Mystery and Performance in Barry Unsworth's Morality Play
DOI:
https://doi.org/10.26754/ojs_misc/mj.200110295Keywords:
Moralities, Detective fiction, Performance, Metaphysics, Grand plotAbstract
The aim of this paper is to analyse Barry Unsworth's Morality Play (1995) in the light of the patterns that make up the formula of classical detective fiction. Unsworth's novel is approached as a tale of mystery and detection that advances through a series of performances devised as a morality play. The motif of performance is thus used to relate the patterns of the detective story with those of the medieval moralities, while simultaneously questioning in the end the grounds on which both of them were based.
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