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Poirot, the Bourgeois Prophet : Agatha Christie’s Biblical Adaptations

Strømmen, Hannah M. LU (2019) In Scriptural Traces p.149-166
Abstract
Agatha Christie’s canon from the ‘Golden Age’ of crime fiction is sometimes said to be surpassed in popularity only by the Bible. But is a large and faithful readership the only connection between the ‘Queen of Crime’ and the ‘Book of Books’? In this chapter, I argue that Christie’s popular detective hero, Hercule Poirot, becomes a mode of adapting religion to the modern world of Europe after the First World War, a world interpreted as increasingly secular. The question Christie’s crime fiction asks, and that Poirot forms an answer to, is: how to affirm a collective anxiety about an unstable middle-class world, while promoting a religious sensibility that can endure in a secularising century?
Please use this url to cite or link to this publication:
author
publishing date
type
Chapter in Book/Report/Conference proceeding
publication status
published
subject
host publication
The Bible in Crime Fiction and Drama : Murderous Texts - Murderous Texts
series title
Scriptural Traces
editor
Blythe, Caroline and Jack, Alison
pages
17 pages
publisher
T&T Clark
external identifiers
  • scopus:85184549549
ISBN
9780567677990
9780567686466
9780567695536
9780567677983
language
English
LU publication?
no
id
82d7bc8c-748f-4b03-a614-59b699503653
date added to LUP
2024-03-29 15:53:30
date last changed
2024-04-17 16:06:27
@inbook{82d7bc8c-748f-4b03-a614-59b699503653,
  abstract     = {{Agatha Christie’s canon from the ‘Golden Age’ of crime fiction is sometimes said to be surpassed in popularity only by the Bible. But is a large and faithful readership the only connection between the ‘Queen of Crime’ and the ‘Book of Books’? In this chapter, I argue that Christie’s popular detective hero, Hercule Poirot, becomes a mode of adapting religion to the modern world of Europe after the First World War, a world interpreted as increasingly secular. The question Christie’s crime fiction asks, and that Poirot forms an answer to, is: how to affirm a collective anxiety about an unstable middle-class world, while promoting a religious sensibility that can endure in a secularising century?}},
  author       = {{Strømmen, Hannah M.}},
  booktitle    = {{The Bible in Crime Fiction and Drama : Murderous Texts}},
  editor       = {{Blythe, Caroline and Jack, Alison}},
  isbn         = {{9780567677990}},
  language     = {{eng}},
  pages        = {{149--166}},
  publisher    = {{T&T Clark}},
  series       = {{Scriptural Traces}},
  title        = {{Poirot, the Bourgeois Prophet : Agatha Christie’s Biblical Adaptations}},
  year         = {{2019}},
}