Detective Fiction and the Problem of Knowledge: Perspectives on the Metacognitive Mystery Tale

348 Pages·2018·3.356 MB·English

by  Antoine Dechêne

Detective
Fiction and the
Problem of
Knowledge
Perspectives on the
Metacognitive Mystery Tale
Antoine Dechêne
General Editor: Clive Bloom
Crime Files
Series Editor
Clive Bloom
Professor Emeritus
Middlesex University
London, UK
Since its invention in the nineteenth century, detective fiction has never
been more popular. In novels, short stories and films, on the radio, on
television and now in computer games, private detectives and psycho-
paths, poisoners and overworked cops, tommy gun gangsters and cocaine
criminals are the very stuff of modern imagination, and their creators a
mainstay of popular consciousness. Crime Files is a ground-breaking series
offering scholars, students and discerning readers a comprehensive set of
guides to the world of crime and detective fiction. Every aspect of crime
writing, from detective fiction to the gangster movie, true-crime exposé,
police procedural and post-colonial investigation, is explored through
clear and informative texts offering comprehensive coverage and theoreti-
cal sophistication.
More information about this series at
http://www.palgrave.com/gp/series/14927
Antoine Dechêne
Detective Fiction and
the Problem of
Knowledge
Perspectives on the Metacognitive Mystery Tale
Antoine Dechêne
University of Liège
Liège, Belgium
Crime Files
ISBN 978-3-319-94468-5 ISBN 978-3-319-94469-2 (eBook)
https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-94469-2
Library of Congress Control Number: 2018948739
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Cover illustration: Jean Dechêne, “Un homme dans la ville”, acrylic, 2016.
Printed on acid-free paper
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To Aïcha
Cover image: Jean Dechêne, “Un homme dans la ville,” acrylic, 2016
P
reface
This book is the result of a six-year process. First a dissertation, it has now
evolved into the full-length monograph the reader holds. As I was major-
ing in Spanish (with a master’s thesis devoted to Antonio Muñoz Molina’s
autofiction), I did not expect to write such a work about detective fiction,
especially not about its metaphysical branch. I started my research back in
2012. It was part of a bigger project, an IAP (Interuniversity Attraction
Poles) program called “Literature and Media Innovations: the question of
genre transformations” (http://lmi.arts.kuleuven.be) and financed by
Belspo (the Belgian Science Policy Office) (http://www.belspo.be). My
work was also attached to the activities of the CIPA (The Interdisciplinary
Center for Applied Poetics, http://labos.ulg.ac.be/cipa/), a research
center based at the University of Liège. The PhD project was first called
“The Metaphysical Thriller as a Literary Genre” and aimed to work on the
metaphysical detective story, to define (or redefine) it as a specific genre
and/or corpus. I defended my dissertation titled “Unreadable Texts:
From the Metaphysical Detective Story to the Metacognitive Mystery
Tale” in December 2016.
One of my major accomplishments during the PhD is to have been able
to organize a two-day bilingual symposium simply titled “The Metaphysical
Thriller/Le Thriller métaphysique,” which took place at the University of
Liège on September 26 and 27, 2013. This event was an opportunity to
gather some important critics in the field of both classical and metaphysi-
cal detective fiction. Indeed, the keynotes were no other than Patricia
Merivale and Susan Elizabeth Sweeney (the editors of Detecting Texts),
John Gruesser (at the time president of the Poe Studies Association), and
ix
x PREFACE
Ilana Shiloh (author of important books on Paul Auster). The conference
led to a collective volume, which is the first book dedicated to the genre
in French: Le Thriller métaphysique d’Edgar Allan Poe à nos jours (Presses
Universitaires de Liège, 2016).
Detective Fiction and the Problem of Knowledge has no other ambition
than to continue this work by offering a comparative analysis of some of
the most emblematic metaphysical detective stories. Such a project would
not have been possible without the help of Prof. Michel Delville, whom I
thank for his patience and insightful comments during the whole time of
my PhD and after. I also want to repeat my thanks to the members of my
dissertation committee: Prof. Jean-Pierre Bertrand (ULiège), president of
the jury; Kristine Vanden Berghe (ULiège), who has followed my work
from the master’s thesis onward; Prof. Jan Baetens (KU Leuven) for coor-
dinating the IAP program; and Prof. John Gruesser (Kean University).
Many thanks to my colleagues and first peer-reviewers: Kevin, Carole,
Valérie-Anne, Benoît, Remy, Christophe, and Sarah.
Liège, Belgium Antoine Dechêne
c
ontents
Part I The Problem of Knowledge 1
1 Introduction 3
2 From the Metaphysical Detective Story to the
Metacognitive Mystery Tale 13
3 Enigmas of the Sublime and the Grotesque 45
Part II From the flâneur to the Stalker 87
4 Edgar Allan Poe’s “The Man of the Crowd” 89
5 Jorge Luis Borges’s Textual Labyrinths 107
6 Paul Auster’s The New York Trilogy 149
xi