Module 1 Flashcards
(39 cards)
1
Q
How does “The Tale of Three Apples Start?”
A
- MC: Khaleefeh and Jaafar (Khaleefeh’s Wezeer)
- Their goal is to find anyone who is again Khaleefeh and displace them. (223)
- They proceeded along a lane, and saw there an old man, with a net and basket upon his head, and a staff in his hand, reciting verses. (223)
- The old man replied to Khaleefeh: “I am a fisherman, and have a family to maintain, and I went forth from my house at noon, and have remained until now, but God hath alotted me nothing wherewith to obtain food for my household; therefore I have hated myself, and wished for death.” (223)
- Khaleef asked the man to return with them to the river and cast the net for his luck. “If thou wilt do so, I will purchase of thee wheatver cometh up for a hundred pieces of gold.”
- The fisherman dragged back his net from the river, pulling up a chest, locked and heavy. (223)
- Khaleefeh gave the fisherman his hundred pieces of gold and they took back the chest to the palace.
- Jaafar and Mesroor then broke it open, and they found in it a basket of palm-leaves sewed up with red wrosted; they cut the threads and saw within it a piece of carpet, and lifting this, they found beneath it an izar, and when they had taken up the izar they discovered under it a damsel like molten silver, killed and cut in pieces. (223)
- Khaleefeh ordered Jaafar to bring him the man who killed this woman so that he can avenge her upon him, or be crucified at the gate of his palace together with forty of they kinsmen.
- Jaafar asked for 3 days. → but couldn’t find him.
- Khaleefeh called on all those to see the crucifixion of Jaafar and his kinsmen. He gave orders to set up the crosses and placed the Wezeer and his kinsemen beneath to crucify them, and were awaiting the Khaleefeh’s permission… (224)
- While they were waiting, a handsome and neatly-dressed young man came forward through the crowd and admitted to killing the woman in the chest. (224)
- While Jaafar was speaking to this man, an old sheykh pressed through the crowd to him and the young man and admitted that he, himself, was the one who killed the woman. (224)
- The young man said the old man didn’t know what he was saying, and reinstated his own guilt. (225)
- The old man argued that he was old and the other man young and had already been satiated with the world and said that he will be a ransom for thee and for the wezeer and his kinsmen and that he alone killed the woman. (225)
- the Wezeer took both the young man and sheykh to the Khaleefeh. (225) He said the murderer of the woman had come.
- The Khaleefeh asked which one killed her. They both claimed it was each of them alone that had killed her. (225)
2
Q
What is the Middle of “The Tale of Three Apples Like?”
A
- The Khaleefeh said to Jafaar “Take them both and crucify them.”
- Jafaar argued that it would be unjust to kill them both if only one was the murderer. (225)
- The young man gave an account of the manner of his killing her, and described what Khaleefeh had found. The Khaleefeh therefore was convinced that the young man was he who had killed the damsel. (225)
- The young man explained: “This damsel was my wife, and the daughter of my uncle: this sheykh was her father, and is my uncle. I married her when she was a virgin….At the commencement of this month she was attacked by a severe illness and was recovered by physicians.” He desired her to be sent to the bath but she said she wanted an apple before taking a bath. (225)
- The young man could not find one. → An old gardener told him it was only in the garden of the Prince of the Faithful at El-Basrah, and preserved there for the Khaleefeh. (226)
- He travelled for 15 days and brought back three apples for her; but she was not pleased by them, and left them by her side. → She then suffered a violent fever, and continued ill during a period of 10 days. Then she recovered her health again. (227)
- A black slave passed him one day, having an apple in his hand → he replied he got it from his sweetheart and told him that he had found her ill and she had three apples and had told him that her husband journeyed to El-Basrah for them (227) and he had taken it from her.
- This filled him with excessive rage and he went back home → he asked her where the apple was and she said she did not know → he thought the slave must be talling the truth, took a knife, and plunged the knife into her. Then he cut off her head and limbs, and put them in the basket in haste, and covered them with izar, over which he laid a piece of carpet and threw the chest into the Tigris. (227)
- The young man begged to hasten his death in retaliation for her murder → bc he had returned home and found his eldest boy crying. The boy said he had taken one of the apples that his mother had, and went down with it into the street to play and a tall black slaves snatched it from him and asked how he had gotten the apple. (227)
- The son told the slave about his father’s journey and how he brought it back from El-Basrah for the sake of his sick mother and the details of it. (227)
- Young Man discovered he had murdered his wife unjustly. (228) and they wept.
3
Q
How did “The Tales of Three Apples” End?
A
- The Khaleefeh said he would not put to death any but the wicked slave; for the young man is excusable. (228)
- He called Jaafar to bring him the wicked slave, if not Jaafar should be put to death in his stead. (228)
- Jaafar, in despair hid in this house for 3 days, and on the fourth dat he caused the Kadee to be brought, and made his testamentary arrangements; and as he was bidding farewell to his children, and weeping, lo, the messenger of the Khaleefeh came and said to him that the Prince of the Faithful was in a most violent rage and said: “this day shall not pass until thou art put to death if thou do not bring to him the salve.” (228)
- Jaafar wept and hugged his youngest daughter to him, an in doing so felt something round in her pocket. She said it was an apple → “Our slave Reyhan brought it, and I have had it for four days; he would not give it to me until he had received from me two pieces of gold.” (228)
- He immediately ordered that the salve should be brought before him. (228) → The slave told him about the boy he had taken the apple from and the boy’s father’s journey to El-Basrah. (229)
- He took the slave and went with him to the Khaleefeh, who ordered that the story should be committed to writing and published. (229)
4
Q
How did the classical detective/crime fiction genre come to be in terms of socio-historical factors?
A
- Classical detective fiction of the 19th c emerges as the quintessential popular genre of modernity and as a reflection of anxieties associated with the rapidly changing society.
- Its cultural and literacy sources can be traced to earlier genres and print forms such as the mystery story and the Gothic genre, as well as the sensational street literature focusing on crime and punishment.
- Development of the tradition of intellectual deduction in modern Europe; elements of ratiocination: F.-M. Voltaire (Zadig) and W. Godwin
- the context of the Enlightenment; emphasis on the power of reason; popularization of science.
- knowledge becomes more accessible; the rise of the public educational system; growth of print culture; the rise of the encyclopedia.
- acceleration of industrialization and urbanization; the rise of urban crime.
5
Q
What did H. Worthington, “Criminal Narratives: Textualising Crime” Include?
A
- Broadsides / broadsheets (street literature, in prose or verse); included descriptions of crimes (eg. burglary, rape, murder, infanticide), criminals, and their punishment (often execution).
- “[T]o sell well, the broadsides had to entertain their audience, and they did so in the case of the criminal narratives by including as much graphic detail or violent crime and equally violent punishment as possible. There was some pretence to a moral and religious tone, but the broadsides made their appeal to the voyeuristic interests of the masses, exposing the gory and sometimes salacious details of the crimes and making public what had been private.”
-“[T]he writers of the criminal broadsides appealed to the.. prurient aspects of their audience, fulfilling the public’s desire for sex and violence whether in the reportage of violent crime or in the accounts of tis equally violent punishment.” - Popular representations of crime and punishment were meant to entertain, generate profit, and “disseminate the spectacle of sovereign power and reinforce its status.” (16)
6
Q
What connects broadsides and Poe and Arthur Conan Doyle’s “A Study in Scarlet.”
A
- The stories highlighted the troubling failings of the legal system:
-> “As the old systems of discovering crime and punishing its perpetrators were seen to be failing in the urbanised, industrialized, and increasingly secular world, so the evidence of this failure and the search for a solution to the problem can be found in the criminography of the literary periodicals. With the focus on the individual, proximity and possibility are no longer sufficient proof of criminality; motive and method are required to give meaning to the criminal act. Circumstantial evidence is no longer perceived as wholly reliable, neither are the statements of witnesses to be accepted as the unvarnished truth. The perception of such instabilities in the system is evident in the proliferation of narratives concenred with the wrongful accusation of the innocent.” (19) - The rise of the literary figure of a brilliant detective alleviated teh anxieties over the imperfect practices and the limitations of the police and judicial systems.”
7
Q
According to Worthington what was common of Broadsides?
A
- Erasure of individuality and reducing the criminal to a signifier.
- Displacement of the actual crime to a discursive, textual space;
- Commodified crime as a deferred, textual representation that is offered for consumption regardless of class, level of education, gender or age.
8
Q
According to Worthington, what was Readership of Broadsides like?
A
- Lower classes, although middle and upper classes had vested interest in the prevention of crime.
- More literate / educated readers had access to books and more factual accounts of crime such as the Newgate Calendars and the fictional narratives of the Newgate novels, as well as periodicals (21).
- “Urban crimes provided the source material, and the ever-increasing urban population offered an audience eager to consume stories that reflected its paranoia about the dangers of city life. In the proliferation of new periodicals, the urban publishing industry supplied the ideal vehicle for an episodic, popular literary from. The conventional critical view is that detective fiction acheived its enormous, enduring popularity bc it put forward accounts for its largely city-dwelling audience. Intended primarily for a bourgeois, conservative readership, early detective fiction, according to the argument, offered a reassuring perspective of urban life, in which through the application of reassuring perspective of urban life, in which through the application of scientific reasoning–‘ratiocination’–the detective renders the city knowable, its mysteries solvable, its relentlessly multiplying lower classes and immigrant populations controllable, its criminals able to be captured.”
9
Q
What was Edgar Allan Poe’s (1809-1849) Romanticism vs. Enlightenment?
A
- Arguably, the formula for the classic detective fiction was first articulated by Edgar Allen Poe in the 1840s.
- Romantic sensibilities: individuality; introversion; introspection; the macabre; representation of the city as dark, dirty, threatening.
- The detective’s character as a deviation from the norm; “diseased intelligence”
- The detective’s power of reasoning: genius-like gift vs. skills of analysis and deduction
- Presence of the popular means of dissemination of information: newspapers
- Reason, materialism, intellectual self-sufficiency:
- :neither of us believe in praeternatural events…. the doers of the deed were material, and escaped materiality.”
- “This may be the practice in law, but it is not the usage of reason”
- “An inquiry will afford us amusement” [ie. it is not a matter of justice]
10
Q
Reading the Murder and the Criminal Body:
A
- “The crime symbolizes not only an infraction of the law but a disruption of the normal order of society” (Cawelti 83)
- Mutilations: “strange”, “peculiar”, “the unusual horror of the ting”
- The public spectacle of death; death as the ultimate mystery.
- Otherness, non-humanity, animality: “a grotesquerie in horror absolutely alien from humanity, and a voice foreign in tone to the ears of men of many nations, and devoid of all distinct or intelligence syllabification.”
- The threat, disruption of the order comes from the colonies.
- Denounement and the problem of justice: the French sailor is innocent.
11
Q
What is Urban Modernity like in Poe?
A
- Poe’s detective as an urban investigator and a reader of the urban space “…roaming far and wide until a late hour, seeking, amid the wild lights and shadows of the populous city, that infinity of mental excitement which quiet observation can afford.”
12
Q
In Poe, how was the death sensationalized and how were the victims brutalized?
A
The victims and what was done to them was described in such vivid, morbid detail: “…the corpse thrust, with the head downward, up the chimney; the frightful mutilation of the body of the old lady…” (155)
- re-mentioning the gory details of the scene, “…thrusting her daughter’s corpse up the chimney as it was found…” (156)
- “here is a woman strangled to death by manual strength, and thrust up a chimney, head downward…. In the manner of thrusting the corpse up the chimney, you will admit that there was something excessively outre… think, too, how great must have been that strength which could have thrust the body up such an aperature so forcibly that the united vigour of several persons was found barely sufficient to drag it down!” (162-163)
- “On the hearth were thick tresses–very thick tresses–of grey human hair. These had been torn out by the roots.” (163)
- “The throat of the old lady was not merely cut, but the head absolutely severed from the body; the instrument was a mere razor.” (163)
13
Q
How were the victims depicted in “The Murders in the Rue Morgue”?
A
- Madame L’Espanaye and her daughter lived an exceedingly retired life–saw no company–seldom went out–had little use for numerous changes of habiliment. (162)
- loners ->
14
Q
According to Cawelti, What are Conventions?
A
“Conventions are elements that are known to both the creator and his audience before” (eg. plot, stereotypical characters and ideas, familiar tropes, and so on).
15
Q
According to Calwelti, all “cultural products” contain what?
A
Both conventions and inventions
16
Q
According to Cawelti, what are inventions?
A
Uniquely imagined by the creator.
17
Q
According to Cawelti, what are the cultural functions of conventions and inventions?
A
“Conventions represent familiar shared images and meanings and…assert an ongoing continuity of values; inventions confront us with a new perception or meaning”
- Cawelti acknowledges, however, that this division is not clear-cut and “many elements lie somewhere along the continuum between the two poles.” (6-7)
- a formula as “a conventional system for structuring cultural products”
- formulas are shaped by cultural and historical contexts and are this fairly limited and specific in terms of their repertoire.
18
Q
How can the formula of the classical (ratiocinative) detective story be described?
A
- The formula of the classical detective story “can be described as a conventional way of defining and developing a particular kind of situation or situations. A pattern of action or development of this situation, or certain group of characters and the relations between them, and a setting or type of setting appropriate to the characters and action.”
19
Q
What was the formula of the classical (ratiocinative) detective story?
A
- Situation (an unsolved crime and an elucidation of its mystery)
- two main types: murder and crimes associated w/political intrigue
- no empathy/human implications in the context of the victim’s death
- the detective has no personal interest in the crime he is investigating (emotional detachment); solving of the crime is presented as an intellectual exercise. - Pattern of Action
- Introduction of the detective; crime and clues; investigation; announcement of the solution; explanation of the solution; denouement
- the character of the detective is detached from society; the detective is both eccentric and brilliant
- The narrative perspective (the detective’s friend, an average mind)
- One of the main sources of pleasure in the detective’s explanation is “the sense of relief that accompanies the detective’s precise definition and externalization of guilt.” - Characters and relationships
- absence of sympathy or identification with the criminal
- “…instead of laying bare the hidden guilt of bourgeois society the detective-intellectual uses his demonic powers to project the general guilt onto specific and overt acts of particular individuals, thus restoring the serenity of the middle-class social order” (96) - Setting
- construction of space (isolated, close spaces)
20
Q
What does Arthur Conan Doyle “A Study in Scarlet” represent in detective fiction?
A
- the “shifting patterns in the literary portrayal of crime”: transformation of crime into a game or puzzle; and growing emphasis on domestic crimes.
- Conan Doyle’s self-reflexive acknowledgement of the existing crime fiction market (eg. his references to Edgar Allan Poe and Emile Gaboriau, who produced five books about M. Lecoq, all in the 1860s)
- ## “A Scandal in Bohemia” (1891) as a turning point in the popularity of the Sherlock Holmes series.
21
Q
What are some similarities between Poe and Conan Doyle?
A
- Aestheticization of crime (transformation of solving a crime into a game, a puzzle, and an intellectual exercise showcasing the skill of the “consulting detective”)
- Emphasis of the formula on domestic crime featuring the family circle (moving away from political or social crimes: cf. Poe’s “The Purloined Letter,” which focuses on a politival intrigue); bringing crime into a middle class, bourgeois setting.
- Conan Doyle’s works as a continuation of the tradition established by Poe and a reaction to it.
- Conan Doyle fully established the relation between crime and the family milieu.
22
Q
What is the Character of Watson like and Watson like as a Narrative Voice?
A
- Watson’s normativity and conformity to Victorian social values is posited in opposition to Holmes’ eccentricity.
- “To Victorian males… the reference [to the battle of Maiwand, Afghanistan] would signify the most heroic qualities of British manhood in the face of adversity, representing a suitable proving ground for Watson. By including these conventional adventure stories and military references, Doyle masculinizes the ambiguous atmosphere of Study, just as he sterilizes it with the trappings of science, analysis and medicine.” (Bragg)
- Through the character of Watson, Doyle establishes a very specific socio-historical context of Britain (as a long-standing imperial, economic, and political power.)
- Watson as a detective (and Holmes as a puzzle): “I eagerly hailed the little mystery which hung around my companion, and spent much of my time endeavoring to unravel it.
23
Q
What is according to scholars, the character of Sherlock Holmes like?
A
- Holmes masculine style is at odds with Victorian normative masculinity
- Holmes’ character is fundamentally marked as other”
- In the character of Holmes Conan Doyle brings together masculine and feminine, public and private spaces.”
24
Q
What is the significance of Arthur Conan Doyle’s Sherlock Holmes and the Police?
A
“[The] move towards the celebration of the fictional detective as hero arrived at a time when the Metropolitan Police were not viewed in a particularly positive light. The years preceding the birth of Holmes and the Strand constituted a challenging time for the reputation of London’s police force and detective branch, as both suffered sustained attacks in the national press, with coverage drawing attention to a number of embarassing and worrying failures.”
- “Here in London we have lots of Government detectives and lots of private ones. When these fellows are at fault, they come to me and I manage to put them on the right scent. They lay all the evidence before me, and I am generally able, y the help of my knowledge of the history of crime, to set them straight…”
25
How does Conan Doyle depict America in "A Study in Scarlet"?
"In the central portion of the great North American Continent there lies an arid and repulsive desert, which for many a long year served as a barrier against the advance of civilization. From the Sierra Nevada to Nebraska, and from the Yellowstone River in the north to the Colorado upon the south, is a region of desolation and silence. Nor is Nature always in one mood throughout this grim district. It comprises snow-capped and lofty mountains, and dark and gloomy valleys. There are swift-flowing rivers which dash through jagged canons; and there are enormous plains, which in winter are white with snow, and in summer are grey with the saline alkali dust. They all preserve, however, the common characteristics of barrenness, inhospitality, and misery."
26
How does Conan Doyle describe Mormons and those he others in "A Study in Scarlet"?
- immoral: Stangerson had 4 wives and Drebber had 7.
- Stangerson threatens John Ferrier when he tells them to leave and that they can only return when his daughter summons them. -> they also paint threatening numbers on the door and around Ferrier's house, counting down the days for him to make "ammendment".
- Eg. Drebber's corpse-form: "so sinister was the impression which that face had produced upon me that I found it difficult to feel anything but gratitude for him who had removed its owner from the world. If ever human features bespoke vice of the most malignant type, they were certainly those of Enoch J. Drebber, of Cleveland."
- eg. Drebber is described as being a drunk and abusive, especially in the account that Gregson got from his supposed leads that he shares with Holmes and Watson proudly when he thinks he has arrested the correct man.
27
How is Jefferson Hope depicted in "A Study in Scarlet?"
- "savage looking": "his dark sunburned face born an expression of determination and energy which was as formidable as his personal strength" "fierce dark eyes"
- describing in sort of an animalistic manner by John Ferrier: "as he watched it he saw it writhe along the ground and into the hall with the rapidity and noiselessness of a serpent."
- like in Poe's "The Murders in the Rue Morgue", the murderer is almost acquitted of being deemed a bad person, by giving him a chance to tell his story and by being affable and righteous -> eg. he expressed his hopes that he had not hurt any of them in the scuffle and his story gives the idea to everyone that his murdering of the two men was justified and even a favour to society.
28
What is significant about the ending of "The Tale of Three Apples", Poe's "The Murders in the Rue Morgue" and Conan Doyle's "A Study in Scarlet?"
- All do not end in justice for the victims, though some of them, like Doyle's "A Study in Scarlet" end with a sort of justice in that the men who had terrorized John Ferrier and his daughter, resulting in their deaths, were also killed for revenge, and that the one who committed the acts in order to get revenge, was never jailed for it and died before he could receive punishment for his actions.
- In "The Tale of Three Apples" the man who killed and dismembered his wife over the misunderstanding of her confusion about where one of the apples went, is not persecuted for his actions and is, in fact, let free when heard how he "accidentally" killed his wife under a false guise. -> the slave who lied and stole the apple, though he did not kill the woman, is implied, instead, to be the one that will receive the punishment.
- Similarly, in Poe's "The Murders in the Rue Morgue", the ourang-outang who committed the heinous murders of the two woman: the mother and daughter, is sold to another person and the man responsible for the monkey, gets off scotch free and is allowed to live his life without having to deal with the consequences of his actions -> CHECK WHAT HIS CONSEQUENCES WERE
29
How is media coverage of the crime in "A Study in Scarlet" depicted?
-> SEE NOTES
- in the Echo for the day: "The public has lost a sensational treat through the sudden death of the man Hope, who was suspected of the murder of Mr. Enoch Drebber and Mr. Joseph Stangerson. The details of the case will probably be never known now..."
- in the same article: "If the case has had no other effect, it, at least, brings out in the most striking manner the efficiency oof our detective police force, and will serve as a lesson to all foreigners that they will do wisely to settle their feuds at home, and not to carry them on to British soil."
30
What are some criticisms about Sherlock the BBC show?
"...this reinvisioning of Sherlock as a fully modern figure is in a key sense not a re-visioning at all, but rather an updating of a character who was crucially modern within his original Victorian context."
- "[the] lavish use of postmodern and contemporary technologies... merely obfuscate the ways in which Sherlock displays a retrofuturism that imagines the present solely in terms of the future of an outdated past. In other words, it projects the image of a postmodern visual aesthetic, which only superficially disguises its essentially conservative, pre-modern message. ... It lacks the self-reflective awareness that ought to permeate a postmodernism relevant to a progressive cultural discourse"
- "...with collapsing the Victorian period into our own in the unexamined, retrofuturistic way that Sherlock does... it actually serves to ensure that history has no context and therefore both the past and the present become wholly fantastical, idealized constructs that have little to do with reality."
- "while the substitutions employed by Sherlock are made possuble by the way our period mirrors the Victorian era (such as the fact that there's still a war in Afghanistan), the writers do not utilize this mirroring to comment on the valence of the present, merely congratulating themselves on having escaped the oppressive yoke of Victorian mores, while simultaneously demonstrating that they haven't actually done so" eg. Sherlock's misogny, classism, and the treatment of queer subtexts, among other examples.
31
What is the character of Sherlock like in the BBC show?
- unconventional; perceived as lacking empathy; does not cultivate friendships; does not attribute much importance to romantic/sexual attachments sexually ambivalent; nonconformist
- "a high-functioning sociopath"
- representation of mental health disorders
- "Sherlock, by naming himself a 'sociopath' also shows a greater self-awareness of his otherness than his Victorian counterpart, who was often puzzled when his considerable eccentricities were pointed out"
- Sergeant Sally Donovan: Sherlock is a "freak" a "psychopath"; he "gets off" on crimes.
- character dichotomies: Sherlock vs. Watson (different levels of detection competence and digital technology competence); Sherlock vs. Lestrade (the tradition of a brilliant consulting detective vs. the [incompetent] police); Sherlock vs. Moriarty
32
How is Gender Represented in BBC's Sherlock?
- Sherlock series and detection as a privileged masculine space (in conformity with the classical tradition of detective fiction); on the other hand, ambivalent and contradictory construction of Sherlock's masculinity.
- Female characters in the series: Mrs. Hudson (Watson's/Sherlock's landlady), Molly Hooper (pathologist), Mary Watson, Sgt Sally Donovan (police officer, Scotland Yard, works for D.I Greg Lestrade); Jennifer Wilson (the victim [woman in pink]).
- Sherlock's treatment of the female characters: dismissive, arrogant, often rude (the same applies to a number of male characters).
- Treatment of queer themes in the series.
33
The millenial Sherlock and the Digital Technology
- Sherlock Holmes' selective knowledge in "A Study in Scarlet" vs. Sherlock's use of information in the series: there is no useless knowledge.
- The historically changing problem of knowledge and access to information; exponential growth of information in the digital age.
- "In Sherlock... [crime] 'traces' are foten left behind through technology: email passwords, GPS directions, website posts"
- Evolving forms of knowledge: from rigid and static knowledge of the print medium (controlled and censored by the author and/or publisher) to the fluid, mobile, indeterminate, de-centred space of the online production and dissemination of information (although in the series it is ordered and controlled through Sherlock's mind)
- Watson's narrative is revisioned in a form of a blog.
- Watson's lack of experience with web technology vs. Sherlock's skills and competence using digital tools.
- "Much of [the] new millenial Sherlock's skill is now based not in honed internal perfection, byt rather in knowing how to navigate digital data quickly and instinctively in order to arrive at an insight into a given mystery"
34
What is meant by seeing "Retrofuturism" in BBC's Sherlock?
(with elements of the steampunk aesthetics)
- Sherlock's world appears to be a "reconstruction of the 19th century version of the future"
- The forward-looking aesthetic of the modern in the 19th c. vs. science fiction's failed utopian visions of modernity.
- "...the overly aestheticized images that make Sherlock so stand out themselves hold political and ideological weight, infusing London's hypermodernity with nostalgia, and thereby creating a very particular vision of the city, a vision that couldn't be further from the omnipresent representation of rioting London youth" -> reference to the Aug. 2011 riots in London)
35
What is the Staying Power of the Sherlock Holmes Narrative/Motifs and the Theme of Modernity?
- The Sherlock Holmes narrative as a symbolic matrix of a set of concerns associated with the discourse of modernity (progress, reason, knowledge as a hisotrically privileged site and a vehicle of power, belief in the possibility of restoration of social order).
- the story's (and our) fascination with transgression generally and specific transgressive social acts (eg. crime and murder); fascination with above-average cognitive abilities; questioning the boundaries of social normativity.
- the story responds to a set of epistemological and social anxieties (about knowledge, progress, and the nature of truth; stability and socio-political structures [class, gender, race, empire]; nostalgia for the past as a site of reassuring and comforting security)
- fascination with neo-Victorianism in today's culture
- the character of Sherlock Holmes as a quintessential figure of modernity.
36
What does Connie Walker say about her podcast and true crime?
- "With the podcast you really have the space to... not only focus on the mystery of someone's death or disappearance, but to really help people understand how that's connected back to Canadian history and how that's connected back to the legacies of residential schools and colonization in Canada."
- The 'insatiable appetite' for true crime podcasts allowed Walker and her team to 'attract a much bigger audience that didn't even know they were interested in indigenous issues until they heard about the podcast'.
'But in "Missing and Murdered", Walker and her team were 'actively trying not to focus on the violence that often resulted in the deaths or disappearances of women and girls' she explained.
- "Instead, they used the true crime genre as a tool, as a way to tell a bigger story."
- "We've tried to subvert the popularity of the true crime genre, to really tell a story about history and to tell a story about Indigenous lives in Canada."
- Trauma-informed journalism
- "...probing as an intrusion" ("The Tip")
37
Where can the beginnings of the horror be traced?
"the origins of the horror story may be traced to the beginnings of the narrative itself." (Dixon 1)
- Elements of horror in epic narratives, folk tales, medieval narratives and later literary production (eg. Epic of Gildamesh c. 2000 BC; Odyssey c. 800 BC; Sir Gawain and the Green Knight; Dante, "The Divine Comedy; J W. Goethe, Faust)
- Range of 20th-21st c. genres and media: fiction, comic books, radio, film and television, computer games
- "...analyzing representations of horror and 'monstrous embodiment' in oral, literary and cinematic texts has long provided one of the most compelling avenues for understanding the cultural impact of social and political change"
- "by embodying society's dark side, [the monster] tests the rule, moral and ideological structures that operate in our culture, holding these structures up for analysis, contesting their worth, and exposing the instability of the system that informs the social order.
"Horror... shows us our inherent scepticism about absolute progress. As we gain more and more mastery of the world, it can be easy to forget that, deep down, we still lack mastery of ourselves. [Horror works] present a dark regressive shadow imag eof the bright and progressive veneer of 18th- and 19th- century optimism. The origins of modern horror provide a vivid representation of the inherent moral weakness and often-present darkness in the human condition. The presence of horror in the popular imagination suggests our cultural need to be reminded of our fallen state" (Tallon 38)
38
What is the Codification of the horror story in the Western Tradition?
Romanticism and the Gothic genre (starting with the 2nd half of the 18th c.)
- Reaction to (neo)classicism (rationalism; traditionalism; formal harmony) and to the Enlightenment belief in the possibility of a rational comprehension of the universe.
- Imaginative apprehension of experience; imagination as a transformative power
- Primacy of feeling over reason; subjectivity
- The cult of the individual (esp of the artist; originality of the genius)
- New attitude towards nature
- Aesthetics; the beautiful and sublime
- Exploration of the unconscious
- The sense of the past; continuity and rupture; Medievalism
- Fascination with the supernatural; mysticicsm
- Greater freedom of expression; spontaneity.
39
What is the context behind Pu Songling's "Strange Tales from a Chinese Studio"
- (1640-1715)
- The writer was born before the conquest of China by the Manchu; his life coincided with the period of Manchu stabilization in power and many conflicts between the new rulers and local loyalists.
Strange Tales from a Chinese Studio
- almost 500 tales believed to be written in the last third of the 17th c, but published (posthumously) in 1766
- a combination of the local folklore material and a commentary on the reality of a troubled political period in China (the end of the Ming Dynasty and the establishment og the Qing Dynasty [1644-1911]).
- magical encounters, both fantastic and scary; domestic scenes; fox shape-shifters, ghosts, demons and immortals, but also ordinary people
- his writings reflects a classic, elite tradition but also connects with the folk tradition
- "Reality shifts, unexpected shocks, ironic knowledge and enlightenment: all these were the common coin of the day. In the late Ming and early Qing educated men and women commonly voiced a revulsion for rational perceptions and praised the eccentric, the wild and the mad; poets and essayists loved the spirit of 'Crazy Zen' as it was termed. The wonder tale was similarly the right medium for this koan perspective; the inverted worlds of magic were the madness cure, the absurdity cure, designed to eliminate bad habits such as thinking. Pu Songlong's tales, with their changing identities and shifting realities, their sudeen revelations of worlds within worlds, their dream sequences that reveal higher realities and the layering of truths within truths, were well attuned to this inside out logic."
