Rhyme or Reason: Three Patterns of Poetic Interference in the British Crime Novel
This essay shows how poetical elements may be integrated to a prose genre, the crime fiction narrative, and the perturbations they may generate. Conan Doyle’s Musgrave Ritual centers on a pattern of verse. There are two ways of interpreting it: a poetical reading, that denies the text an object, and...
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| Main Author: | |
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| Format: | Article |
| Language: | English |
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Centre de Recherche "Texte et Critique de Texte"
2004-12-01
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| Series: | Sillages Critiques |
| Subjects: | |
| Online Access: | https://journals.openedition.org/sillagescritiques/1438 |
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| Summary: | This essay shows how poetical elements may be integrated to a prose genre, the crime fiction narrative, and the perturbations they may generate. Conan Doyle’s Musgrave Ritual centers on a pattern of verse. There are two ways of interpreting it: a poetical reading, that denies the text an object, and an utilitarian reading, that forces out of it a series of names limiting its “effect of illimitation” (Jean Cohen), though questioned by narrative irony. In Agatha Christie’s Crooked House, the nursery rhyme in the title is merely submitted by the detective to a rational, analogical reading. Now an irrational reading, based on Freud’s interpretation of dreams, might show that the poem’s signifiers all reveal one unspeakable statement: a child has killed. In Colin Dexter’s The Way Through The Woods, a detective builds up a poem in order to display its object – a corpse. This interpretation happens to be faulty, yet the poem states the truth insofar as it expresses another murderer’s confession – unknown to his author and the murderer. An oracular utterance, it subverts the traditional pattern of the detective’s final explanation. |
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| ISSN: | 1272-3819 1969-6302 |