Cover not available
Part of
Landscapes of Realism: Rethinking literary realism in comparative perspectives
Edited by Dirk Göttsche, Rosa Mucignat and Robert Weninger
[Comparative History of Literatures in European Languages XXXII] 2021
► pp. 761–774

Realism in Anglo-American crime fiction

For the century following the publication of Edgar Allan Poe’s “The Murders in the Rue Morgue” in 1841 crime fiction would follow lines set by that foundational work: the main character must solve mysteries by the application of reason alone. In an effort to ennoble a genre of popular literature that had its roots in nineteenth-century sensational fiction, in which the otherworldly was commonplace, the Golden Age of the genre, the 1910s to 1930s, saw the emphasis on rational thought and realistic explanations become enshrined in rules that sought to root out any supernatural solution. This formula was criticized by Raymond Chandler in his article “The Simple Art of Murder” (1944 and 1950), which took stock of a new style of crime novels published in the previous decade and coined the term ‘hardboiled’ to define them: realistic depictions of criminals and their motivations, with a particular emphasis on realistic language. Realism based on the use of everyday language and the depiction of morally reprehensible behavior displaced realism based on rationality as the cardinal rule for the detective story. Upon closer inspection, however, the very novels championed by Chandler display inconsistencies: language is stylized and the detective is often portrayed as a romantic hero facing off evil. In both periods realism appears as a ploy to grant canonicity to a genre of popular literature.

Keywords: realism, crime fiction, popular literature, Raymond Chandler, film noir
Article outline
  • Poe, Conan Doyle, The Golden Age: Reason and detection
  • Hardboiled crime fiction: Language and morals
  • Moving beyond Chandler: Crime fiction’s going global
  • Note
  • Works cited
Published online: 21 April 2021
DOI logo
https://doi.org/10.1075/chlel.xxxii.29val
References

Works cited

Athanasourelis, John Paul
2012 Raymond Chandler’s Philip Marlowe: The Hardboiled Detective Transformed. Jefferson, NC: Mcfarland.Google Scholar
Black, Joel
2010 “Crime Fiction and the Literary Canon.” In A Companion to Crime Fiction, edited by Charles J. Rzepka and Lee Horsley, 76–89. Chichester: Blackwell. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Bloom, Clive
1998 “Introduction.” In Gothic Horror: A Reader’s Guide from Poe to King and Beyond. Basingstoke and London: Macmillan. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Chandler, Frank Wadleigh
1899 The Literature of Roguery, vol. 2. Boston and New York: Houghton Mifflin and Co.Google Scholar
Chandler, Raymond
1995 “The Simple Art of Murder.” In Raymond Chandler, Later Novels and other Writings, 977–92. New York: Library of America.Google Scholar
Conan Doyle, Arthur
1986 Long Stories. London: John Murray.Google Scholar
Gardner, Erle Stanley
1965 “Getting away with murder.” Atlantic Monthly 215: 72–75.Google Scholar
Hammett, Dashiell
2005 The Maltese Falcon. London: Orion.Google Scholar
Haycraft, Howard
1941 Murder for Pleasure: The Life and Times of the Detective Story. New York and London: Appleton-Century.Google Scholar
1946 The Art of the Mystery Story. New York: Grosset and Dunlap.Google Scholar
Holquist, Michael
1971 “Whodunit and Other Questions: Metaphysical Detective Stories in Post-War Fiction.” New Literary History 3.1: 135–56. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Horsley, Lee
2005 Twentieth-Century Crime Fiction. Oxford: Oxford University Press.Google Scholar
Knight, Stephen
1980 Form and Ideology in Crime Fiction. London: Macmillan Press. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
2003 “The golden age.” In The Cambridge Companion to Crime Fiction, edited by Martin Priestman, 77–94. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Knox, Ronald
1946 “A Detective Story Decalogue” [1929] In The Art of the Mystery Story, edited by Howard Haycraft, 194–96. New York: Grosset and Dunlap.Google Scholar
Le Breton, André
1905 Balzac: l’homme et l’œuvre. Paris: A. Colin.Google Scholar
McHale, Brian
1987 Postmodernist Fiction. New York and London: Routledge.Google Scholar
Messac, Régis
1929 Le «Detective Novel» et l’influence de la pensée scientifique. Paris: Honoré Champion.Google Scholar
Orwell, George
1968 “Tobias Smollett: Scotland’s Best Novelist” [1944] In George Orwell, The Collected Essays: Journalism and Letters of George Orwell. As I Please 1943–45, vol. 3, 244–48. London: Secker and Warburg.Google Scholar
Partridge, Eric
1995 Dictionary of the Underworld [1950] London: Routledge.Google Scholar
Poe, Edgar Allan
2004 The Selected Writings of Edgar Allan Poe. New York and London: W. W. Norton.Google Scholar
Porter, Dennis
2003 “The Private Eye.” In The Cambridge Companion to Crime Fiction, edited by Martin Priestman, 95–113. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Priestman, Martin
1991 Detective Fiction and Literature: The Figure on the Carpet. Basingstoke: Macmillan. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Rankin, Ian
1998 “Heroes Doing it by the Book.” The Times, May 18: 9.Google Scholar
Scaggs, John
2005 Crime Fiction. London: Routledge. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Van Dine, S. S.
1946 “Twenty Rules for Writing Detective Stories” [1928] In The Art of the Mystery Story, edited by Howard Haycraft, 189–93. New York: Grosset and Dunlap.Google Scholar