Award Date
May 2024
Degree Type
Thesis
Degree Name
Master of Arts (MA)
Department
English
First Committee Member
John Hay
Second Committee Member
Jessica Teague
Third Committee Member
Siddharth Srikanth
Fourth Committee Member
Lynn Comella
Number of Pages
70
Abstract
This thesis argues for the importance of crime fiction as a major literary genre with global reach. Taken as a whole, crime fiction acts as a vehicle for exploring macro-level questions of social structures, political-economic processes and power relations. Within that genre, I claim that James Ellroy is a key figure who writes at the intersection of the historical novel and literary noir. As the first work in his L.A. Quartet (1987-1992), The Black Dahlia fictionalizes the investigation of the city’s most famous unsolved homicide—the gruesome murder and mutilation of Elizabeth Short. The novel, however, uses the investigation as a pretext for depicting the historical context of postwar American society, offering readers an opportunity to view past crimes as the prehistory of the present. In the novel, L.A. is portrayed as a site of terminal dysfunction and social inequality that provides the space for critical reflection, particularly on the systemic nature of policing and gendered violence. Ellroy’s historical crime novel, I argue, critiques postwar American society through its representation of the everyday nature of violence and marginalization in this chapter of the city’s development. These depictions of policing and gendered violence show readers that power structures are socially constructed and historically contingent rather than transhistorical, immutable truths.
Keywords
Crime Fiction; Historical Fiction; James Ellroy; Noir; Policing; The Black Dahlia
Disciplines
American Literature | Arts and Humanities | Modern Literature | Other Languages, Societies, and Cultures
Degree Grantor
University of Nevada, Las Vegas
Language
English
Repository Citation
Ortiz Zaragoza, Mauricio, "“Everyone’s Favorite Dead Girl”: Historical Crime Fiction and Postwar Policing in James Ellroy’s The Black Dahlia" (2024). UNLV Theses, Dissertations, Professional Papers, and Capstones. 5057.
http://dx.doi.org/10.34917/37650882
Rights
IN COPYRIGHT. For more information about this rights statement, please visit http://rightsstatements.org/vocab/InC/1.0/
Included in
American Literature Commons, Modern Literature Commons, Other Languages, Societies, and Cultures Commons