Fiction, crime, and empire : clues to modernity and postmodernism /

In this revised dissertation, Thompson focuses on eight "crime fictions" by Poe, Conan Doyle, Kipling, Conrad, Christie, Hammett, and Le Carr^D'e. His purpose is not to explicate texts or analyze detective heroes but "to develop a historical poetics of fiction" in terms of "what Gramsci calls hegemonic values, beliefs, and ideas." He hopes "to articulate a theoretical understanding of postmodernism alongside a 'fictional' understanding." He stakes his case on a reading of Pynchon's The Crying of Lot 49 that defines our postmodern condition as one in which "narratives do not reflect reality; they produce it--or at least imaginatively reproduce it." Like many postmodern literary scholars, Thompson views fictions as expressions of imperialism and capitalism. His theoretical foundation, as the bibliography demonstrates, is Freudo-Marxism filtered through Benjamin, Tony Bennett, Eagleton, Foucault, Gramsci, Jameson, and Raymond Williams. Literature per se, once thought to be an independently worthy subject for study, becomes merely an occasion for indicting Western political and economic institutions. Thompson's argument remains securely within the bounds of political correctness. Some readers may ask whether an examination of several detective stories can justify Thompson's expansive theoretical claims. Faculty.