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A Counter-History of Crime FictionLondon as a ‘Heart of Darkness’

A Counter-History of Crime Fiction: London as a ‘Heart of Darkness’ [The archetypal opposition between holy city and sin city is rooted in the Bible, where Jerusalem, the seat of the Temple, is contrasted with nests of wickedness such as Babel, whose punishment for the erection of its tower — an emblem of impious pride — is a relapse into a primordial chaos of languages, or Sodom and Gomorrah, which are destroyed by ‘brimstone and fire’ (Genesis, 19: 24). Western culture is imbued with this rhetoric of the urban space, pivoting on the contrast between holiness and sin or between the metaphors of light and darkness. London has often been described as embodying these contradictory terms, that is to say as a beacon of civilisation and a harbour of vice, two dimensions that have also been regarded as coinciding with the diurnal and nocturnal faces of the city.] http://www.deepdyve.com/assets/images/DeepDyve-Logo-lg.png

A Counter-History of Crime FictionLondon as a ‘Heart of Darkness’

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Publisher
Palgrave Macmillan UK
Copyright
© Palgrave Macmillan, a division of Macmillan Publishers Limited 2007
ISBN
978-0-230-59462-3
Pages
133 –144
DOI
10.1057/9780230234536_8
Publisher site
See Chapter on Publisher Site

Abstract

[The archetypal opposition between holy city and sin city is rooted in the Bible, where Jerusalem, the seat of the Temple, is contrasted with nests of wickedness such as Babel, whose punishment for the erection of its tower — an emblem of impious pride — is a relapse into a primordial chaos of languages, or Sodom and Gomorrah, which are destroyed by ‘brimstone and fire’ (Genesis, 19: 24). Western culture is imbued with this rhetoric of the urban space, pivoting on the contrast between holiness and sin or between the metaphors of light and darkness. London has often been described as embodying these contradictory terms, that is to say as a beacon of civilisation and a harbour of vice, two dimensions that have also been regarded as coinciding with the diurnal and nocturnal faces of the city.]

Published: Oct 9, 2015

Keywords: Urban Space; American Writer; Cruel Beast; London Street; Holy City

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