HARD-BOILED SCHOOL: THE BIRTH OF LITERATURE COMING FROM THE PULP MAGAZINES AND A BACKWARD (Drsna skola: Zrod literatury z ducha pulp magazinov a cesta spat)

• Authors: Horvath Tomas
• Languages of publication: SK

Abstracts

EN

The paper maps the process of constitution of the literary stream of so called 'hard-boiled school' from the simple illustrations in the form of literary extracts published in the pulp magazine Black Mask to the most representative novels by the main representatives and to the epigones. Dashiell Hammett internally transformed literary grammar of the detective genre through the change of a chronotop (mega city, gangland) and also by determining realistic motivation for murders. He took the element of rebus and a mystery scheme - logical solution from a formula of a classical detective story. In the novels he uses also methods of other genres (western in The Red Harvest, gothic novel in The Dain Curse). In interpretation we stress an open character of the heroes - sleuths (a detective from the Continental, Sam Spade and Ned Beaumont) with their 'misty' motivation, for which a film technique of narration seems to be helpful. In interpretation of the work of Raymond Chandler we are interested in depicted process of 'cannibalism' - using motifs from his older short stories in his later novels. We also follow gradation of disillusionment in the ends (a novel Long Goodbye versus his short story The Curtain, a novel Farewell, my Lovely versus his short story Try the Girl). The term 'hard-boiled school' overlaps the genre boarders of a detective story and covers wider genre field (e.g. gangster novel and criminal story of a murder in case of James Caine a Jim Thompson). In the novels of the epigone of the 'hard-boiled school' Mickey Spillane we can follow also a semantic line of schizophrenia in the main hero's plan- the detective (mixing thematic outer and narrator's inner perspective).

Keywords

EN

DETECTIVE STORY; EPIGONE; GENRE; HARD-BOILED SCHOOL; NARRATION; NOVEL; PULP MAGAZINES

Discipline

• PHILOLOGY_&_LINGUISTICS: PHILOLOGY & LINGUISTICS

• Publisher: Institute of Slovak Literature, Slovak Academy of Sciences
• Journal: Slovenská literatúra (Slovak Literature)
• Year: 2010
• Volume: 57
• Issue: 3
• Pages: 226-258
• Document type: ARTICLE

Contributors

author

Horvath Tomas

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

Identifiers

CEJSH db identifier

11SKAAAA09363