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The Devil Himself Villainy in Detective Fiction and Film
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Stacy Gillis, Philippa Gates
Book Code: GM1655
ISBN: 0-313-31655-4
ISBN-13: 978-0-313-31655-5
232 pages
Greenwood Press
Publication: 10/30/2001
List Price: $110.95 (UK Sterling Price: £65.00)
Availability: Print on demand
Media Type: Hardcover
Trim Size: 6 1/8 x 9 1/4
Subjects:
Series Title: Contributions to the Study of Popular Culture
Series Number: 73
Reviews:
  • Gillis and Gates provide a timely revisitation of the nature of villainy in popular literature and cinema. As values and mores evolve, so too do the role and efficacy of evil as a driving force in a culture's fictional artifacts. As Gillis argues in the introduction, "Although they may be punished, the villains remain much more provocative than the detectival agents who attempt to contain them." Although this premise may be arguable, it sets the stage for 15 substantive essays exploring the style and function of criminality in the detective genre. The writings span the works of two centuries, from Dickens, White, Doyle, and other late Victorian writers, through golden age authors such as Rohmer, Christie, and Allingham to such contemporaries as P.D. James and Patricia Cornwell. The essays are uniformly intelligent and informative....Collections supporting the study of detective fiction at the lower-division undergraduate level and above.
    —Choice     July/August 2002
Description: This study of the villain in detective fiction and film examines such questions as what the villains reflect about the heroes, what they reflect about society, and what defines villainous activity. The texts discussed span the end of the 18th through the 20th century and range from Charles Brockden Brown's Weiland (1798) to the film Se7en (1995). As the villains reflect the changing ethics of society, the shift in such nebulous moral boundaries can be traced through the changing depictions of these dark characters. Correspondingly, essays address issues of gender, genre, race, and class. In addition to Weiland and Se7en, books and films discussed include Dickens's Bleak House, Wilkie Collins's The Woman in White, the works of Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, the films of Alfred Hitchcock, the James Bond novels and films, the novels of P.D. James, Ruth Rendell, and Dorothy Sayers, A. S. Byatt's Possession, Patricia Conrwall's Scarpetta mysteries, Margaret Atwood's Robber Bride, and the movie The Usual Suspects. As one of the most successful literary genres, detective fiction appeals to a wide audience. This study will interest scholars of 19th and 20th century literature, of film, and of popular culture. Each chapter concludes with a select bibliography and filmography, where applicable.
Table of Contents:
  • The Devil Himself: An Introduction by Stacy Gillis
  • Vicarious Villainy and the Burden of Narrative Guilt by Jan-Melissa Schramm
  • Why Does Hortense Walk Barefoot Through the Grass?: Ambivalent Hierarchies of Intimacy in Bleak House by Janet Levison
  • From "Foreign Perculiarities" to "Fatal Resemblance": Detecting Villainy in The Women in White by Natalka Freeland
  • The Female Moriarty: The Arch-Villainess in Victorian Popular Fiction by Chris Willis
  • Philanthropies, Villainies and "The Speckled Band": The Conflict of the Imperial and the Anti-Imperial in Arthur Conan Doyle's Story and Play by Catherine Wynne
  • The Political Appeal of Fu Manchu by Peter Christensen
  • Case Closed: Scapegoating in British Women's Wartime Detective Fiction by Kristine Miller
  • Shadows and Doubts: Hitchcock, Genre and Villainy by Rowland Hughes
  • Why Don't They Just Shoot Him?: The Bond Villains and Cold War Heroism by Deborah Banner
  • Gothic Villainy: P.D. James and the Horror of Modernity/Ruth Rendell and the Utopian Sublime by Susan Rowland
  • Villainy and the Life of the Mind in Sayers and Byatt by Helen Taylor
  • Alone and Vulnerable in the Terrible Dream: Contagion and Technology in the Early Scarpetta Novels by Gerard Collins
  • The Devil Herself? Fantasy, Female Identity, and the Villainess Fatale in Margaret Atwood's The Robber Bride by Ann Heilmann
  • Getting Away with It: Villainy in The Usual Suspects and Se7en by Philippa Gates
  • Whoever Fights Monsters: Serial Killers, the FBI and America's Last Frontier by Linnie Blake
LC Card Number: 2001018221
LCC Class: PR830
Dewey Class: 791
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