Course Overview
Crime fiction is known for recognising and reflecting social trends. Perhaps nowhere is this more evident than at the birth of American noir fiction, which, as Raymond Chandler noted, ‘gave murder back to the kind of people that commit it for reasons, not just to provide a corpse.’ In this course, we will look at Chandler’s manifesto and works by writers of classic noir fiction, such as Dorothy B Hughes, to compare and contrast their treatments of social history, themes, subject matter and the genre itself.
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