Predavanje dr. Charlotte Beyer sa Sveučilišta u Gloucestershire pod naslovom: Agatha Christie: Love, Murder, and Mystery at Christmas

U srijedu, 17.12. u 13.00 u P8, dr. Charlotte Beyer sa Sveučilišta u Gloucestershire održat će predavanje pod naslovom: Agatha Christie: Love, Murder, and Mystery at Christmas

Abstract:  

Agatha Christie’s crime fiction is often associated with “cosy crime” - the type of detective narrative which features quintessential English villages or wealthy country houses as its setting and remains strictly hands-off when it comes to graphic description of violence and transgression. Cosy crime provides us with the neat resolution and restoration of order which audiences crave, adding a good deal of humour and light-hearted description into the mix. This paper, however, digs a little deeper into Christie’s fiction, using the traditional occasion of Christmas to explore her portrayal of love and seasonal murder, and mayhem. After all, what could be more Christmassy than a good murder mystery?  The paper will refer to several familiar Christie texts featuring well-loved detective characters, such as the Miss Marple story “A Christmas Tragedy” and Hercule Poirot’s Christmas featuring the Belgian detective famous for his “little grey cells”. I furthermore discuss Christie’s treatment of the theme of love, which is involved in a variety of her plots, whether as a motive for murder, crime of passion, suspense and adventure, or as an escapism from a harsh reality, referring specifically to the novels Murder is Easy and A Caribbean Mystery. The seasonal topics of love, murder, and mystery thus come together in this paper to highlight Christie’s versatility as an author and sharpen our appetites for some Christmas mystery and mayhem.

Bio:

Dr Charlotte Beyer is Senior Lecturer in English Studies at the University of Gloucestershire, UK. She has published widely on crime fiction and contemporary literature. She is the author of four single-author scholarly monographs, Murder in a Few Words: Gender, Genre and Location in the Crime Short Story (2020), Contemporary Children’s and Young Adult Literature: Writing Back to History and Oppression (2021), and Intersectionality and Decolonisation in Contemporary British Crime Fiction (2023). Her latest book, Crime Fiction in the Age of #MeToo (Anthem, 2024) examines the intersections between fourth-wave feminism and modern and contemporary crime fiction. She has also edited six books, including Teaching Crime Fiction (2018) and Decolonising the Literature Curriculum (2022).