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Palgrave Macmillan

Queering Agatha Christie

Revisiting the Golden Age of Detective Fiction

  • Book
  • © 2016

Overview

Authors:
  1. J.C Bernthal

    1. Independent Scholar, Norwich, United Kingdom

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  • Offers the first book-length queer reading of Christie's work
  • Expands queer notions of archive and canonicity
  • Considers Christie’s reputation in the twenty-first century by exploring nostalgic television adaptations of her work

Part of the book series: Crime Files (CF)

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Table of contents (7 chapters)

  1. Front Matter

    Pages i-vii
    Download chapter PDF

  2. Introduction

    • J. C. Bernthal
    Pages 1-24

  3. Constructing Agatha Christie

    • J. C. Bernthal
    Pages 25-74

  4. English Masculinity and Its Others

    • J. C. Bernthal
    Pages 75-120

  5. Femininity and Masquerade

    • J. C. Bernthal
    Pages 121-159

  6. Queer Children, Crooked Houses

    • J. C. Bernthal
    Pages 161-211

  7. Queering Christie on Television

    • J. C. Bernthal
    Pages 213-261

  8. Conclusion

    • J. C. Bernthal
    Pages 263-269

  9. Back Matter

    Pages 271-304
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Keywords

About this book

This book is the first fully theorized queer reading of a Golden Age British crime writer. Agatha Christie was the most commercially successful novelist of the twentieth century, and her fiction remains popular. She created such memorable characters as Hercule Poirot and Jane Marple, and has become synonymous with a nostalgic, conservative tradition of crime fiction. J.C. Bernthal reads Christie through the lens of queer theory, uncovering a playful, alert, and subversive social commentary. After considering Christie’s emergence in a commercial market hostile to her sex, in Queering Agatha Christie Bernthal explores homophobic stereotypes, gender performativity, queer children, and masquerade in key texts published between 1920 and 1952. Christie engaged with debates around human identity in a unique historical period affected by two world wars. The final chapter considers twenty-first century Poirot and Marple adaptations, with visible LGBT characters, and poses the question: might the books be queerer?

Reviews

“Queering Agatha Christie is the latest of many works subjecting Christie’s considerable œuvre to new readings. … this volume is a timely, rich, immensely suggestive, and … wonderfully well-written reassessment of Agatha Christie and her work.” (Alyce von Rothkirchi, Modern Language Review, Vol. 112, October, 2017)

Authors and Affiliations

  • Independent Scholar, Norwich, United Kingdom

    J.C Bernthal

About the author

J.C. Bernthal is a private researcher for a major crime writer. He holds a PhD from the University of Exeter, UK, where he taught English Literature, and is the editor of The Ageless Agatha Christie (2016).

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