Genre reassignment: crime, morality, and Elmore Leonard's place in law and literature
Description
For over a century, writings in the Law & Literature genre have been largely restricted to works concerning lawyers and courtrooms. This despite early preeminent Law& Literature scholars' assertions that the genre should incorporate any writing that examines the intersection of law, crime, morality, and society. For over a half-century, Detroit novelist Elmore Leonard has been producing well-written, introspective novels about criminals, violence, and society's need to both understand and condemn these things, all under the broad, oft-marginalized genre of crime and detective fiction. This paper pairs the work of Elmore Leonard, using his successful novel Out of Sight as a stylistic framework, with the Law & Literature genre. After a dissection of the true definition of a Law & Literature and detective fiction, as well as an excavation of underlying themes and imports of Out of Sight, it is found that Law & Literature scholars need to be more inclusive of crime novels like Leonard's. And, given the characteristics of both genres, Leonard's novels are more appropriately classified as Law & Literature rather than detective fiction.
Date Created
The date the item was original created (prior to any relationship with the ASU Digital Repositories.)
2012
Agent
- Author (aut): Weier, Nicholas
- Thesis advisor (ths): Clarke, Deborah
- Committee member: Lussier, Mark
- Committee member: Holbo, Christine
- Publisher (pbl): Arizona State University