This phenomenological investigation primarily explores John Banville and Benjamin Black’s crime fiction. A clear aim is to pin down what kind of crime fiction Blackville writes in relation to the crime fiction genre and as compared to Banville’s non-crime prose fiction (which do contain crimes but are not marketed as crime fiction). In addition to the crime fiction as such, attention will be paid to the Irish history that has a prominent function in the narratives. When I refer to Blackville, that label is intended to cover the implied author of all of Black’s works and the four crime novels published in the name of John Banville 2020, 2021, 2023, and 2024, which in chronological order encompasses: Snow, April in Spain, The Lock-Up and The Drowned, all of which are analysed more in detail in Chap. 3 . Central to the analysis is the tension between epistemology and ontology that comes to the fore when analytically considering the crime fiction and the rest of Banville’s oeuvre, since such a theme can actually be traced all the way from Nightspawn (1971) to The Drowned (2024). Notable is that this tension made it across the border from relatively obscure and difficult works to more accessible and popular narratives within the genre of crime. In fact, to make this clear from the outset, crime fiction is currently one of the most popular existing genres. The massive popularity of crime fiction may obviously have a number of reasons, but in this study, I focus on the ubiquitous human drive of immanent epistemological Desire—that means the seemingly unquenchable desire to know with certainty, or at least to attempt to do so. It would be very difficult to claim that such an aspect of the human constitution is irrelevant or that it does not exist. Generally speaking, if we would abort that notion completely, what would remain in the human realm of existence? What may have begun as behaviour to promote and improve the survival chances of the species—that is, basically functioning as the improvement of the human problem-solving capability—curiosity and a more profound desire to know have gradually evolved into one of the main pillars of human existence in terms of science as well as art, and additionally, even as the plain everyday curiosity of the (wo)man on the street. Crime fiction would hardly be possible without the force of the human being bursting with its hell-bent desire to know. Crime fiction is the genre par excellence as concerns epistemological Desire, which applies to two levels, the thematised sphere of central and peripheral crimes and narrativity as such, that is, suspense, the basic curiosity which makes the reader turn the pages.

Introduction

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发表日期：

2026年

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Joakim Wrethed

摘要

This phenomenological investigation primarily explores John Banville and Benjamin Black’s crime fiction. A clear aim is to pin down what kind of crime fiction Blackville writes in relation to the crime fiction genre and as compared to Banville’s non-crime prose fiction (which do contain crimes but are not marketed as crime fiction). In addition to the crime fiction as such, attention will be paid to the Irish history that has a prominent function in the narratives. When I refer to Blackville, that label is intended to cover the implied author of all of Black’s works and the four crime novels published in the name of John Banville 2020, 2021, 2023, and 2024, which in chronological order encompasses: Snow, April in Spain, The Lock-Up and The Drowned, all of which are analysed more in detail in Chap. 3 . Central to the analysis is the tension between epistemology and ontology that comes to the fore when analytically considering the crime fiction and the rest of Banville’s oeuvre, since such a theme can actually be traced all the way from Nightspawn (1971) to The Drowned (2024). Notable is that this tension made it across the border from relatively obscure and difficult works to more accessible and popular narratives within the genre of crime. In fact, to make this clear from the outset, crime fiction is currently one of the most popular existing genres. The massive popularity of crime fiction may obviously have a number of reasons, but in this study, I focus on the ubiquitous human drive of immanent epistemological Desire—that means the seemingly unquenchable desire to know with certainty, or at least to attempt to do so. It would be very difficult to claim that such an aspect of the human constitution is irrelevant or that it does not exist. Generally speaking, if we would abort that notion completely, what would remain in the human realm of existence? What may have begun as behaviour to promote and improve the survival chances of the species—that is, basically functioning as the improvement of the human problem-solving capability—curiosity and a more profound desire to know have gradually evolved into one of the main pillars of human existence in terms of science as well as art, and additionally, even as the plain everyday curiosity of the (wo)man on the street. Crime fiction would hardly be possible without the force of the human being bursting with its hell-bent desire to know. Crime fiction is the genre par excellence as concerns epistemological Desire, which applies to two levels, the thematised sphere of central and peripheral crimes and narrativity as such, that is, suspense, the basic curiosity which makes the reader turn the pages.