Antička tradicija i engleski detektivski roman
The Ancient Tradition and the English Detective Novel

Summary/Abstract: The flowering of detective fiction between the two World Wars is commonly known as the Golden Age of detective fiction, and many historians of the genre like to confine it mostly to the 1920’s, the decade when Agatha Christie first appeared on the scene with Hercule Poirot, Dorothy L. Sayers with Lord Peter Wimsey, S.S. Van Dine with Philo Vance and Margery Allingham with Albert Campion. Their names stand out from a host of other writers who enjoyed a briefer fame. The formal detective novel, the so called whodunit, is the most firmly established and easily recognized version of the thriller. Neither a picture of actual crime, a pure game of wits, nor a popular but degenerate version of tragedy, it is a comedy. More specifically, it remains one of the last outposts of the comedy of manners in fiction. Though whodunit attained its greatest heights of production and consumption in the 1920’s and 1930’s – the so called Golden Age of the detective story – the best examples of the type retain a remarkable longevity. The whodunit, in fact, has become a kind of classic in the field of popular fiction.

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