1.

Record Nr.

UNINA9910255254403321

Autore

Bernthal J.C

Titolo

Queering Agatha Christie [[electronic resource] ] : Revisiting the Golden Age of Detective Fiction / / by J.C Bernthal

Pubbl/distr/stampa

Cham : , : Springer International Publishing : , : Imprint : Palgrave Macmillan, , 2016

ISBN

3-319-33533-2

Edizione

[1st ed. 2016.]

Descrizione fisica

1 online resource (308 p.)

Collana

Crime Files

Disciplina

155.33

Soggetti

Literature, Modern—20th century

Fiction

British literature

Ethnology—Europe

Sex (Psychology)

Gender expression

Twentieth-Century Literature

British and Irish Literature

British Culture

Gender Studies

Lingua di pubblicazione

Inglese

Formato

Materiale a stampa

Livello bibliografico

Monografia

Note generali

Description based upon print version of record.

Nota di bibliografia

Includes bibliographical references and index.

Nota di contenuto

Introduction -- Chapter 1. Constructing Agatha Christie -- Chapter 2. English Masculinity and its Others -- Chapter 3. Femininity and Masquerade -- Chapter 4. Queer Children, Crooked Houses -- Chapter 5. Queering Christie on Television -- Conclusion.

Sommario/riassunto

This book is the first fully theorized queer reading of a Golden Age British crime writer. Agatha Christie was the most commercially successful novelist of the twentieth century, and her fiction remains popular. She created such memorable characters as Hercule Poirot and Jane Marple, and has become synonymous with a nostalgic, conservative tradition of crime fiction. J.C. Bernthal reads Christie through the lens of queer theory, uncovering a playful, alert, and subversive social commentary. After considering Christie’s emergence



in a commercial market hostile to her sex, in Queering Agatha Christie Bernthal explores homophobic stereotypes, gender performativity, queer children, and masquerade in key texts published between 1920 and 1952. Christie engaged with debates around human identity in a unique historical period affected by two world wars. The final chapter considers twenty-first century Poirot and Marple adaptations, with visible LGBT characters, and poses the question: might the books be queerer?