商品簡介
A Counter-History of Crime Fiction takes a new look at the evolution of crime fiction, drawing on material from the Middle Ages up to the early twentieth century, when the genre was theoretically defined as detective fiction. Considering 'criminography' as a system of interrelated, even incestuous, sub-genres, Maurizio Ascari explores the connections between modes of literature such as revenge tragedies and providential fictions, the gothic and the ghost story, urban mysteries and anarchist fiction, while taking into account the influence of pseudo-sciences such as mesmerism and criminal anthropology. The result is an inquiry into the nature of a genre whose formulaic nature has not prevented imaginative, not to say heretical, variations on the themes of crime and detection.
作者簡介
Maurizio Ascari is Senior Lecturer in English Literature at the University of Bologna, Italy.
