Studies in Literature and Film (386-0-20)
Topic
Detective Fiction and the Search for Truth
Instructors
Douglas R O'Hara
Meeting Info
University Hall 112: Mon, Wed 2:00PM - 3:20PM
Overview of class
Political corruption, murderous conspiracies, adulterous affairs, and deceptions of all kinds plague the realms of detective fiction. If only a knight in shining armor would arrive on the scene to untangle the web of lies, or rescue the damsel in distress, or solve the puzzle of "whodunit?" And that's exactly how fictional detectives are often characterized. Indeed, the very first fictional detective, Edgar Allan Poe's C. Auguste Dupin, had the title Le Chevalier, the French word for a knight. This figure of the knight invites us to consider the detective's investigation as a lonely, but noble and heroic, quest for the truth. It also invites us to assume that the quest is undertaken by a gentleman for the sake of a lady's honor, and that the grail-like truth is something that only he will be able to discover. What happens, however, when the truth-seeker is no longer a man of honor, or a man at all? Or, when the lady in question is no longer in distress, but the cause of the distress? Or, when the social order on whose behalf the detective-knight supposedly works is no longer committed to seeking the truth but to covering it up? That's when things get interesting. We'll begin our class with Poe's "The Murders in the Rue Morgue," which raises in pointed fashion the question of human culpability and bestial violence, and end with Colson Whitehead's The Intuitionist, which transforms the detective's traditional powers of "deduction" based on empirical evidence into something like its opposite, pure "intuition." Along the way, we will examine who comes to occupy the position of the detective, and how the identity of the detective affects both the search for truth and its relationship to power. And, just for fun, we'll explore how reading a novel or viewing a film is like the work of detection.
Class Materials (Required)
Edgar Allan Poe's "The Murders in the Rue Morgue," Raymond Chandler's The Big Sleep (ISBN 978-0394758282), Katherine Forrest's Murder at the Nightwood Bar (ISBN 978-1935226673), and Colson Whitehead's The Intuitionist (ISBN 978-0385493000).
Likely films: The Maltese Falcon (1941), The Third Man (1958), Devil in a Blue Dress (1995), and Knives Out (2019).
Class Notes
Doug O'Hara received his Ph.D. in Early Modern Literature from the University of California, Berkeley. He has taught classes at Berkeley and Northwestern, while studying widely in history, philosophy, and some film. Currently, he is most interested in genre fiction, because it offers more opportunities for better conversation.
Class Attributes
Literature & Fine Arts Distro Area