EGL 226 - (266) Victorian Detective Fiction

Course Units: 1

(Not offered in 2015-16) Offered once every four years. This course investigates detective fiction’s emergence and popularity in late nineteenth-century English literature and places the birth of the genre in its social and cultural contexts. We read prominent Victorian writers such as Dickens and Collins as well as canonical detective fiction writers such as Conan Doyle and Poe. How does the rise of the detective novel intersect with historical conditions of Empire, gender relations, and social policy? Does the spread of detective fiction signal late Victorian England’s need to patrol destabilizing forces, both domestic and foreign? Common Curriculum CC: HUL