‘There are Some Perversities that Cannot Stand’: Nostalgia, Homosexuality, and the Continuation Novel

2020 ◽  
Vol 1 (1) ◽  
pp. 114-129
Author(s):  
J. C. Bernthal
Keyword(s):  
Crime Fiction ◽  
First Century ◽  
Male Homosexuality ◽  
Literary Marketplace ◽  
Lesbian History ◽  
Crime Novel ◽  
Twenty First Century

Crime fiction scholars tend to ignore continuation novels (written as part of an established series after its creator's death) despite their importance in the international literary marketplace. As these novels exist in dialogue with their own contexts and those of their predecessors, they raise important questions about the handling of social mores. This article examines the presentation of homosexuality and its connection to criminality in two twenty-first century continuation novels, Anthony Horowitz's The House of Silk (2011) and Stella Duffy's Money in the Morgue (2018). Horowitz's deliberately conservative novel uses the Victorian context to present a relationship between male homosexuality, conspiracy, and paedophilia that would be unacceptable in a ‘contemporary’ mainstream crime novel. Duffy's rewriting of Ngaio Marsh's unfinished Roderick Alleyn novel, however, creates a dialogue with lesbian history in the context of speculation around Marsh's own repressed sexuality.

Corporeal Intentions

2017 ◽  
Author(s):  
Stephen Amico
Keyword(s):  
Gay Men ◽  
First Century ◽  
Male Body ◽  
Male Homosexuality ◽  
The Gaze ◽  
Eurovision Song Contest ◽  
The Feminine ◽  
Twenty First Century ◽  
Physical Beauty

This chapter explores how male homosexuality is suggested via the presentation of the sexualized male body as object of the gaze—an objectifying gaze placing the male in the position of the “feminine.” It looks at the efflorescence of images of male physical beauty in the musical discourses of numerous singers and bands in the first two decades of the twenty-first century in Russia and how these images were conflated with homosexuality or homoeroticism. To this end, the chapter examines instances of the male body's foregrounding in the work of Andrei Danilko, the groups Hi-Fi and Smash!!, and singer Dima Bilan (focusing on his appearances at the Eurovision Song Contest). It highlights not only the variable of the body's visibility (and, concomitantly, questions of power), but also the interrelated and phenomenologically inflected dynamics of intentionality, proximity, and orientation. It shows that visible male bodies, invoking the possibility of the homosexual, provide a sight/site for Russian gay men and also serve the goluboi.

scholarly journals Conexus: Crime Fiction and the State of the Nation.

2019 ◽  
Author(s):  
◽  
Duncan Dicks
Keyword(s):  
Information Technology ◽  
Critical Discussion ◽  
Crime Fiction ◽  
The State ◽  
First Century ◽  
The Novel ◽  
State Control ◽  
Social Commentary ◽  
The Past ◽  
Crime Novel

Conexus: Crime Fiction and the State of the Nation consists of two parts. The first section is the novel, Conexus, which is a practice-based exploration and illustration of crime fiction as state-of-the-nation social commentary. The second is a critical discussion of the requirements of a state-of-the-nation novel that reflects the contemporary, globalised word, and how crime fiction contends with these needs. Conexus follows a range of characters in parallel threads that converge onto a single physical location in Gloucestershire. Ainsley Griffin, a technology journalist, his partner, Chelsey, his grandson, Sundance, and a range of other characters gradually become aware of each other through their use of IT as they investigate a series of undiscovered murders that began with a sophisticated network of paedophiles in the 1990s. The murderer chooses each new victim through the random last act of communication of the last victim, and controls their lives through surveillance hacking before murdering them. The critical underpinning of the thesis discusses the concepts, theories and controversies surrounding the concept of a nation (for example, following the legacy of Gellner’s work, Hroch, and the explorations of Bhabha), emphasising the importance of state control through jurisprudence, of communication technology, and of physical locations and boundaries over the past two hundred years. The relative importance and impact of these concepts is seen to have changed dramatically with the rapid explosion of information technology in the twenty-first-century, requiring a very different approach to literary explorations of a nation. A number of crime novels from the past 25 years are analysed in conjunction with Conexus. The locations and boundaries are discussed with reference to the uncanny implications of the physical as discussed by Freud. Approaches to the incorporation of information technology into crime fiction are explored, and the success of this integration is compared to other literary works. In summary, the suitability of the crime novel as portrayal and summary of the culturally and socially significant trends of the time is assessed.

Criminal Peripheries: The Globalization of Scandinavian Crime Fiction and Its Agents

2020 ◽  
pp. 184-204
Author(s):  
Jakob Stougaard-Nielsen
Keyword(s):  
International Market ◽  
Crime Fiction ◽  
First Century ◽  
Literary Prizes ◽  
Twenty First Century ◽  
Global Publishing ◽  
The Uk ◽  
Literary Agents

In the twenty-first century, the extraordinary success of Scandinavian crime fiction in translation has challenged long-held assumptions about the hierarchy of nations, languages and genres in global publishing. This chapter assesses the ‘Scandinavian publishing miracle’ by considering various consecration processes (e.g. literary prizes), domestic changes brought to the publishing field towards the end of the last century (e.g. literary agents and the regional publishing field) and the dynamics of translation and promotion of Scandinavian crime fiction with a focus on the UK market since 2000. The chapter presents a case study of Henning Mankell’s impact on the international market – a case which also demonstrates that the Scandinavian twenty-first-century publishing phenomenon is the tip of an iceberg hiding strategic coordinated practices between small-nation actors established in the early 1990s, which provided a ‘marginocentric’ model for how literatures from small European nations could successfully enter the international mainstream.

New Adult Fiction

2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Jodi McAlister
Keyword(s):  
Young Adult ◽  
Social Factors ◽  
First Century ◽  
Young Adult Fiction ◽  
Literary Marketplace ◽  
Twenty First Century

The term 'new adult' was coined in 2009 by St Martin's Press, when they sought submissions for a contest for 'fiction similar to YA that can be published and marketed as adult – a sort of 'older YA' or 'new adult'.' However, the literary category that later emerged bore less resemblance to young adult fiction and instead became a sub-genre of another major popular genre: romance. This Element uses new adult fiction as a case study to explore how genres develop in the twenty-first-century literary marketplace. It traces new adult's evolution through three key stages in order to demonstrate the fluidity that characterises contemporary genres. It argues for greater consideration of paratextual factors in studies of genre. Using a genre worlds approach, it contends that in order to productively examine genre, we must consider industrial and social factors as well as texts.

From Vidocq to the Locked Room

2020 ◽  
pp. 163-178
Author(s):  
Stephen Knight
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
Twentieth Century ◽  
International Development ◽  
The United States ◽  
Crime Fiction ◽  
First Century ◽  
Transnational Mobility ◽  
Legal Narratives ◽  
History Of ◽  
Twenty First Century

This chapter provides an in-depth history of the international development of the crime genre prior to the twentieth century. The chapter traces the emergence of a transnational genre from the 1700s through legal narratives and Romantic preoccupations and aesthetics in France, Germany, England, the United States, the Scandinavian countries and Australia. While crime fiction scholars have traditionally maintained that the genre emerged in Britain and America, this chapter places doubt on the supposed centrality of the genre’s British and American genealogy. By examining the genre’s early transnational mobility, the chapter challenges the dominant perception that the genre’s transnationality is a consequence of twentieth- and twenty-first-century globalization and, as such, that it is largely a contemporary phenomenon.

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