Fleshing Out and Losing Flesh: The Decomposing Corpse as Narrative Object in American Hardboiled Detective Fiction

This dissertation examines the corpse as an object in and of American hardboiled detective fiction written between 1920 and 1950. I deploy several theoretical frames, including narratology, body-as-text theory, object relations theory, and genre theory, in order to demonstrate the significance of objects, symbols, and things primarily in the clever and crafty work of Dashiell Hammett (1894-1961) and Raymond Chandler (1888-1959), but also touching on the writings of their lesser known accomplices. I construct a literary genealogy of American hardboiled detective fiction originating in the writings of Edgar Allan Poe, compare the contributions of classic or Golden Age detective fiction in England, and describe the socio-economic contexts, particularly the predominance of the “pulps,” that gave birth to the realism of the Hardboiled School. Taking seriously Chandler’s obsession with the art of murder, I engage with how authors pre-empt their readers’ knowledge of the tricks of the trade and manipulate their expectations, as well as discuss the characteristics and effect of the inimitable hardboiled style, its sharpshooting language and deadpan humour. Critical scholarship has rarely addressed the body and figure of the corpse, preferring to focus instead on the machinations of the femme fatale, the performance of masculinity, or the prevalence of violence. I cast new light on the world of hardboiled detective fiction by dissecting the corpse as the object that both motivates and de-composes (or rots away from) the narrative that makes it signify. I treat the corpse as an inanimate object, indifferent to representation, that destabilizes the integrity and self-possession, as well as the ratiocination, of the detective who authors the narrative of how the corpse came to be. The corpse is all deceptive and dangerous surface rather than the container of hidden depths of life and meaning that the detective hopes to uncover and reconstruct. I conclude with a chapter that is both critical denouement and creative writing experiment to reveal the self-reflexive (and at times metafictional) dimensions of hardboiled fiction. My dissertation, too, in the manner of hardboiled fiction, hopes to incriminate my readers as much as enlighten them.

Bystander Narratives: The Fiction of J.M. Coetzee and the Holocaust

J.M. Coetzee’s novels are suffused with a pervasive, though often oblique, Holocaust awareness. Direct references to the event and to the historical era to which it belongs, subtle stylistic and thematic echoes of Holocaust writing, and the recurrent mobilization of Holocaust imagery in Coetzee’s novels all contribute to suggest the significance of the event to the author’s work and thought. Providing Coetzee with a lens through which to view the contemporary situation, both local and global, the Holocaust offers Coetzee a means by which difficult and complex questions of ethics and historiographical truth may be approached. Above all, the Holocaust and its representation contribute to Coetzee’s exploration of the dilemmas of translating the traumatic lived experience of atrocity – including, but not limited to, life in apartheid South Africa – into narrative form. Taken as a whole, Coetzee’s oeuvre initially anticipates and later responds to, in characteristically oblique fashion, the narrative project(s) facing post-apartheid South Africa as the newly-democratic nation sought to make sense of its past through a variety of means, the most important of which was the country’s Truth and Reconciliation Commission. Implicitly challenging the TRC’s findings as well as its narrative assumptions, the Coetzean oeuvre accordingly invites being read as offering a continuous and evolving counter-narrative to the TRC and its construction of a narrative of the apartheid past for the post-apartheid nation. In utilizing the Holocaust, its representations, and the reception thereof to frame his response to apartheid, Coetzee implicates both in a critique of the Western model of modernity, suggesting, in the process, the importance of reconfiguring modernity in a more ethical shape.

Contact zone dynamics and the evolution of reproductive isolation in a North American treefrog, the spring peeper (Pseudacris crucifer)

Despite over seven decades of speciation research and 25 years of phylogeographic studies, a comprehensive understanding of mechanisms that generate biological species remains elusive. In temperate zones, the pervasiveness of range fragmentation and subsequent range expansions suggests that secondary contact between diverging lineages may be important in the evolution of species. Thus, such contact zones provide compelling opportunities to investigate evolutionary processes, particularly the roles of geographical isolation in initiating, and indirect selection against hybrids in completing (reinforcement), the evolution of reproductive isolation and speciation. The spring peeper (Pseudacris crucifer) has six well-supported mitochondrial lineages many of which are now in secondary contact. Here I investigate the evolutionary consequences of secondary contact of two such lineages (Eastern and Interior) in Southwestern Ontario using genetic, morphological, acoustical, experimental, and behavioural evidence to show accentuated divergence of the mate recognition system in sympatry. Mitochondrial and microsatellite data distinguish these two lineages but also show ongoing hybridization. Bayesian assignment tests and cline analysis imply asymmetrical introgression of Eastern lineage nuclear markers into Interior populations. Male calls are divergent between Eastern and Interior allopatric populations and show asymmetrical reproductive character displacement in sympatry. Female preference of pure lineage individuals is also exaggerated in sympatry, with hybrids showing intermediate traits and preference. I suggest that these patterns are most consistent with secondary reinforcement. I assessed levels of post-zygotic isolation between the Eastern and Interior lineages using a laboratory hybridization experiment. Hybrid tadpoles showed equal to or greater fitness than their pure lineage counterparts, but this may be countered through competition. More deformities and developmental anomalies in hybrid tadpoles further suggest post-zygotic isolation. Despite evidence for pre-mating isolation between the two lineages, isolation appears incomplete (i.e. hybridization is ongoing). I hypothesize that potentially less attractive hybrids may circumvent female choice by adopting satellite behaviour. Although mating tactics are related to body size, genetic status may play a role. I show that pure Eastern males almost always engage in calling, while hybrids adopt a satellite tactic. An absence of assortative mating, despite evidence of female preference, suggests successful satellite interception possibly facilitating introgression.