Detective Fiction and the Problem of Knowledge: Perspectives on the Metacognitive Mystery Tale (Crime Files)

This book establishes the genealogy of a subgenre of crime fiction that Antoine Dechêne calls the metacognitive mystery tale. It delineates a corpus of texts presenting 'unreadable' mysteries which, under the deceptively monolithic appearance of subverting traditional detective story conventions, offer a multiplicity of motifs – the overwhelming presence of chance, the unfulfilled quest for knowledge, the urban stroller lost in a labyrinthine text – that generate a vast array of epistemological and ontological uncertainties. Analysing the works of a wide variety of authors, including Edgar Allan Poe, Jorge Luis Borges, and Henry James, this book is vital reading for scholars of detective fiction. Front Matter ....Pages i-xii Front Matter ....Pages 1-1 Introduction (Antoine Dechêne)....Pages 3-11 From the Metaphysical Detective Story to the Metacognitive Mystery Tale (Antoine Dechêne)....Pages 13-44 Enigmas of the Sublime and the Grotesque (Antoine Dechêne)....Pages 45-86 Front Matter ....Pages 87-87 Edgar Allan Poe’s “The Man of the Crowd” (Antoine Dechêne)....Pages 89-106 Jorge Luis Borges’s Textual Labyrinths (Antoine Dechêne)....Pages 107-147 Paul Auster’s The New York Trilogy (Antoine Dechêne)....Pages 149-190 Front Matter ....Pages 191-191 Herman Melville’s “Bartleby, the Scrivener: A Story of Wall Street” (Antoine Dechêne)....Pages 193-218 Samuel Beckett’s Molloy (Antoine Dechêne)....Pages 219-245 Roberto Bolaño’s Monsieur Pain (Antoine Dechêne)....Pages 247-272 Front Matter ....Pages 273-273 Henry James’s “The Figure in the Carpet” (Antoine Dechêne)....Pages 275-302 Horacio Quiroga’s “The Pursued” (Antoine Dechêne)....Pages 303-323 Front Matter ....Pages 325-325 Nathaniel Hawthorne’s “Wakefield” (Antoine Dechêne)....Pages 327-337 Back Matter ....Pages 339-347