Details

Autor(en) / Beteiligte

• DeFino, Dean Joseph

Titel

Rara Avis: American detective literature film

Ort / Verlag

ProQuest Dissertations & Theses

Erscheinungsjahr

1999

Link zum Volltext

• ProQuest

Quelle

ProQuest Dissertations & Theses A&I

Beschreibungen/Notizen

• This study examines the extraordinary narrative and emblematic role of the fictional detective, as both source and symbol of meaning within its text. The detective is a rare bird, who symbolizes meaning and resolution merely by being present. We are inspired to confidence by the very sight of Sherlock Holmes' meerschaum, as though it, and not the detective's acute analytical mind, were the engine of revelation. This particular work considers the relationship of detective iconography and method in light of two generic transformations: the emergence of the laconic, hard-boiled detective stories of American writers like Dashiell Hammett and Raymond Chandler, and the translation of detective fiction to Hollywood film. Hollywood cinema reworked the expository style of literary detective fiction into melodrama and action sequences, while Hammett and Chandler reconfigured the role of the detective from effete genius to tough-jawed gumshoe. Since then, the image of the detective has all but displaced its method, and the word detective is as likely to call up the face of Humphrey Bogart (playing hard-boiled Sam Spade or Philip Marlowe) as the deductions and inductions of Sherlock Holmes. But inherent to hard-boiled film and literature, and to a line of dissent which this study traces back to Edgar Allan Poe's “tales of ratiocination,” is a self-conscious critique of the illusions of meaning and reason central to detective fiction in general. Like the lead bird in Dashiell Hammett's Maltese Falcon, the detective merely symbolizes our desire for meaning. This study uses critical approaches ranging from the historical (the growth of Hollywood in the 1920s and 30s) to the generic (narrative and thematic conventions) to the semiotic (adaptation and translation) to examine the sources of that desire.