Title Dreams for dead bodies : blackness, labor, and the corpus of American detective fiction / M. Michelle Robinson

Published Ann Arbor : University of Michigan Press, [2016]

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Description 1 online resource (256 pages) Series Class : culture Class, culture. Contents Introduction: The original plotmaker -- Reverse type -- The art of framing lies -- To have been possessed -- The great work remaining before us -- Prescription: Homicide? -- Conclusion: dream within a dream Summary Dreams of Dead Bodies: Blackness, Labor, and Detective Fiction in American Literature argues that the detective genre's lineage lies in unexpected texts: experimental works on the margins of what we recognize as classical detective fiction today. It shows that authors like Edgar Allan Poe, Mark Twain, Pauline Hopkins, and Rudolph Fisher drew on detective fiction's puzzle-elements to wrestle with complicated questions about race and labor in the United States, such that the emergence of detective fiction is itself bound to a history of interracial conflicts and labor struggles. Unlike previous studies of detective fiction, this book foregrounds an interracial genealogy of detective fiction, building a nuanced picture of the ways that both black and white American authors appropriated and cultivated literary conventions that finally coalesced in a recognizable genre at the turn of the twentieth century. These authors tinkered with detective fiction's puzzle-elements to address a variety of historical contexts, including the exigencies of chattel slavery, the erosion of working class solidarities by racial and ethnic competition, and accelerated mass production. Dreams for Dead Bodies demonstrates that nineteenth- and early twentieth-century American literature was broadly engaged with detective fiction, and that authors rehearsed and refined its formal elements in literary works typically relegated to the margins of the genre. By looking at these margins, the book argues, we can better understand the origins and cultural functions of American detective fiction Analysis literature cultural studies Bibliography Includes bibliographical references (pages 233-250) and index Notes Master and use copy. Digital master created according to Benchmark for Faithful Digital Reproductions of Monographs and Serials, Version 1. Digital Library Federation, December 2002. http://purl.oclc.org/DLF/benchrepro0212 MiAaHDL English Print version record digitized 2011 HathiTrust Digital Library committed to preserve pda MiAaHDL Subject Detective and mystery stories, American -- History and criticism African Americans in literature. Working class in literature. Slavery in literature. Work in literature. Cultural studies. Society and culture: general. Society and social sciences Society and social sciences. LITERARY CRITICISM -- American -- General. LITERARY CRITICISM -- Mystery & Detective. Working class in literature Work in literature Slavery in literature Detective and mystery stories, American African Americans in literature Literature Genre/Form Criticism, interpretation, etc. Form Electronic book LC no. 2020706933 ISBN 9780472121816 0472121812 9780472900602 0472900609

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