ENGL 399 Lecture Notes - Lecture 2: Serial Killer, Locked-Room Mystery, Reason
14 Jan 2018
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The detective stories he wrote are stories he called tales of ratiocination (calculation and discovery). Gothic: stephen king can be thought of as a modern gothic writer, gothic: genre invested in darkness, mystery, magic, and threat, many gothic stories take place in a threatening atmosphere. Mysterious events, and it takes a while for the story to work out the difference between a mystery and a detective story. O it"s (cid:374)ot the (cid:373)oti(cid:448)e: motiveless but seemingly supernatural crime. Perhaps not entirely supernatural, but always the element of the supernatural in the gothic. The gothic has an ongoing presence in the detective stories, not just with poe. I(cid:374) the dete(cid:272)ti(cid:448)e sto(cid:396)ies the(cid:396)e is(cid:374)"t al(cid:449)a(cid:455)s a(cid:374) ele(cid:373)e(cid:374)t of the supe(cid:396)(cid:374)atu(cid:396)al, (cid:271)ut pe(cid:396)haps a threatening house or figure appears. Or an unknown threat: serial killer is a threatening presence in a gothic style, even though they may not be supernatural. There may be hints of the supernatural in their actions though.
