Research - Dr. Sophie Boyer
Dr. Sophie Boyer
German Studies Section
Dr. Boyer's research explores the different meeting points of crime and sexuality in German literature from 1900 to 1933, a period in which crime literature depicting sexual violence flourished. Approximately twenty novels and short stories that push the boundaries of narration and representation will be analyzed. Rather than being a simple reflection of the society that produced them, these literary texts render a distorted image of this very society in which accounts of sexual assault, rape, and sexual murder figure as symptoms of a profound crisis, of a generalized psychopathology. Dr. Boyer's research will attempt to elucidate how the same epoch could witness both the birth of psychoanalysis - a new science developed to explain and ultimately control the domain of sexuality - and the rise of a literary production in which sexuality has come to portray an uncontrollable threat. She will analyze to what extent the increase in "discourse on sex" (Foucault) provoked the emergence of such a crime literature, and to what extent this literature translates German society's preoccupations. Moreover, Dr. Boyer intends to analyze the aesthetic aspects of the intersection of crime and sexuality. Whether inspired by real events or influenced by the narrative strategies of popular literature, the authors in question all cultivate an aesthetic of horror and anxiety that exerts an uncanny fascination over the reading public. It is one of the aims of this research project to reveal the complex mechanisms underlying this aesthetic of horror. Dr. Boyer's project will contribute to the elucidation of a phenomenon that still haunts the field of literature today.
