Dr Reshmi Dutta-Flanders, Honorary Research Fellow in the Department of English Language & Linguistics, will be presenting at the American Crime Fiction symposium in Chicago, organised by the American Literature Association, on 3-4 March 2017.

Reshmi’s talk is titled ‘Narrative technique in Patricia Highsmith’s The Talented Mr Ripley’, and will be delivered on Saturday 4 March.

In crime fiction, although the crime precedes the investigation, in the course of narration, such events are not presented in a chronological order due to personal experiences that are embedded in the narrative. Hence, there is a situated focus created as the perpetrator is residing within an ‘inter diegesis’ space constructed for the purpose of illusion, delay or even distortion in the manner the story of crime is influenced by the story of personal circumstance.

Reshmi will use Partricia Highsmith’s 1955 novel The Talented Mr Ripley subsequently adapted twice for cinema as the French Plein Soleil (1960) as well as the 1999 American adaption under the original name to analyse the linguistic dysfunctions used to evoke an intermediary space between narrative of the crime and narrative of the story.

For more details about the conference, please see the American Literature Association page here.