Abstract
This chapter is the first of two chapters which demonstrate how literary postmodernism is developed practically, concentrating on the genre of fiction. With a focus on epistemology, questions of knowledge, this chapter looks at the history of detective fiction to demonstrate how postmodern forms of detective fiction fit within the genre. Consequently, the chapter argues that it is possible to have postmodern fiction with an epistemological dominant; thus, such a dominant cannot function as a definition of literary postmodernism. This is done through looking at canonical examples of classical, modernist, late modernist, and postmodernist detective fiction, and how those stories function structurally. It also demonstrates that chronology is not a sufficient means to present the history of detective fiction, as structural elements are also at play.
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Notes
- 1.
See Benvenuti and Rizzoni (1979); Horsley (2005); Knight (2004); Priestman (2003); and Thompson (1993). Stephen Knight includes a third section on diversity, after the chronological breakdown, which includes chapters on race, gender (feminist, lesbian, and male gay detection) and postmodern detection. Horsley, for example, includes sections specifically dealing with sexism and racism and redefining the genre when dealing with those social-political issues. Priestman’s collection also includes chapters dealing specifically with gender and race.
- 2.
This reordering is not intended to cover over important distinctions in the divisions of the genre into various subgenres, whether based on themes (i.e. feminism), analytic focus (i.e. forensic), or types of crime or how graphically they are displayed (as in the cozy). Each of these subgenres and many others deserve specific attention, especially in histories of the genre as a whole, but this division would allow them to be grouped by how the crime is solved, while preserving their other foci.
- 3.
Robert Rushing uses this term to refer to the ever-smaller divisions of crime fiction, into categories so small that it seems ‘whatever one’s taste, there is a detective novel to match’ (2007, 26).
- 4.
This despite the later references to the theories of probability. “Coincidences, in general, are great stumbling-blocks in the way of that class of thinkers who have been educated to know nothing of the theory of probabilities – that theory to which the most glorious objects of human research are indebted for the most glorious of illustration” (Poe 1975, 392). These theories, discussed in Ian Hacking’s work The Emergence of Probability (2006) and tied to crime fiction by Maurizio Ascari (2007), highlight the paradoxical nature of evidence and probability in the world of crime. Poe here, although referring to a contemporary field of probability, falls more in line with Cesare Beccaria’s discussion of moral certainty, which is tantamount to our contemporary legal test of reasonable doubt (Beccaria 1958), and which Poe alludes to with the separation between the reality of his solution and the insistence that there be no preternatural solution to the crime. “It is not too much to say that neither of us believe in preternatural events” (Poe 1975, 388). By disallowing supernatural solutions, Poe is adding limitations to the investigation, which lead closer to a ‘reasonable’ solution rather than an absolute truth.
- 5.
I limit the discussion of Poe’s Dupin series to “Rue Morgue” both for space considerations and for simplicity. “Marie Rogêt” is partially based on a true story and thus has non-generic twists, complicating its use as an example of the genre, and “Purloined Letter” implicates Dupin which violates yet to be articulated rules, but more importantly compromises the purity of the investigative process and the author/reader dynamic.
- 6.
There are, of course, other motivations inherent within crime fiction. Neither the criminals nor the detectives act dispassionately, and often emotion is a considerable factor both in the impetus for readings as well as the rationale of the narrative. This aspect of crime fiction’s history is detailed in Maurizio Ascari’s work A Counter-History of Crime Fiction (2007) among other places. This study, however, remains focused on the epistemological structure of the detective story, and thus does not delve into these other interesting aspects, including those important and necessary for elucidating generic and sub-generic boundaries.
- 7.
Specifically violating Williard Huntington Wright’s (alias SS Van Dine) “Twenty Rules for Writing Detective Stories,” whose first rule states “all clues must be plainly stated and described” (Van Dine 1928, 129).
- 8.
This collection was published in the UK in 1932 with the title The Thirteen Problems.
- 9.
Here again, we can see that we are meant to identify with the sidekick rather than the “detective.” In this case, the audience is carried along through the process, but always after the fact, in the same perspective as Gus, and yet before the police are “clued” in to the evidence.
- 10.
The reference to Eric Stanley Gardner seems to be to the author of the Perry Mason series, Erle Stanley Gardner, who hails, like Chandler, from Southern California.
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Stephan, M. (2019). Whodunit? And How Do We Know? (or Do We?): The Structure of the Epistemological Investigation in Detective Fiction. In: Defining Literary Postmodernism for the Twenty-First Century. Palgrave Macmillan, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-15693-0_5
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