Detective Fiction
Class Information
Instructor: Dobbins, Gregory
CRN: 53827
Time: TWR 2:10-3:50
GE Areas: Writing Experience
Description
"Hard-Boiled/Noir Crime Fiction"
This course will not concern the history of the detective novel in general-- instead, it will focus exclusively on two specific sub-genres: "hard-boiled crime fiction" and "noir film". The Hard-Boiled detective novel first emerged in California the 1920s and 1930s in the works of writers like Dashiell Hammett, Raymond Chandler, and James Cain. It referred to what was then a new trajectory in crime writing: these novels were bleaker, more violent, and often focused on the exposure of systematic and institutional corruption. These novelists consciously developed their respective approaches to the detective novel AGAINST the more staid English model of the detective novel identified with Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, Agatha Christie, and Dorothy Sayers. Later, once the works of the "hard-boiled" writers were made into films, the term "noir" came into use when they started to appear in post-WWII France. While the sense of "darkness" captured by the word noir in part referred to the formal characteristics evident in these films, it also captured the sense of bleakness that these films (and the novels on which they were based) expressed as a persistent thematic concern. By now, "noir" loosely refers to a sub-genre of twentieth-century crime-writing that begins roughly 100 years ago and continues into the present day. This course will focus specifically on the emergence of this trajectory in crime narrative in the 1930s and 1940s. We will be read classic noir novels by writers like Hammett, Chandler, Cain, Vera Caspary, and Dorothy Hughes and compare to them to the notable films they inspired.
This course will be ONLINE via REMOTE INSTRUCTION consisting of a mix of synchronous and asynchronous classes. We will have live meetings once a week on Thursdays(via Zoom). Our other class commitments (that which would cover the time in class for Tuesday and Wednesday each week) will be satisfied through pre-recorded video lectures uploaded to the course Canvas site which you will view on your own through the week.
Grading
Two 1500 word essays, take-home final exam, frequent online discussion/journal submissions
Texts
'M' (film), Fritz Lang
The Maltese Falcon, Dashiell Hammett
The Postman Always Rings Twice, James Cain
Double Indemnity, James Cain
The Big Sleep, Raymond Chandler
Laura, Vera Caspary
In a Lonely Place, Dorothy Hughes
Film versions of preceding novels , John Huston, Tay Garnett, Billy Wilder, Howard Hawkes, Otto Preminger, Nicholas Ray