Crime Fiction Migration Crossing Languages, Cultures and Media

by Gregoriou, Christiana; McIntyre, Dan

• ISBN13: 9781474216524
• ISBN10: 1474216528
• Format: Hardcover
• Copyright: 2017-07-27
• Publisher: Bloomsbury Academic

Summary

Crime narratives form a large and central part of the modern cultural landscape. This book explores the cognitive stylistic processes in prose and in audiovisual fictional crime 'texts'. It examines instances where such narratives find themselves, through popular demand, 'migrating' - meaning that they cross languages, media formats and/or cultures.

In doing so, Crime Fiction Migration proposes a move from a monomodal to multimodal approach to the study of crime fiction. Examining original crime fiction works alongside their translations, adaptations and remakings proves instrumental in understanding how various semiotic modes interact with one another. The book analyses works such as We Need to Talk About Kevin, The Killing trilogy and the reimaginings of plays such as Shear Madness and films such as Funny Games.

Crime fiction is consistently popular and 'on the move' - witness the spate of detective series exported out of Scandinavia, or the ever popular exporting of these shows from the USA. This multimodal and semiotically-aware analysis of global crime narratives expands the discipline and is key reading for students of linguistics and criminology.

Author Biography

Christiania Gregoriou is Lecturer in English Language at the University of Leeds, UK. She runs the Crime Studies Network. Her 2007 book Deviance in Contemporary Crime Fiction was nominated from the Anthony Boucher Award under 'Best Critical Work'.

Table of Contents

1. Introduction: The crime fiction migration effect
2. Migrating into other mediums (crime fiction into a novel, film, play)
2.1. On novelisation
2.2. On filmic adaptation: we need to talk about Kevin some more
2.2.1. On the book's traumatic linguistic style
2.2.2. 'Nobody loves an adaptation' (Boyum, 1985: 15), or do they?
2.3. On theatrical adaptation: even more 'Curious Incidents'
2.3.1. Curious prose
2.3.2. Curious drama
3. Migrating into other mainlands (into "yet another" novel, film, play)
3.1. On translation
3.2 On filmic Americanisation (on the Austrian 'Funny Games' film into the American version)
3.2.1. Deviant metafilmic games
3.2.2. Americanising the 'games'
3.3. On theatrical greeking: shear stylistic madness
3.3.1. A 'mad' detective play unlike any other
3.3.2. Metatheatrical madness
4. Conclusion
5. References