The Noir Landscape of Dublin in Benjamin Black’s Quirke Series

Authors

  • Auxiliadora Pérez-Vides Universidad de Huelva

DOI:

https://doi.org/10.24162/EI2020-9702

Keywords:

City landscapes, Coexistence, Crime fiction, Dublin Noir, Ecocriticism

Abstract

This article offers an examination of Benjamin Black’s Quirke series through an ecocritical lens. Set against the backdrop of 1950s Dublin, the texts feature a pathologist who investigates the murder of the victims that end at the morgue of the Holy Family Hospital. I contend that by exhaustively mapping the city through its crimes, the author hints at the far-reaching web of criminal actions executed and sanctioned by different agents of authority and violence. Similarly, I also claim that the author consistently draws on the notions of coexistence and interdependence to construct the personality of the protagonist, as the narrator insists on this growing indignation and cynicism towards the connected artefacts of dominance that inhabit the city. Consequently, the novels suggest that relationality and interdependence should involve untangling that net of power and control so as to negotiate social responsibility and create a climate of greater justice and solidarity.

Author Biography

Auxiliadora Pérez-Vides, Universidad de Huelva

Auxiliadora Pérez-Vides is Senior Lecturer in English at the University of Huelva, Spain. She has conducted extensive research on the intersection of gender, nation, family and social history in contemporary Ireland as well as on the representation of single maternity in Irish fiction, cinema and art. Her publications include Sólo ellas: familia y feminismo en la novela irlandesa contemporánea (2003) and the co-edition of Espacios de Género (2005), Single Motherhood in Twentieth Century Ireland: Cultural, Historical and Social Essays (2006), Gendering Citizenship and Globalization (2011), Experiencing Gender: International Approaches (2015) and Words of Crisis/ Crisis of Words: Ireland and the Representation of Critical Times (2016). She has also published on motherhood and women’s corporeality, concentrating on the work of Catherine Dunne, Mary Rose Callaghan, Edna O’Brien and Mary Leland, among other authors. Her current research interests focus on the repression of the institutionalised body, the cultural manifestations of Ireland’s Magdalene Laundries and the social dimension of John Banville’s crime fiction as Benjamin Black. She is a member of the Research Project “Bodies in Transit 2: Genders, Mobilities, Interdependencies”, funded by the Spanish Ministry of Science, Innovation and Universities.

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Published

2020-10-31

How to Cite

Auxiliadora Pérez-Vides. (2020). The Noir Landscape of Dublin in Benjamin Black’s Quirke Series. Estudios Irlandeses, 15(2), 90–101. https://doi.org/10.24162/EI2020-9702

Issue

Vol. 15 No. 2 (2020): Issue 15.2. Eco-Fictions, The Animal Trope and Irish Studies - 2020

Section

Articles

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Copyright (c) 2020 Auxiliadora Pérez-Vides

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