Abstract
This paper aims at highlighting a major pattern of
differences between classic realist and postmodernist detective fiction by
arguing that whereas the former, in spite of occasionally foreshadowing
future developments in this respect, generally tends to retain an
ideological split between people operating from the right and the wrong
side of the moral/state law, the latter derives its narrative force from a
sweeping and tumultuous ambivalence functioning at the core of the
ideology of these two supposedly heterogeneous categories of characters.
A preliminary survey of a few selected texts shall denote the premise of
the proposed distinction between classic and postmodern detective
fiction, followed by a comparatively detailed analysis of this trope in
Caleb Carr’s critically acclaimed historical thriller The Alienist (1994)
to illustrate how the merging of identities of the detective and the criminal
in a continuum contributes to a substantial problematization of value
system in postmodern detective fiction.
Muhammad Furqan Tanvir, Dr. Waseem Anwar, Dr. Amra Raza. (2019) Postmodern Ambivalence of Identities, Moralities and Law(lessness): The Detective-Criminal Continuum in Caleb Carr’s The Alienist, Journal of Research ( Humanities), Vol LV, Issue 1.
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