Skip to main content
University of Michigan Press
Fulcrum logo

Share the story of what Open Access means to you

a graphic of a lock that is open, the universal logo for open access

University of Michigan needs your feedback to better understand how readers are using openly available ebooks. You can help by taking a short, privacy-friendly survey.

  1. Home
  2. Dreams for Dead Bodies: Blackness, Labor, and the Corpus of American Detective Fiction

Dreams for Dead Bodies: Blackness, Labor, and the Corpus of American Detective Fiction

M. Michelle Robinson 2016 Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International license This open access version made available with the support of libraries participating in Knowledge Unlatched.
Open Access Open Access
Dreams for Dead Bodies: Blackness, Labor, and  the Corpus of American Detective Fiction offers new arguments about the origins of detective fiction in the United States, tracing the lineage of the genre back to unexpected texts and uncovering how authors such as Edgar Allan Poe, Mark Twain, Pauline Hopkins, and Rudolph Fisher made use of the genre's puzzle-elements to explore the shifting dynamics of race and labor in America.

 

The author constructs an interracial genealogy of detective fiction to create a nuanced picture of the ways that black and white authors appropriated and cultivated literary conventions that coalesced in a recognizable genre at the turn of the twentieth century. These authors tinkered with detective fiction's puzzle-elements to address a variety of historical contexts, including the exigencies of chattel slavery, the erosion of working-class solidarities by racial and ethnic competition, and accelerated mass production. Dreams for Dead Bodies demonstrates that nineteenth- and early twentieth-century American literature was broadly engaged with detective fiction, and that authors rehearsed and refined its formal elements in literary works typically relegated to the margins of the genre. By looking at these margins, the book argues, we can better understand the origins and cultural functions of American detective fiction.

 
Read Book
  • EPUB (735 KB)
  • PDF (2.38 MB)
Buy Book
Series
  • Class : Culture
ISBN(s)
  • 978-0-472-90060-2 (open access)
  • 978-0-472-11981-3 (hardcover)
Subject
  • Literary Studies:American Literature
  • African American Studies
  • American Studies
  • Literary Studies:19th Century Literature
  • Class Studies
Citable Link
  • Table of Contents

  • Stats

  • Cover
  • Half Title
  • Title
  • Copyright
  • Contents
  • Acknowledgments
  • Introduction: The Original Plotmaker
  • Chapter 1: Reverse Type
  • Chapter 2: The Art of Framing Lies
  • Chapter 3: To Have Been Possessed
  • Chapter 4: The Great ork Remaining before Us
  • Chapter 5: Prescription: Homicide?
  • Conclusion: Dream within a Dream
  • Notes
  • Bibliography
  • Index
109 views since August 16, 2018
University of Michigan Press logo

University of Michigan Press

Powered by Fulcrum logo

  • About
  • Blog
  • Feedback
  • Contact
  • Contribute
  • Accessibility
  • Preservation
  • Privacy
  • Terms of Service
  • Log In
© University of Michigan Press 2020
x This site requires cookies to function correctly.