IN THE HEART OF SECRET. MYSTERIOUS MURDER OF THE LITERARY CRITIQUE

• Authors: Horvath T.
• Languages of publication: SK

Abstracts

EN

The author of the article analyses a classical type of a detective story written by S. S. Van Dine 'The Greene Murder Case' (1928). He uses it as a reference and representative text (as a 'textbook of generic grammar') indicating all formulated genre, referring also to the generic variations in other texts. The description of the characters already in static characteristic introduces elements of iteration, repeating on the successive axis of the text and they form that way a stabile characterization of a hero. In the focal narrative sequence of solution there are two types of a motif set in confrontation: theme distribution of enigmatic motives without their sense and correct arrangement of motives. The detective has to deduce it from enigmaticaly distributed data through his own mechanism of judgement. In the Van Dine novel a holistic type of problem shooting operates: one introduced hypothesis explains 'in one move' all morphemes of the secret and that is why it is correct. (If whoever else murders except of the right murder, it will not be necessary to let the lights switched on in all the rooms, the woman, a murder, would not be found in the lit up room shot in front of the mirror just because to be able to shoot herself etc.) The author shows the strategies of the text through which a model reader is deceived to construct incorrect possible world of the own hypothesis and also to construct an incorrect possible world in the hypothesis excluding a real perpetrator from the list of the suspicious persons. As an illustration the author uses and example from famous Holmes' solution concerning a dog in the short story 'Silver Blaze'.

Keywords

EN

DETECTIVE GENRE; MODEL READER; MOTIVES; NARRATIVE STRUCTURE; STRATEGY; VAN DINE S. S.

Discipline

• PHILOLOGY_&_LINGUISTICS: PHILOLOGY & LINGUISTICS

• Publisher: Institute of Slovak Literature, Slovak Academy of Sciences
• Journal: Slovenská literatúra (Slovak Literature)
• Year: 2007
• Volume: 54
• Issue: 4
• Pages: 255-276
• Document type: ARTICLE

Contributors

author

Horvath T.

• T. Horvath, Ustav slovenskej literatury SAV, Konventna 13, 813 64 Bratislava, Slovak Republic

Identifiers

CEJSH db identifier

07SKAAAA03106418