Dan Brown versus John le Carré: An Imagological Approach to Literary Thrillers
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2017-07-03
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en
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This research aims to answer the following research question: “How do the representations of the American and European national identities in character descriptions, setting, and dialogues in the works of Dan Brown and John le Carré interact with the textual tradition of stereotyping Europe and America in relation to each other?”. The theoretical framework that is applied to answer this question is that of Imagology, as described by Manfred Beller and Joep Leerssen in their study Imagology: The Culturual Construction and Literary Representation of National Characters. The introduction to this research will explicate the textual tradition of stereotyping as well as the theory by Beller and Leerssen. Chapters one, two, and three will focus on the various aspects in the novels (Brown’s Angels & Demons, The Da Vinci Code, en Inferno, en le Carré’s The Tailor of Panama, Absolute Friends, en A Delicate Truth) that show stereotyping. Chapter one will be aimed at stereotyping in the character descriptions of European and American characters, chapter two will focus on stereotyping in dialogues, and chapter three will highlight the way in which setting is used to by the writers to reinforce these stereotypes. This will lead to an Imagological analysis of the aforementioned literary thrillers. It is expected that this research will demonstrate that certain national stereotypes that are part of the textual tradition are still present in contemporary popular literature. It is also anticipated that the novels by Dan Brown will use traditional archetypes more overtly than the novels by John le Carré will. Until now very little imagological research has been done on Brown and le Carré, which means that this research will add something new to this field of study.
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