New Approaches to Crime in French Literature, Culture and Film

The notion of crime crosses generic, disciplinary and cultural frontiers. In an era of identity fraud, eco-crime and global terrorism, this collection moves towards a reconsideration of crime in the French and Francophone literary and cultural imagination. How have our conceptions of 'criminal' behaviour developed? How has the French genre of crime fiction, encompassing, but not limited to, the polar, the roman policier and film noir, evolved and reinvented itself? The volume adopts a number of theoretical approaches, which range from sociological and criminological discourse to literary criticism and postcolonial theory (by Chamoiseau, Durkheim, Deleuze, Foucault, Glissant, Krafft-Ebing and Todorov). In a wide-ranging series of innovative and challenging readings, it examines ideas which include the evolving concept of crime in literature from Voltaire and censorship through to scientific constructions of criminality in the nineteenth century and in the postcolonial era, both within and outside metropolitan France. The volume also explores 'textual crimes' in contemporary Martinican women's writing, crime as a genre in Andr? H?l?na, Serge Arcou?t and Jean Meckert, S?bastien Japrisot and Dominique Manotti, and visual responses to crime by artist Jacques Monory and filmmaker Didier Bivel.

Author: Louise Hardwick

Publisher: Peter Lang UK

Publication Date: Jul 17, 2009

Number of Pages: 246 pages

Binding: Paperback or Softback

ISBN-10: 3039118501

ISBN-13: 9783039118502