LEC # | Topics | READINGS |
---|---|---|
1 | High Art, Hermenutics, Detection, and Suspense Modes: Oedipus and Theseus Typology: The Hidden Treasure, The Locked Room, the Detective-as-Suspect | Sophocles. Oedipus Rex. Film: The Moonstone. Directed by Paddy Russell. 1972. |
2 | Nature and Hieroglyphics Ideograms Cryptography as Process and as Metaphor | Emerson, Ralph Waldo. "Nature." (Read the essay, not the entire work.) Poe, Edgar Allen. "The Raven." In Tales of Terror and Detection. Ancillary Readings Haycraft, Howard. Murder for Pleasure. New York, NY: Appleton-Century Company, 1941. |
3 | Doubling Self-Consciousness as Method and Disguise Materialism, Claustrophobic Homes, Locked Rooms | Poe, Edgar Allen. "Murders in the Rue Morgue," "The Purloined Letter," "The Raven," and "The Philosophy of Composition." In Tales of Terror and Detection. Ancillary Readings Lacan, Jacques. "Seminar on 'The Purloined Letter.'" Translated by Jeffrey Mehlman. Yale French Studies 48, French Freud: Structural Studies in Psychoanalysis (1972): 5-9. |
4 | Materialism and Identity The Advantages of Empiricism are the Disadvantages of Empiricism Why Conan Doyle Killed Off Holmes to Write about Victorian Faeries | Doyle, Arthur Conan. "A Scandal in Bohemia," "Adventure of the Speckled Band," "Adventure of the Dancing Men," "Five Orange Pips," "The Musgrave Ritual," and "The Final Problem." In Six Great Sherlock Holmes Stories. |
5 | Self and Self-Revelation Oedipal Resistances Retrospective Narratives | Browning, Robert. "The Bishop orders His Tomb," "My Last Duchess," "Porphyria's Lover," "Soliloquy in a Spanish Cloister." In My Last Duchess and Other Poems. Ancillary Readings ![]() |
6 | The Position of the Observer Small Town, Country House, Sexual Demimonde, Moving Train | Christie, Agatha. The Murder of Roger Ackroyd. Ancillary Readings Wilson, Edmund. "Who Cares Who Killed Roger Ackroyd?" Originally published in New Yorker, January 20, 1945. ![]() |
7 | McGuffins, Clewes, Histories The Detective as Knight Errant Film Noir as Style and as Moral Orientation | Hammett, Dashiell. The Maltese Falcon. Film: The Maltese Falcon. Directed by John Huston. 1941. Ancillary Readings Chandler, Raymond. "The Simple Art of Murder." Originally published in Atlantic Monthly, December, 1945. |
8 | Deep Focus Politics and Representation Does Rosebud Even Matter? Kane's Women | Film: Citizen Kane. Directed by Orson Welles. 1941. Ancillary Readings ![]() |
9 | Doubling and the Mind-Body Nexus Completing Dupin The Double-Mirror Paradigm of Self-Consciousness Evidence, Clues, Solution: Elusive Pleasures | ![]() ![]() |
10 | Guilt and Transference The Pleasure of Looking through Other People's Windows The Secret in the Marsh: Coming Clean about Secrets | Film: Psycho. Directed by Alfred Hitchcock. 1960. Ancillary Readings ![]() |
11 | The Hidden Jewels Doubling and Narcissism "The Mystery to a Solution" | Nabokov, Vladimir. Pale Fire. |