EN 334: Crime Fiction, Nation and Empire
Assessed Essay 2 (5000 words)
Please consult the Department website for guidance on essay submission and citations:
http://www2.warwick.ac.uk/fac/arts/english/currentstudents/undergraduate/essay/
You should refer to and compare, unless otherwise stated, at least two texts you have
studied in your essays.
1.Compare Flambeau in Chesterton’s Father Brown stories to some of the other criminalartists that you have come across.
2."Valentin was a sceptic in the severe style of France..." (The Blue Cross). What is the
relationship between faith, reason and crime in the Father Brown Stories?
3."She's the worst cat in the village...inferences from it” (Murder at the Vicarage). How
are the detectives you have encountered this term viewed by the characters who surround
them?
4. "It made me powerful...You adore me madly, don't you?" (Murder at the Vicarage)
What kinds of power do women wield in the fiction of Agatha Christie?
5. “There was a savage aspect about the sheet of water…There’s something about this
country that makes me feel –wicked” (Death on the Nile). Consider the role of space in
some of the fiction you have read this term.
6. ‘Once I went professionally to an archeological expedition [….] your object is there,
all alone, ready to be drawn and photographed with no extraneous matter confusing it’.
(Death on the Nile). Hercule Poirot compares thinks detection is like archeology. Compare his method to at those of two other detectives you have met this term.
7. “he felt for the first time the dull and angry helplessness which is the first warning
stroke of the triumph of mutability….For the first time, too, he doubted his own power to
carry through what he had undertaken” (Strong Poison). Angst, doubts, helplessness –
Why are these key to understanding what makes Peter Wimsey tick? Compare him to at
least one other fictional detective you know.
8. “the female detective must not loaf” (Strong Poison). Compare and contrast Miss
Climpson to some of other male and female ‘detective’ figures that we have studied.
9. “Dorothy Sayers writes about them very often, but never with as much fear and as
much love as she bestows on them in Gaudy Night” (Nina Auerbach). How is the
‘woman question’ adopted by Sayers in the novels you have read this term?
10. ‘Another instance…of the aristocracy mixing with the commonality. They’ve tried
trade and they’ve tried big business. Why not a spot of homicide?’ (Surfeit of Lampreys)
Examine how the relationship between aristocracy and crime.
11. “I begin to think that you are suffering from some terrible form of insanity” (Death
and the Dancing Footman). How are ideas of sanity and insanity related to guilt and innocence?
12. Do you think the crime novel is inherently subversive as a form of writing, or does it
work to reinforce hegemonic power?