Abstract
<p>Even if the Gothic romance may be considered as one of the predecessors of detective fiction, the world model proposed by the latter seems to exclude what was the essence of the former: the irrational underlying the proposed world model. However, some of detective novel writers deploy Gothic conventions in their texts, thus questioning the rational order of the reality presented there. Such a genological syncretism is typical - among others - of the novels by John Dickson Carr. The paper is an analysis of Gothic conventions and their functions in four earliest novels by Carr, featuring a French detective-protagonist, Henri Bencolin. It concentrates on elements of Gothic horror, on the atmosphere of terror as well as the motif of the past intruding the present.</p>
Highlights
It is customary to think of broadside ballads, 18th century pamphlets describing actual crimes, “Newgate” novels drawing themes from crime chronicles or sensational novels of the 50s and the 60s of the nineteenth century as the predecessors of English detective fiction, but the Gothic roots of this genre seem to be obvious (Ostrowski, 1980, pp. 90-91; Ascari, 2007; Cook, 2014)
Already in the pre-Romantic Gothic romances the intrusion of ghosts and spectres into the world of the living was most often provoked by some crimes committed in the past – one may say that the objective was exactly the same as in detective fiction: to unmask the culprit and bring them to justice
The sensational novels from the second half of the nineteenth century did not shun the atmosphere of terror and the sense of mystery either, even if the final explanation rarely involved the supernatural
Summary
It is customary to think of broadside ballads, 18th century pamphlets describing actual crimes, “Newgate” novels drawing themes from crime chronicles or sensational novels of the 50s and the 60s of the nineteenth century as the predecessors of English detective fiction, but the Gothic roots of this genre seem to be obvious (Ostrowski, 1980, pp. 90-91; Ascari, 2007; Cook, 2014). Already in the pre-Romantic Gothic romances the intrusion of ghosts and spectres into the world of the living was most often provoked by some crimes committed in the past – one may say that the objective was exactly the same as in detective fiction: to unmask the culprit and bring them to justice.
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