formation, fandom, authorship, and performance. The
chapters explore how prestige can affect many facets of the
adaptation process, including selection, approach, and reception.
The first section of this volume deals directly with cycles of
influence involving prizes such as the Pulitzer, the Man Booker,
and other major awards. The second section focuses on the juncture
where adaptation, the canon, and awards culture meet, while the
third considers alternative modes of locating and expressing
prestige through adapted and adaptive intertexts. This book will be
of interest to students and scholars of adaptation, cultural
sociology, film, and literature.
Virginia Woolf has for many years been seen as a key participant in
British literary modernism. Following a period of relative critical
neglect following her tragic death in 1941, her body of work has
earned her recognition as a groundbreaking feminist thinker, a
perceptive literary critic, a formidably creative diarist and
correspondent, and as one of the twentieth century's leading
essayists. Most notably, her experimental fiction, from her first
novel The Voyage Out to the posthumously published Between the
Acts, has grown in both popularity and critical renown. All of her
work remains in print, and novels such as Mrs Dalloway, To the
Lighthouse, and Jacob's Room are regularly read and discussed both
inside and outside the academy. Few modernist writers--indeed, few
writers of any period-have had such a pronounced and lasting impact
on literary culture. There has been, and continues to be, an
enormous amount of critical and scholarly work done on almost all
aspects of Woolf's writing and life. Monographs, journal articles,
and collections of essays dedicated to Woolf's writing appear every
year alongside scholarly and popular biographies, and there is an
annual international conference dedicated solely to her work. Yet
amidst this veritable inundation of exegetical energy, this
tremendous and ever-growing body of scholarly work on Woolf, there
is one curious omission. While Woolf was both in theory and
practice fascinated by questions of character and characterization,
scholarship has not generally been directed towards this field.
This may be due to both general theoretical discomfort with the
critical category of character, and to a sense that Woolf's work in
particular may not respond well to such interpretations. However,
Woolf was very much an experimenter in character, and readings that
minimize or ignore this interest miss an important facet of her
work. This book offers the first full-length reading of Virginia
Woolf's career-long experimentation in character. It examines her
early journalism, from her short reviews of contemporary literature
to more substantial essays on Gissing and Dostoyevsky, for
indications of her engagement with questions of characterization,
and links this interest to her later fictional writings. In The
Voyage Out she establishes a continuum of levels of
characterization, a key element of which is the Theophrastan type,
an alternative form of characterization that corresponds to a way
of knowing real people, while in Jacob's Room she seeks to
represent an elusive 'essence' that may exist outside of the
structuring forms of social life, and which is accessible through
speculative identification. Mrs Dalloway explores the shaping of
character through social pressure, and To the Lighthouse proposes a
simplified version of character as an ethically acceptable way of
relating to other people. A similar notion is picked up in The
Waves, in which a limited character, or form of caricature, is
proposed as a possible solution to the problems of
characterization. In Between the Acts, many of these themes
reappear as Woolf simultaneously situates her characters more
firmly than ever in a comprehensible physical and social context,
and explores areas where language and rationality fail. Virginia
Woolf: Experiments in Character is an important book for Woolf
studies in particular, modernism studies more generally, and
literature collections.
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