Get 20M+ Full-Text Papers For Less Than $1.50/day. Start a 14-Day Trial for You or Your Team.

Learn More →

Matthew LeVay, Violent Minds: Modernism and the Criminal

Matthew LeVay, Violent Minds: Modernism and the Criminal BOOK REVIEWS Matthew LeVay, Violent Minds: Modernism and the Criminal. Cambridge University Press, 2019. $99.99, 978-1-10842-886-6. Reviewed by Audrey Chan Matthew LeVay’s Violent Minds: Modernism and the Criminal (2019) adopts an interdisciplinary approach to explore the changing representation of the criminal mind in late nineteenth- and early twentieth-century British and American literature in response to scientific studies of criminology. Focusing on the subjectivity of the criminal, LeVay ambitiously places proto-modernist and modernist writers such as Joseph Conrad, Dashiell Hammett, Henry James, and Gertrude Stein in dialogue with crime fiction writers including Arthur Conan Doyle, Patricia Highsmith, Edgar Allan Poe, and Dorothy L. Sayers. Although many critics such as Patricia Merivale and Susan Elizabeth Sweeny have examined the relationship between crime fiction and non-genre literature, LeVay’s view of ‘the modernist fascination with the criminal as just as much an aesthetic experiment as a social critique’ of ‘the violence of modernity’ is novel (3–5). Important, too, is his argument that modernism’s embodied representation of fictional criminals’ inner lives criticises ‘previous theories of criminality’ that failed to address individual consciousnesses from formal and historical perspectives (3–4). LeVay introduces his study with a brief discussion of the nineteenth-century positivist model of criminality based http://www.deepdyve.com/assets/images/DeepDyve-Logo-lg.png Crime Fiction Studies Edinburgh University Press

Matthew LeVay, Violent Minds: Modernism and the Criminal

Chan, Audrey
Crime Fiction Studies , Volume 2 (2): 3 – Sep 1, 2021
Download PDF
3 pages

Loading next page...
 
/lp/edinburgh-university-press/matthew-levay-violent-minds-modernism-and-the-criminal-ZI3kNGfxLA
Publisher
Edinburgh University Press
Copyright
Copyright © Edinburgh University Press
ISSN
2517-7982
eISSN
2517-7990
DOI
10.3366/cfs.2021.0049
Publisher site
See Article on Publisher Site

Abstract

BOOK REVIEWS Matthew LeVay, Violent Minds: Modernism and the Criminal. Cambridge University Press, 2019. $99.99, 978-1-10842-886-6. Reviewed by Audrey Chan Matthew LeVay’s Violent Minds: Modernism and the Criminal (2019) adopts an interdisciplinary approach to explore the changing representation of the criminal mind in late nineteenth- and early twentieth-century British and American literature in response to scientific studies of criminology. Focusing on the subjectivity of the criminal, LeVay ambitiously places proto-modernist and modernist writers such as Joseph Conrad, Dashiell Hammett, Henry James, and Gertrude Stein in dialogue with crime fiction writers including Arthur Conan Doyle, Patricia Highsmith, Edgar Allan Poe, and Dorothy L. Sayers. Although many critics such as Patricia Merivale and Susan Elizabeth Sweeny have examined the relationship between crime fiction and non-genre literature, LeVay’s view of ‘the modernist fascination with the criminal as just as much an aesthetic experiment as a social critique’ of ‘the violence of modernity’ is novel (3–5). Important, too, is his argument that modernism’s embodied representation of fictional criminals’ inner lives criticises ‘previous theories of criminality’ that failed to address individual consciousnesses from formal and historical perspectives (3–4). LeVay introduces his study with a brief discussion of the nineteenth-century positivist model of criminality based

Journal

Crime Fiction Studies – Edinburgh University Press

Published: Sep 1, 2021

There are no references for this article.