The Shakespeare Conference: SHK 13.0815 Friday, 15 March 2002
[1] From: Robin Hamilton <This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it.>
Date: Friday, 15 Mar 2002 01:30:15 -0000
Subj: Re: SHK 13.07377 Re: Hamlet (Once More)
[2] From: Melissa D. Aaron <This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it.>
Date: Thursday, 14 Mar 2002 23:59:22 +0000
Subj: Re: SHK 13.0806 Re: Hamlet (Once More)
[1]-----------------------------------------------------------------
From: Robin Hamilton <This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it.>
Date: Friday, 15 Mar 2002 01:30:15 -0000
Subject: 13.07377 Re: Hamlet (Once More)
Comment: Re: SHK 13.07377 Re: Hamlet (Once More)
ASIDE -- via another thread on another list, as a candidate (not the
earliest, but) for The First English Detective Story, how about
Browning's _The Ring and the Book_?
More Patricia Highsmith than Agatha Christie, but Browning always +was+
ahead of his time.
Robin Hamilton.
(And, as no one has bothered to mention it yet -- probably too obvious
-- James Thurbers' "The Macbeth Murder Mystery" [_My World and Hard
Times_ {original publication, 1938}]
R2.)
[2]-------------------------------------------------------------
From: Melissa D. Aaron <This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it.>
Date: Thursday, 14 Mar 2002 23:59:22 +0000
Subject: 13.0806 Re: Hamlet (Once More)
Comment: Re: SHK 13.0806 Re: Hamlet (Once More)
> Mike Jensen wrote:
>
>> Do you really think a plot cannot have an aspect
>> where a character
>> wonders who committed a killing without putting the
>> plot in the
>> detective/mystery genre? Are writers so vulnerable
>> to later
>> interpretations that this claim is fair? Aside from
>> that, what do these
>> plays really have in common with Agatha Christie or
>> Dashiell Hammett?
>> I'll answer my own question: virtually nothing.
to which Lucia A. Setari responded:
>It goes without saying that Oedipus Rex (and Hamlet as well) CANNOT be
>defined as detective stories. They belong to most different cultural
>conditions and deal with quite different questions from Agatha
>Christie's novels, of course.
I seem to remember an essay of Dorothy Sayers' in which she claimed that
Aristotle's Poetics, while of questionable value for tragedy, just about
perfectly suited detective fiction. I wouldn't be so quick to dismiss
Dorothy Sayers, either as a writer or as a critic.
M D Aaron
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