ENGL 350 M - Writing about Lit Text Culture - Detective Fiction

Campus: Urbana-Champaign

Description:

Writing-intensive, variable-topic course designed to improve English majors' ability to produce clear, well-organized, analytically sound and persuasively argued essays relevant to English studies. Introduces students to research techniques through the examination of critical texts appropriate to the course topic. Course Information: Credit is not given for ENGL 300 and ENGL 350. Prerequisite: Completion of the Composition I requirement; one year of college literature or consent of instructor. For majors only.

Special Instructions:

Detective Fiction - Detective Fiction: As the twentieth century dawned and Britain-s empire foundered, some of the nation-s most dynamic and inventive writers began to pen detective-based mystery stories. While Arthur Conan-Doyle is often credited with originating the genre, both Wilkie Collins and Edgar Allen Poe wrote the type of detective stories that inspired the creation of Doyle-s Sherlock Holmes. Tracing a literary history that begins with Collins-s The Moonstone and several of Doyle-s Sherlock Holmes stories, this course will chart the ways that the collapse of empire and the two World Wars prepared the way for the hyper-alert genius detectives that we see in the writings of Agatha Christie (The Murder of Roger Ackroyd). We-ll also check out how American writers like Patricia Highsmith (Strangers on a Train), Raymond Chandler (The Big Sleep), and Dashiell Hammett (The Maltese Falcon) responded by developing the notorious, morally compromised detectives that we fin

Option 1

Course Level: Undergraduate

Credit: 3

Term(s): Fall