Tjuvar, snutar och spioner: Litteratur- och språkvetenskapliga perspektiv på kriminalromanen

This course focuses on three expressions of genre fiction: Crime, Detective and Spy fiction. Despite what may apparently differentiate these genres at first glance, what they have in common is that the stories are focused on crimes and criminal activities (e.g. murder, organized crime, international conspiracies, etc.), the victims of these crimes, the perpetrators/villains behind these crimes and, most importantly, the relentless pursuit of truth in a narrative world that usually challenges our ability to locate it.

We will read crime/detective/espionage novels and short stories as complex narratives whose history within literary studies is both well-established while at the same time being subject to constant innovation and pioneering process. We will read appropriate critical material and explore a wide range of topics in relation to the assigned readings that both question and develop the social and political critique of the genre, its rhetorical strategies and genre conventions along with contemporary concerns of cultural difference, language, gender, class, psychology and ethnicity.