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To Hell with Ya: Katabasis in Hard-Boiled Detective Fiction
Ist Teil von
Journal of popular culture, 2009-04, Vol.42 (2), p.291-303
Ort / Verlag
Malden, USA: Blackwell Publishing Inc
Erscheinungsjahr
2009
Link zum Volltext
Quelle
Wiley Online Library - AutoHoldings Journals
Beschreibungen/Notizen
In Raymond Chandler's first novel, detective Philip Marlowe, on stakeout at the house of a local smut-peddler, witnesses the sudden bright burst of a flashbulb followed by a woman's scream. With this event, Chandler inaugurates what will become a defining sequence of the criminal investigation not only in his work but also in the hard-boiled fiction of other American mystery writers of the 1930s, 1940s, and 1950s: the katabasis, or hero's descent into the underworld. What is being enacted in the works of Chandler, Hammett, Spillane, and their later epigones in the motif of the classical katabasis is the attempt by the ego, as a representation of American selfhood, to resolve ontological and epistemic ruptures through external activity. Here, Rawson explores the katabasis in hard-boiled detective fiction.