Contemporary French and Scandinavian Crime Fiction

Anne Grydehøj

Description

This book offers a study of Danish, Norwegian, Swedish and French crime fictions covering a fifty-year period. From 1965 to the present, both Scandinavian and French societies have undergone significant transformations. Twelve literary case studies examine how crime fictions in the respective contexts have responded to shifting social realities, which have in turn played a part in transforming the generic codes and conventions of the crime novel. At the centre of the book’s analysis is crime fiction’s negotiation of the French model of Republican universalism and the Scandinavian welfare state, both of which were routinely characterised as being in a state of crisis at the end of the twentieth century. Adopting a comparative and interdisciplinary approach, the book investigates the interplay between contemporary Scandinavian and French crime narratives, considering their engagement with the relationship of the state and the citizen, and notably with identity issues (class, gender, sexuality and ethnicity in particular).

Acknowledgements
Introduction
Part I: The Structure of Crime Fiction Revolutions
Chapter 1 – Social and Literary Models in Crisis
Chapter 2 – Individual and Collective Identities in the Twenty-First Century
PART II: Gender and Genre
Chapter 3 – Gender and Sexuality in the femikrimi and the polar au féminin
Chapter 4 – The Figure of the Prostitute
Part III: Cultures in Migration
Chapter 5 – Bled and Banlieue in French Crime Fiction
Chapter 6 – Self and Other in Scandinavian Crime Fiction
Conclusion: Closing the Case
Selected bibliography

Sujets

• Literary Criticism
• Northern Europe
• Scandinavia
• European
• French
• Scandinavie
• France

Informations

• Publié par: University of Wales Press
• Date de parution: 05 juillet 2021
• Nombre de lectures: 0
• EAN13: 9781786837196
• Langue: English
• Poids de l'ouvrage: 4 Mo

Extrait

CONTEMPORARY FRENCH AND SCANDINAVIAN CRIME FICTION

INTERNATIONAL CRIME FICTIONS

The International Crime Fictions Series aims to build on the success of its precursor, European Crime Fictions, to profile transnational and intercultural approaches to crime fiction from around the world. The extended mission of the Series is conceived to analyse and document the fruitful exchanges between creative and critical work on crime fiction in an international context today. The scope of the Series includes literary and cultural studies, translation studies, popular culture studies, film, photography and comics, fandom studies, genre studies, and national and transnational histories of crime, writing and practice.

Series Editors Professor Claire Gorrara, Cardiff University Professor Giuliana Pieri, Royal Holloway, University of London Professor Shelley Godsland, University of Amsterdam

Editorial Board Professor M. Atack, University of Leeds Professor John Foot, University of Bristol Dr Katharina Hall, Swansea University Professor Stephen Knight, University of Melbourne

Other titles in the series: Crime Fiction in German Crime Fiction in the City French Crime Fiction Iberian Crime Fiction Italian Crime Fiction Scandinavian Crime Fiction

INTERNATIONAL CRIME FICTIONS

CONTEMPORARY FRENCH AND SCANDINAVIAN CRIME FICTION

Citizenship, Gender and Ethnicity

Anne Grydehøj

UNIVERSITY OF WALES PRESS

© Anne Grydehøj, 2021

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced in any material form (including photocopying or storing it in any medium by electronic means and whether or not transiently or incidentally to some other use of this publication) without the written permission of the copyright owner except in accordance with the provisions of the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act. Applications for the copyright owner’s written permission to reproduce any part of this publication should be addressed to the University of Wales Press, University Registry, King Edward VII Avenue, Cathays Park, Cardiff, CF10 3NS.

www.uwp.co.uk

British Library CataloguinginPublication Data A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library.

ISBN 9781786837189 eISBN 9781786837196

The right of Anne Grydehøj to be identified as author of this work has been asserted in accordance with sections 77 and 79 of the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.

Typeset by Marie Doherty Printed by CPI Antony Rowe, Melksham, United Kingdom

Acknowledgements

Introduction

Contents

Part I: The Structure of Crime Fiction Revolutions 1 Social and Literary Models in Crisis 2 Individual and Collective Identities in the Twentyfirst Century

Part II: Gender and Genre 3 Gender and Sexuality in thefemikrimiand thepolar au féminin 4 The Figure of the Prostitute

Part III: Cultures in Migration 5BledandBanlieuein French Crime Fiction 6 Self and Other in Scandinavian Crime Fiction

Conclusion: Closing the Case

Notes Selected bibliography Index

vii

1

15 48

87

119

145 170

199

207 235 241

Acknowledgements

This book would not have come into being without the support and help from a number of people, to whom I owe my gratitude. First of all, I am enormously indebted to my PhD supervisor Lucy O’Meara for her expert guidance and inspiration during the project’s research and writing phases, and to my secondary supervisor Tom Baldwin for his always constructive criticism and involvement. Katya Haustein and Claire Gorrara as my PhD examiners deserve warm thanks for reading through the manuscript, providing constructive feedback and encouraging me to publish a revised version. I would also like to express my gratitude to the University of Kent for granting me a Graduate Teaching Assistantship which made my research financially viable, and to Ana de Medeiros, who in the first instance encouraged me to embark on the project. Throughout the project, colleagues and friends at the University of Kent and University College London have provided a supportive atmosphere for seeing the book to fruition, for which I am thankful. I owe a special debt of thanks to Mathilde PoizatAmar for efficient work sessions in her office, and to Heide Kunzelmann for chats, coffees and collegiality, and for her help with the Nordic Research Network conference that I coorganised at the IMLR in 2016. I was also exceedingly fortunate in having the support and friendship of Giovanna Piga and Victoria Bennett; in our writing group, I found an intense and productive work environment combined with breaks of laughter that got me through the final chapters. I also owe considerable thanks to friends and family who opened their homes to me during research trips: Mirjam KofodPihl for accommodation during the Krimimessen crime festival in Horsens, Carolina Boe and François Lê Xuân for use of their apartment in Paris on multiple occasions, William Frost for bed and breakfast in Edinburgh, and my mother Ena Nygaard Jørgensen and her husband, Svend Nygaard, for providing a fullboard writing retreat at their house in Silkeborg. I am also grateful to my father, Peter Grydehøj, and his wife, Jolanta Grydehøj, as well as to my two sisters, Mette

Contemporary French and Scandinavian Crime Fiction

Grydehøj Post and Stinne Grydehøj, for their continuous sincere and curious interest in what I do. Finally, a very special thanks to my children, Sigurd Grydehøj and Marta Grydehøj Duffy, for their unique way of keeping me afloat throughout the process, and to Larry Duffy for his always knowledgeable inputs, continuous encouragement and love. I could not have done it without you.

viii

Introduction

Of all contemporary European crime fiction traditions, the French and the Scandinavian variants arguably stand out. These two manifestations of the genre have been crucial to the shaping of its present conception, albeit for different reasons. In the case of France, the longstanding influence of theroman noir (especially in the incarnation of Gallimard’s Série noire) is recognised internationally, and, as Andrea Goulet and Susanna Lee write in their introduction to a crime fiction issue ofYale French Studiespublished in 2005, ‘France has set the aesthetic tone and template for modern representations of crime … [and is] perhaps the country where crime fiction … has met 1 with the most commercial and critical success.’ The special status of French crime fiction has in recent years found a competitor in the international publishing phenomenon of ‘Nordic Noir’, which since the 1990s – and increasingly in the new millennium following the international success of Stieg Larsson’sMillenniumtrilogy – has established itself as a distinctly geographically and culturally defined variant of the genre. The origins of this book may be situated in this broad intercultural context, alongside a consideration of the reception ofle polar scandinave(the Scandinavian crime novel) in France. Many of the front covers of Scandinavian crime fictions translated into French feature an exoticised vision of the north: the covers show snowcovered, barren landscapes, frequently framing the silhouette of a lonesome male character. Upon closer examination, the dustjacket texts, alongside further allusions to the Nordic climate, frequently comment on the novels’ engagement with ‘le côté obscur’ – the dark side – of the Scandinavian welfare states. This publishing phenomenon and the historically unprecedented explosion of translated Scandinavian literature in France are closely connected with the uniform marketing template and the French media’s preoccupation withpolars polaires. The present work initially set out to investigate the ways in which the French reception of Scandinavian crime fiction was culturally specific, and whether, in fact, it had as much to with ideological and cultural