The lobster and the maid: scenario-dependence and reader manipulation in Agatha Christie

Alexander, M. (2008) The lobster and the maid: scenario-dependence and reader manipulation in Agatha Christie. In: Annual Conference of the Poetics and Linguistics Association (PALA), Sheffield, UK, 23-26 July 2008,

Abstract

Readers of detective fiction deliberately seek to be deceived by the stories they read; in this manner, the genre forms a series of texts that aim to manipulate and persuade. This paper describes Agatha Christie’s manipulation of plot-significant information in her short story 'The Tuesday Night Club' by discussing a reader’s psychological depth of processing of significant entities and characters. In particular, I describe this technique within cognitive stylistics using the theory of scenario-dependence, in which a reader’s partitions of memory dictate the focus of a scenario and the role­ mapping of entities within a narrative. In this manner, the paper describes how Christie’s puzzle-like plot invites a reader’s engagement while she simultaneously uses psychological means to divert reader scrutiny and persuade them to follow the wrong ‘path’ to the story’s conclusion. This paper is part of a wider project to describe the cognitive and stylistic basis of reader manipulation in detective fiction (see also Alexander 2006).

• Item Type: Conference Proceedings
• Status: Published
• Refereed: Yes
• Glasgow Author(s) Enlighten ID: Alexander, Professor Marc
• Authors: Alexander, M.
• Subjects: P Language and Literature > PR English literature; P Language and Literature > P Philology. Linguistics
• College/School: College of Arts & Humanities > School of Critical Studies > English Language and Linguistics
• Copyright Holders: Copyright © 2008 The Authors
• First Published: First published in Online Proceedings of the Annual Conference of the Poetics and Linguistics Association (PALA), Sheffield, Uk, 23-26 July 2008
• Publisher Policy: Reproduced with the permission of the publisher