Quotes as Clues

Sonja Irène Grieder Rebstock

Quotes as Clues. Intertextuality in Dorothy L. Sayers’s Detective Novels

ISBN 978-3-86821-447-5, 354 S., kt., € 35,00 (2013)

(SALS - Studies in Anglophone Literatures, Bd. 40)

The origins of the genre of crime fiction, which still attracts such a wide audience today, lie at the beginning of the 20th century in the so-called golden age of detective fiction, an era where names of female authors suddenly became famous. Possibly the most illustrious among them was Dorothy L. Sayers, whose works are outstanding for their frequent use of literary allusions, especially in the speeches of her eccentric sleuth Lord Peter Wimsey. In an in-depth intertextual analysis, the present study reveals a complex web of references in Sayers's novels giving depth to the story and characters, while at the same time providing additional clues to the riddle of the detective plot for the attentive reader working alongside the detective. In addition to her poetic language use and the inclusion of the traditional topics of love and marriage as well as contemporary social conflicts in her novels, Sayers's intertextual strategy contributed to her aim of developing the detective novel into a novel of manners addressing a middlebrow readership which enjoyed well-written literary works in the style of the nineteenth-century novel.

Buchvorschau / Inhaltsverzeichnis (pdf)