Adventure, Mystery, and Romance
eBook - ePub

Adventure, Mystery, and Romance

Formula Stories as Art and Popular Culture

  1. English
  2. ePUB (mobile friendly)
  3. Available on iOS & Android
eBook - ePub

Adventure, Mystery, and Romance

Formula Stories as Art and Popular Culture

About this book

In this first general theory for the analysis of popular literary formulas, John G. Cawelti reveals the artistry that underlies the best in formulaic literature. Cawelti discusses such seemingly diverse works as Mario Puzo's The Godfather, Dorothy Sayers's The Nine Tailors, and Owen Wister's The Virginian in the light of his hypotheses about the cultural function of formula literature. He describes the most important artistic characteristics of popular formula stories and the differences between this literature and that commonly labeled "high" or "serious" literature. He also defines the archetypal patterns of adventure, mystery, romance, melodrama, and fantasy, and offers a tentative account of their basis in human psychology.

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Yes, you can access Adventure, Mystery, and Romance by John G. Cawelti in PDF and/or ePUB format, as well as other popular books in Literature & Literary Criticism. We have over one million books available in our catalogue for you to explore.

Table of contents

  1. Cover
  2. Copyright
  3. Title Page
  4. Dedication
  5. Contents
  6. Acknowledgments
  7. Introduction: The Design of This Book
  8. 1. The Study of Literary Formulas
  9. 2. Notes toward a Typology of Literary Formulas
  10. 3. The Mythology of Crime and Its Formulaic Embodiments
  11. 4. The Formula of the Classical Detective Story
  12. 5. The Art of the Classical Detective Story
  13. 6. The Hard-Boiled Detective Story
  14. 7. Hammett, Chandler, and Spillane
  15. 8. The Western: A Look at the Evolution of a Formula
  16. 9. The Best-Selling Social Melodrama
  17. Conclusion
  18. Notes
  19. Bibliographical Notes
  20. Index