ISBN:
9783319335339
Language:
English
Pages:
1 Online-Ressource (VII, 304 p)
Edition:
Springer eBook Collection. Literature, Cultural and Media Studies
Series Statement:
Crime Files
Parallel Title:
Printed edition
Keywords:
Literature
;
Ethnology Europe
;
Literature, Modern 20th century
;
Sociology
;
Gender identity
;
Fiction
;
British literature
;
Sex (Psychology)
;
Gender expression
;
Fiction.
;
British literature.
;
Sex (Psychology).
;
Gender expression.
;
Literature, Modern—20th century.
;
Ethnology—Europe.
;
Christie, Agatha 1890-1976
;
Geschlechterforschung
Abstract:
This book is the first fully theorized queer reading of a Golden Age British crime writer. Agatha Christie was the most commercially successful novelist of the twentieth century, and her fiction remains popular. She created such memorable characters as Hercule Poirot and Jane Marple, and has become synonymous with a nostalgic, conservative tradition of crime fiction. J.C. Bernthal reads Christie through the lens of queer theory, uncovering a playful, alert, and subversive social commentary. After considering Christie’s emergence in a commercial market hostile to her sex, in Queering Agatha Christie Bernthal explores homophobic stereotypes, gender performativity, queer children, and masquerade in key texts published between 1920 and 1952. Christie engaged with debates around human identity in a unique historical period affected by two world wars. The final chapter considers twenty-first century Poirot and Marple adaptations, with visible LGBT characters, and poses the question: might the books be queerer?
Abstract:
Introduction -- Chapter 1. Constructing Agatha Christie -- Chapter 2. English Masculinity and its Others -- Chapter 3. Femininity and Masquerade -- Chapter 4. Queer Children, Crooked Houses -- Chapter 5. Queering Christie on Television -- Conclusion
DOI:
10.1007/978-3-319-33533-9
URL:
Volltext
(lizenzpflichtig)
