Frank investigates an intertextual exchange between nineteenth-century historical disciplines (philology, cosmology, geology archaeology and evolutionary biology) and the detective fictions of Poe, Dickens, and Doyle. In responding to the writings of figures like Lyell, Darwin and E.B. Taylor, detective fiction initiated a transition from scriptural literalism and a prevailing Natural Theology to a naturalistic, secular worldview. In the process, detective fiction sceptically examined both the evidence such disciplines used and their narrative rendering of the world.
| ISBN: | 9781403911391 |
| Publication date: | 2nd July 2003 |
| Author: | Lawrence Frank |
| Publisher: | Palgrave Macmillan an imprint of Palgrave Macmillan UK |
| Format: | Hardback |
| Pagination: | 249 pages |
| Series: | Palgrave Studies in Nineteenth-Century Writing and Culture |
| Genres: |
Fiction Literary studies: c 1800 to c 1900 Literature: history and criticism |