Staff in the Department of French
Miss Amy Wigelsworth
Contact Miss Amy Wigelsworth (email at a.l.wigelsworth@durham.ac.uk)
Biography
My PhD research, funded by the AHRC and entitled ‘(Re-)Mystifying the city: the mystères urbains and the palimpsest, 1842-1905’, uses the palimpsest as an interpretative lens through which to consider various rewritings of Eugène Sue’s Mystères de Paris. The corpus date range reflects the extent of the mystères urbains phenomenon, from 1842, when serial publication of Sue’s novel began, to 1905, when serialization of Jules Lermina’s Mystère-ville was completed, and after which the mystères tended to adopt new settings and new preoccupations. The texts are characterized by a self-reflexivity typical of literary modernity, but especially prominent given the significant relationship between text and context; the city provides not only the subject matter of the mystères, but also the forum for the production, consumption, reception and rewriting of the novels.
Research Groups
- Literature/History/Theory
- Visual and Performance
Research Interests
- C19th and C20th French literature and culture
- Crime Fiction
- Popular Fiction
Selected Publications
Books: edited
- Accepted (co-edited with Kimyongür, Angela) (Re-)Writing Wrongs: French Crime Fiction and the Palimpsest, Cambridge Scholars Publishing.
Books: reviews
- 2012 'Le populaire au pluriel', Acta Fabula pp. 139
- 2010 'Sur la Piste de la Littérature du XIXe siècle: Eugène sue à l'étranger et l'éclosion du Roman Policier', Acta Fabula pp.
Edited works: contributions
- 2011 'Eugène Sue', in (ed.), The Literary Encyclopedia.
Journal papers: academic
- Published 'Detection in the second degree in French urban mystery novels', Australasian Journal of Popular Culture pp.
- 2012 'Au seuil des bas-fonds: Footnotes in the mystères urbains', Dix-Neuf 16, pp. 243-259