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Shiloh, Ilana
The Double, the Labyrinth and the Locked Room
Metaphors of Paradox in Crime Fiction and Film
Year of Publication: 2011
New York, Bern, Berlin, Bruxelles, Frankfurt am Main, Oxford, Wien, 2011. X, 186 pp.
ISBN 978-0-8204-6843-3 pb.
(Softcover)
ISBN
978-1-4539-0088-8
(eBook)
Weight: 0.290 kg, 0.639 lbs
available PDF
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- Softcover
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Book synopsis
Traditional detective fiction celebrates the victory of order and reason over the senseless violence of crime. Yet in spite of its apparent valorization of rationality, the detective genre has been associated from its inception with three paradoxical motifs - the double, the labyrinth and the locked room. Rational thought relies on binary oppositions, such as chaos and order, appearance and reality or truth and falsehood. Paradoxes subvert such customary distinctions, logically proving as true what we experientially know to be false.
The present book explores detective and crime-mystery fiction and film from the perspective of their entrenched metaphors of paradox. This new and intriguing angle yields fresh insights into a genre that has become one of the hallmarks of postmodernism.
About the author(s)/editor(s)
Ilana Shiloh received her PhD in American literature from Tel Aviv University, where she taught detective fiction in the Department of English. Her previous book, Paul Auster and Postmodern Quest, has gained critical acclaim.