The Heritage of Cain: Crime in American Fiction

For almost two centuries American fiction has featured crime, but its treatment in popular literature, which strokes the norms of a mass audience, has been quite different from that in high art, which examines critically the assumptions and values of our society. A study of serious fiction can, ther...

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Bibliographic Details
Published in:The Annals of the American Academy of Political and Social Science 1976-01, Vol.423 (1), p.47-66
Main Author: Grenander, M. E.
Format: Article
Language:English
Subjects:
Attorneys
Crime
Crime/Crimes (see also Criminal)
Criminal justice
Criminals
Fiction
Juries
Killing
Literature
Mental illness
Murder
Mutiny
Myth and Meaning of Crime in America
Verdicts
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Summary:For almost two centuries American fiction has featured crime, but its treatment in popular literature, which strokes the norms of a mass audience, has been quite different from that in high art, which examines critically the assumptions and values of our society. A study of serious fiction can, therefore, probe fundamental issues for us: How does literature define crime? Why does this definition differ occasionally from the statutory one? What crimes has fiction taken most seriously? How does fiction assess the criminal's circumstances and motivation? What is the literary attitude to criminal responsibility? What is the victim's role in crime? How is the criminal apprehended? How does the trial contribute to equity? How are legal professionals, the jury, and the insanity defense portrayed? How does literature rank criminal punishments? We can postulate tentative answers to these rather open-ended questions, but in a larger sense their value is heuristic, forcing us to reconsider some hypotheses we may have taken for granted.
ISSN:0002-7162
1552-3349
DOI:10.1177/000271627642300106