| 英文摘要 |
In this study I examine a limited aspect of spatial representation in Golden Age, hard-boiled, and postmodern detective fiction. I situatethese representations within a theory of architectural enclosure, Tschumi’s pyramid/labyrinth distinction, thenemploy conceptsderived from Gestalt theory as pointing up an ideological tendency in the Golden Age floor plans and diagramsby which crime is contained and spaces are normalized.John Dickson Carr’s The Problem of the Wire Cageserves as a test case. The subsequentsections offer spatial analyses of Dashiell Hammett’s “The Whosis Kid”and “Dead Yellow Women”and Paul Auster’s City of Glass. Hammett’s stories illustrate the breakdown of visual mastery in disorienting spaces whose textual representation parallels the Op’s own limited knowledge. Auster’sdiagramsappear tooffer a synthesis of priorpositions: he incorporatesplans which seem to promise meaning but which ultimately fail to establish certainty. Iargue, however, that Auster’splans are most effectively readin theirspecific socio-historical and political context and that the performative loss of referentialcertainty in his protagonistreflects a form of critique that differs from earlier genres’use of these figures. |
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