1.

Record Nr.

UNINA9910464133303321

Autore

Walton Samantha

Titolo

Guilty but insane : mind and law in Golden Age detective fiction / / Samantha Walton

Pubbl/distr/stampa

New York, New York : , : Oxford University Press, , 2015

©2015

ISBN

0-19-872333-4

0-19-103492-4

Edizione

[First edition.]

Descrizione fisica

1 online resource (321 p.)

Collana

Oxford Textual Perspectives

Disciplina

823.087209

Soggetti

Detective and mystery stories - History and criticism

Mental illness in literature

Electronic books.

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

Cover; Series; Guilty But Insane; Copyright; Dedication; Contents; List of Figures; Epigraph; Introduction: Death by Adaptation:  The Case for Reading Detective Fiction; Theories of Mind: An Introduction; 1 Psychological Detection; 2 Guilty but Insane; 3 Born Criminals; 4 'The Concealed Enemy of the Self':  Deviance and Dissociation; 5 Irrational Detection; Dénouement; References; Index

Sommario/riassunto

Guilty But Insane takes an historical approach to golden age detective fiction by Margery Allingham, Christianna Brand, Agatha Christie, Dorothy L. Sayers, and Gladys Mitchell. It examines how writers and readers of detective fiction during the 1920s to 1940s understood guilt, responsibility, and the workings of the mind as they related to the commission, the investigation, and the punishment of crime. Under the lens of psychology, the detective novel isrevealed as a site for the negotiation of competing interpretations of sanity and insanity. An unexplored depth and subtlety is revealed in de