Date of Award
Spring 4-20-2026
Document Type
Thesis
Degree Name
Master of Arts (MA)
Department
English
First Advisor
Annarose Steinke
Committee Members
Marguerite Tassi
Megan Hartman
Linda Van Ingen
Chene Heady
Keywords
interwar, detective fiction, reader response, embodied emotion, Lord Peter Wimsey, T.S. Eliot, Dorothy L. Sayers, Religion and Literature, Towards a Christian Aesthetic, detective
Abstract/Description
Critical discussions of detective fiction from the 1920s and 30s ask two main questions: what is detective fiction and what is it for? T.S. Eliot and Dorothy L. Sayers both wrote extensively on detective fiction throughout the interwar period as part of this larger literary effort to understand the nature, purpose, and influence of detective fiction. Scholars examining their detective criticism rightly detect the importance of their shared emphasis on lifelike characters — or what Eliot called “the intangible human element” in his 1927 essay “Wilkie Collins and Dickens.” However, comparatively little scholarship explores how Eliot’s and Sayers’s focus on “real” characters reflects their wider concerns about the representation of reality in popular fiction and its influence on readers. Following a biographical survey of Eliot’s and Sayers’s lives, in which I locate their criticism within a more nuanced understanding of their personal contexts, I move towards a definition of what Eliot meant by the “human element” in detective fiction. I argue that strictly formulaic characters in the clue-puzzle Golden Age form are insufficient to hold readers’ attention and thus undermine active reader participation with the text. I then narrow my focus to explore how the realistic detective character serves as a paradigm by which readers respond to crime. The embodied emotions of the detective can potentially evoke narrative empathy in the reader, a factor that can direct how we respond to thematic issues that are foundational to detective stories. Using Sayers’s proposed artistic aesthetic as a starting point, I show how detective fiction that depicts real human desires invites readers to creatively consider alternative approaches to reconciling conflicting moral values.
Recommended Citation
Rodgers, Amelia, "Beyond the Puzzle: Interwar Detective Fiction as Reader Formation through T.S. Eliot and Dorothy L. Sayers" (2026). English Theses, Dissertations, and Student Creative Activity. 24.
https://openspaces.unk.edu/eng-etd/24