Space and Crime Fiction
Call for papers – SIS 2017 (University of Hull 27th-30th
June)
Crime fiction as a genre seems to rely on a special relationship with space. The detective’s main talent lies in
the ability to read the space of the crime as a text, by making sense of clues that can be gathered therein. The city is probably the space that has benefitted more overtly from this privileged relation, and the
detective has often been compared with the literary figure of the flâneur, an idle walker and watchful observer that, according to Walter Benjamin, is able
‘to catch things in flight’. Within Italian crime fiction tradition, the work of Giorgio
Scerbanenco, set in 1950s and 1960s
Milan, establishes the concrete topography of the city as the scene for enquiries and investigations.
The first English work on Italian crime fiction, edited by Giuliana Pieri in 2011, acknowledges a particular focus
on the representation of space, and especially on – but not limited to – city space. Setting has acquired increasing centrality
to the point where some regard crime fiction as the most plausible version of contemporary social novel. Barbara Pezzotti suggests that crime fiction is particularly
well-positioned to explore the “sense of a place” that is “the result of the amalgamation between reality and culture and between visual and symbolic reality” (2012: 3).
Contemporary Italian detective storywriters present a very
regional voice and may be identified with well-defined geographical poles and metropolitan areas, which have given rise to specifically local traditions: amongst others, one thinks of Milan with its Scuola dei Duri, Bologna and the Gruppo 13, Rome and the
so-called Neonoir.
Has crime fiction contributed to changing the representation and perception of space(s) and place(s)? How far,
in turn, do local identities affect the type or style of narrative? Are these cases where the genre of crime fiction has proved particularly effective in recording a specific relation with space? To what extent do different media influence this particular
connection between crime stories and space? These are only samples of the issues we would like to address in this panel, which seeks to bring together a range of perspectives to investigate the relationship between spatiality and crime fiction.
We invite proposals for
20-minute papers addressing the interplay
between space and the genre of crime fiction, in relation to different aspects: topographical, sociological, cultural, and narratological.
Please send a
300-word abstract in English or Italian and a short
bio to the panel organisers by 23rd
October 2016: