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The Double, the Labyrinth and the Locked Room

Metaphors of Paradox in Crime Fiction and Film

by Ilana Shiloh (Author)
©2011 Monographs X, 186 Pages

Summary

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.

Details

Pages
X, 186
Publication Year
2011
ISBN (PDF)
9781453900888
ISBN (Softcover)
9780820468433
DOI
10.3726/978-1-4539-0088-8
Language
English
Publication date
2011 (June)
Keywords
logical paradoxes labyrinth double locked room detective fiction and cinema
Published
New York, Bern, Berlin, Bruxelles, Frankfurt am Main, Oxford, Wien, 2011. X, 186 pp.

Biographical notes

Ilana Shiloh (Author)

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.

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Title: The Double, the Labyrinth and the Locked Room