1.

Record Nr.

UNINA9910872195803321

Autore

Bloomfield Jem

Titolo

Allusion in Detective Fiction : Shakespeare, the Bible and Dorothy L. Sayers / / by Jem Bloomfield

Pubbl/distr/stampa

Cham : , : Springer Nature Switzerland : , : Imprint : Palgrave Macmillan, , 2024

ISBN

9783031583391

Edizione

[1st ed. 2024.]

Descrizione fisica

1 online resource (235 pages)

Collana

Crime Files, , 2947-8359

Disciplina

823.087209

Soggetti

Literature, Modern - 20th century

Religion - History

European literature

Literature - History and criticism

European literature - Renaissance, 1450-1600

Twentieth-Century Literature

History of Religion

European Literature

Literary Criticism

Early Modern and Renaissance Literature

Lingua di pubblicazione

Inglese

Formato

Materiale a stampa

Livello bibliografico

Monografia

Note generali

Includes index.

Nota di contenuto

Introduction: Shakespeare, the Bible and the Textual Crisis -- Section I -- Chapter One: Sayers, Satan, Milton, Donne -- Chapter Two: Seeing Darkly, Seeing Visions: Christie’s Bible -- Chapter Three: Three Ordinary, Normal Old Women: Christie’s Shakespeare -- Section II: Introduction: The New Canon -- Chapter Four: Rival Queens of Crime -- Chapter Five: Let’s Have Eight Other Gaudy Nights -- Chapter Six: Sayers’s Followers: Where the Bodies and the Books are Buried -- Conclusion.

Sommario/riassunto

This study argues that allusion is a central part of classic British detective fiction. It demonstrates the fraught status of Shakespeare and the Bible during the Golden Age of the British detective novel, and the cultural currents which novelists navigated whilst alluding to them. The first part traces the complex web of allusions to Shakespeare and the



Bible which appear in the novels of Agatha Christie and Dorothy L. Sayers, examining the meanings these allusions produce. The second part explores the way in which Sayers’ own collection of detective novels became a canon, on which later novelists exercised those same allusive practices. It studies allusions to Sayers’ novels throughout the twentieth century and into the twenty-first, from Gladys Mitchell and P.D. James to Reginald Hill and Sujata Massey. This study reveals allusion as a shaping force at the origin of the classic British detective novel, and a continuing element in its identity. Jem Bloomfield is Assistant Professor of Literature at the University of Nottingham, UK. His research interests focus around detective fiction, British mid-century writing, and the reception histories of Shakespeare and the Bible. His books include Words of Power: Reading Shakespeare and the Bible (2016), Witchcraft and Paganism in Midcentury Women’s Detective Fiction (2022) and Paths in the Snow: A Literary Journey Through The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe (2023). .