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Hard-Boiled Fiction and Dark Romanticism

by Jopi Nyman (Author)
©1998 Monographs 144 Pages

Summary

Since the 1920s the use of romantic features in the tough masculinist narratives of American hard-boiled fiction has often surprised its readers. Through an exploration of fiction written by four major hard-boiled writers (Ernest Hemingway, Dashiell Hammett, James M. Cain and Horace McCoy), this study explains the genre's fascination with romance from a critical Cultural Studies perspective. It focuses not only on the use of the theme of the waste land and Gothic conventions, but also on the subversion of romance and its ideal hero. The study argues that the romanticism and pathos evident in the genre are antimodern and nostalgic yearnings for a lost world of true individualism and manhood.

Details

Pages
144
Publication Year
1998
ISBN (PDF)
9783653019261
DOI
10.3726/978-3-653-01926-1
Language
English
Publication date
2012 (August)
Keywords
Cultural Studies perspective American narratives Hard-Boiled Fiction
Published
Frankfurt/M., Berlin, Bern, New York, Paris, Wien, 1998. 144 pp.

Biographical notes

Jopi Nyman (Author)

The Author: Jopi Nyman, born in 1966, was educated at the Universities of Joensuu, Finland, and East London, UK. He is currently employed as Researcher in English at the University of Joensuu, Finland. He is the author of Men Alone: Masculinity, Individualism, and Hard-Boiled Fiction (1997).

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Title: Hard-Boiled Fiction and Dark Romanticism