French crime fiction and the Second World War explores France's preoccupation with memories of the Second World War through an examination of popular culture in one of its most enduring forms: crime fiction. A populist literary form, French crime fiction offers fascinating insights into past and present perceptions of the war years in France, as well as the role that popular culture has played in both shaping and reflecting cultural memories of the Occupation. By analyzing representations of the war years in a selection of French crime novels from the late 1940s to the 2000s, this study contends that such texts open up new avenues for charting the two-way traffic between official discourses and popular reconstructions of such a contested conflict in French cultural memory. Starting with narratives of the Resistance in the late 1940s and concluding with contemporary crime fiction for younger readers, this study examines popular memories of the Second World War in dialogue with the changing social, cultural and political contexts of remembrance in post-war France. From memories of the persecution of Jews and French collaboration to the legacies of the concentration camps and the figure of the survivor-witness, all the crime novels discussed grapple with the challenges of what it means to live in the shadow of such a past for generations past, present and future. Aimed at students and researchers of French history and culture, this study demonstrates the important contribution crime fiction makes to our understanding of the rich and multiple memory discourses of the Second World War in contemporary France.
Author(s): Claire Gorrara
Edition: 1.
Publisher: Manchester University Press
Year: 2014
Language: English
Pages: 160
City: Manchester
French crime fiction and the Second World War: Past crimes, present memories
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Half Title Page
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Series Editors
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Title Page
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Copyright
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Contents
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Preface and acknowledgements......Page 8
Introduction: Mapping French memories of the Second World War
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1. Resisters and the resistance: Challenging the epic in French crime fiction of the 1940s and 1950s......Page 31
2. Forgotten crimes: Representing Jewish wartime experience in French crime fiction of the 1950s and 1960s......Page 51
3. Resurgent collaboration: Revisiting collaboration in French crime fiction of the 1980s......Page 69
4. Survivor stories: Representing persecution and extermination in French crime fiction of the 1980s and 1990s......Page 92
5. Mobilising memory: Reading the Second World War in children’s crime fiction of the 1990s and 2000s......Page 117
Conclusion: Memories past, present and future......Page 142
Bibliography......Page 147
Index......Page 156
