Storytellers in fallen worlds: the metaphysical longings of crime fiction detectives
type: CreativeWork
description: The thesis examines how I might deploy the postmodern approaches of the metaphysical detective novel to represent a divided society’s quest to understand itself in the context of the Northern Ireland Troubles. Wary of the pitfalls of applying the certainties of traditional detective fiction to these complex historical circumstances, my aim was to uncover a form of storytelling that would depict truth and justice as problematic and elusive entities, eschewing the type of conventional ending in which order is restored and the truth conclusively understood. As such, I employed the template of the metaphysical detective to create an alienated and fragmented hero, one whose sense of guilt and self-doubt leaves him better equipped to penetrate the layers of culpability and detect the dark forces that plagued civilian life during the Troubles, while relentlessly interrogating his own allegiances and motives. Using as its starting point Merivale’s identification of the characteristic themes of the metaphysical novel, the critical component considers the extent to which writers such as Samuel Beckett, Edgar Allen Poe, Raymond Chandler, Arthur Conan-Doyle and Agatha Christie imitate, subvert or transform the familiar conventions of the detective novel. In doing so, I offer a slightly subversive reading of Beckett’s Molloy, in which the more intellectual and literary form is used as a means to interpret the thematic possibilities of the generic form. I argue that the apparently cliched conventions of the crime fiction genre are important sources of meaning in their own right and their deployment often enhances literary creativity rather than limits it. One of my principal conclusions is that the conventions of the genre are not a repetitive framework or a bland supporting structure for end-orientated stories. Instead, they are conventions capable of high art, to paraphrase E M Forster, and profound philosophical enquiry. I go on to emphasise the importance of radical innovatio…
abstract: The thesis examines how I might deploy the postmodern approaches of the metaphysical detective novel to represent a divided society’s quest to understand itself in the context of the Northern Ireland Troubles. Wary of the pitfalls of applying the certainties of traditional detective fiction to these complex historical circumstances, my aim was to uncover a form of storytelling that would depict truth and justice as problematic and elusive entities, eschewing the type of conventional ending in which order is restored and the truth conclusively understood. As such, I employed the template of the metaphysical detective to create an alienated and fragmented hero, one whose sense of guilt and self-doubt leaves him better equipped to penetrate the layers of culpability and detect the dark forces that plagued civilian life during the Troubles, while relentlessly interrogating his own allegiances and motives. Using as its starting point Merivale’s identification of the characteristic themes of the metaphysical novel, the critical component considers the extent to which writers such as Samuel Beckett, Edgar Allen Poe, Raymond Chandler, Arthur Conan-Doyle and Agatha Christie imitate, subvert or transform the familiar conventions of the detective novel. In doing so, I offer a slightly subversive reading of Beckett’s Molloy, in which the more intellectual and literary form is used as a means to interpret the thematic possibilities of the generic form. I argue that the apparently cliched conventions of the crime fiction genre are important sources of meaning in their own right and their deployment often enhances literary creativity rather than limits it. One of my principal conclusions is that the conventions of the genre are not a repetitive framework or a bland supporting structure for end-orientated stories. Instead, they are conventions capable of high art, to paraphrase E M Forster, and profound philosophical enquiry. I go on to emphasise the importance of radical innovatio…
author: Quinn, Anthony
language: eng
keywords: Metaphysical detective fiction, The Troubles, Northern Ireland, crime fiction, Station Island, Samuel Beckett
date published: 2021-7
date modified: 2026-07-24T03:55:45Z
provider: Queen's University Belfast
publisher: Networked Digital Library of Theses and Dissertations
type: WebPage
source organization: Queen's University Belfast