Ian Rankin: A diachronic Study of the City of Edinburgh

Florence Dujarric

Abstract


Ian Rankin’s world-famous crime series features as a main character the city of Edinburgh, where Inspector Rebus relentlessly wanders, drives, drifts, tails and chases suspects. In each novel, the narrative visits a number of referential locations and examines them through the prism of time, slowly building a diachronic map of the city. As the series spans more than thirty years, the urban locus evolves as the narrative unfolds. Ian Rankin takes stock of new urban developments in real time and draws on them to feed his plots. Piecing a map together therefore remains a work in progress, and the literary geography of Edinburgh gazes out at an endlessly elusive horizon.


Keywords


Ian Rankin; Crime fiction; Contemporary fiction; Urban studies; City in literature

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DOI: http://dx.doi.org/10.17951/lsmll.2020.44.4.111-125
Date of publication: 2020-12-22 14:44:34
Date of submission: 2020-03-31 22:23:41


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