Module: ENG5107-20 Crime Fiction

Level: 5

Credit Value: 20

Module Tutor: Samantha Walton

Module Tutor Contact Details: s.walton@bathspa.ac.uk

1. Brief description and aims of module:

Crime Fiction is a literary genre that is traditionally regarded as distinguishable from literary fiction. Within the overall genre there are various sub-genres, such as the ‘whodunit’ (detective fiction), the ‘hard-boiled’ crime thriller and the psychological crime novel. Nonetheless, the genre has a long history of subversions within it, never remaining fixed in a way that we might assume when we think of the classic ‘Golden Age’ whodunit writers such as Agatha Christie. One of the key questions that this module addresses is the stability of the various boundaries that have been applied both within and around the genre, including that between ‘crime fiction’ and ‘literature’.

The module is broadly chronological in approach. While the Gothic novel of the C18th contains elements in common with the crime novel, it was in the C19th that what we now consider to be the classical detective story emerged and developed – this will act as the starting point. The ‘Golden Age’ is, as Stephen Knight argues ‘usually taken as the period between the two world wars’ and the module will consider this as the age of the classic ‘whodunit’, murder as a device utilised to allow for the intellectual exercise of the detective (whether professional or amateur). The Golden Age typically evokes and was played out on the shady lawns of Middle England, while from the 1930s a new type of writer emerged in the United States, who introduced the ‘hard-boiled’ detective hero. Society in these novels is presented as overwhelming the hero in its seediness and lack of humanity, and the virtual guarantee of order restored found in the Golden Age novels, is subverted. More recently, writers have emphasised the ethical and moral considerations (or lack of) within the broad genre. Questions of right and wrong, good and evil, guilt (or its absence) have come to the forefront. The module will conclude with a selection of texts which work to challenge the conventions and boundaries of the genre.

2. Outline syllabus:

The module approaches the genre chronologically and includes some or all of the following authors and texts as exemplars of the particular historical and methodological features of each sub-genre:

1. Beginnings. The emergence of the detective (both amateur and professional) throughout the C19th.

2. The Golden Age. This section of the module concentrates on the era of the classic ‘whodunit’ with its emphasis on the intellectual skills of the hero/heroine and the challenge to, and re-establishment of, social and moral order. However, the chosen texts reveal that this era also introduces the psychological thriller.

3. Hard-boiled. Through the study of a classic text of the ‘hard-boiled’ sub-genre this section of the module acts to contrast the ‘genteel’ murders of the Golden Age with the gritty, tough and world-weary detectives within an urban America populated by seedy crooks and femme fatales.

4. Beyond Good and Evil: Morality, Guilt and Conscience. Citing Dostoevsky as a key influence, Georges Simenon is often credited with the shift within the genre to an emphasis on psychology, of the detective and the perpetrator of crime.

3. Teaching and learning activities:

Learning methods: The module is taught through a series of lectures, seminars and workshops. Each section of the module combines crime fiction texts (indicative selection above) with a series of theoretical and critical commentaries that highlight particular themes and preoccupations common to each section of the module (femininity, masculinity, guilt, morality or the lack of it). In this way the module both provides an overview of the genre up until the latter part of the C20th and at the same time pays attention to its subversive and creative possibilities.

Assessment Item 1:

• Assessment Type: Coursework

• Description: Essay (2,000 words)

• % Weighting: 40%

Assessment Item 2:

• Assessment Type: Coursework

• Description: Essay (3,000 words)

• % Weighting: 60%