Riot in Oxford

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Riot in Oxford (original title: Gaudy Night ) is a 1935 UK detective novel ( university novel ) by Dorothy L. Sayers . The author breaks with a number of conventions of the genre and tells not the story of a murder, but the uncovering of a series of mean pranks that drive the faculty and students of an early British women's university to the edge of desperation.

Riot in Oxford is the tenth of a total of eleven novels in which Sayers has the amateur detective Lord Peter Wimsey appear, and the third of five in which Harriet Vane appears, the crime writer with whom Wimsey - at first unhappily - is in love. The story is told from Vane's perspective. As a series, the novels not only form an overall plot, but also show how the two main characters continually gain depth and complexity through their experiences. The literary scholar Sarah Crown has therefore recommended that the Wimsey novels be read in strict order.

The novel is considered one of the most important of the "Golden Age" of British crime fiction.

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prehistory

The central figure of the novel is - alongside the detective Wimsey - Harriet Vane, with whom the reader has already become familiar in the previous novels Strong Poison (1930) and At the Time of Questioning (1932). Vane studied English at Shrewsbury College and subsequently gained fame as a detective story writer.

She lives in London's bohemian Bloomsbury district , for some time as the partner of the talented but less successful writer Philip Boyes. The relationship is complicated, Boyes does not believe in marriage (which is not a problem for the emancipated Vane), but finally offers Vane a marriage, which shatters her trust in his character so that she ends the relationship.

When Boyes is murdered a little later, suspicion falls on Vane. Boyes died of arsenic poisoning, a type of killing Vane has just studied for her next literary work. She is arrested. Help comes from Lord Peter Wimsey, who investigates the case and can identify the real killer. When Vane finds a body on the beach some time later and the press is scandalous about the incident, it is again Wimsey who uses her to find the real killer and exonerate her.

Wimsey fell deeply in love with her during his encounters with Vane and harassed her with marriage proposals. Vane does not consider the gratitude she feels for Wimsey to be a viable basis for marriage and therefore always refuses.

Riot in Oxford

The setting is Shrewsbury College at the University of Oxford, the time is the author's present, in other words the year 1935. Harriett Vane accepts the invitation to a Gaudy Night at her former alma mater, hesitantly at first and only because she is her friend Mary Stokes Attwood, who is seriously ill and plans to leave for an operation abroad soon after Gaudy. The reunion with the former teachers and especially with the dean, Letitia Martin, is very warm. However, as a writer of high-profile detective novels and after her involvement in the Boyes and Alexis murders, Vane has acquired a somewhat problematic reputation; some of the former fellow students let you feel this clearly. She also received two anonymous letters of abuse during her stay.

After the small party program ends, Vane returns to her home in Bloomsbury. A little later she received a letter from the dean, who reported disturbing events at Shrewsbury College: anonymous letters sent to various addressees with obscene, accusatory or threatening content, wall graffiti of the same kind, a burned book and a destroyed manuscript: all in more obvious ways Intention to demoralize the teachers and damage the reputation of the women's college - at a time when women's colleges are still struggling for social acceptance and a damaged reputation would destroy the institution in a short time. In order to avoid any public attention, the dean decided not to involve the police at first.

Vane doubts that as a detective writer she has the necessary tools, but is happy to help with the internal investigation and travels to Oxford again. At first she doesn't make any progress. The anonymous letters become so hurtful that a student almost commits suicide. For Vane, this is the cue to turn to Lord Peter Wimsey for help. During their collaboration, Vane gets to know Wimsey better and gains the impression that he would be a suitable partner for her who would have no problems with an ambitious and successful woman.

When they are almost on the trail of the perpetrator, the situation escalates and Vane becomes the target of an attempted murder, which she narrowly escapes.

Wimsey now has enough evidence to bring the perpetrator to justice. It's the maid, Annie Wilson. One of the lecturers, Miss de Vine, had exposed Wilson's husband many years ago in the falsification of research results and thus not only destroyed his scientific career, but also drove him to suicide. Annie had subsequently been forced to make a living scrubbing floors, and her grudge against Miss de Vine had spread to all academics.

Fortunately, Harriet Vane accepts Wimsey's marriage proposal.

Background to the plot

Somerville College

The author, Dorothy L. Sayers, was born in 1893 as the daughter of the director of the major choir school at Christ Church College , Oxford . She spent her childhood and youth in East Anglia , but returned to Oxford in 1912 to study at Somerville College . Women were allowed to study at this all-female institution, but were not yet able to obtain academic degrees. When the latter became possible in 1920, Sayers was one of the first women to be ceremonially presented with a diploma.

While the University of Oxford does exist, Shrewsbury College, with its all-female faculty and student body, is an author's fiction. The first women's college in Great Britain was Bedford College in 1849 . In addition to Somerville College, founded in 1879, Oxford also had Lady Margaret Hall (1878), St Anne's College (1879), St Hugh's College (1886) and St Hilda's College (1893). The first British university to give women a formal degree was the University of London ; there, in 1880, four women acquired the bachelor's degree for the first time .

The annual cycle of British universities is characterized by numerous traditions that have no equivalent in the German-speaking area. While universities in German-speaking countries tend to see themselves as service providers commissioned by the state, universities that are in the English tradition cultivate a strong personal bond between students and alma mater , which by no means ends with graduation; the alumni retain their permanent place in the school's activities throughout their lives. The Gaudy Night , which appears not only in the plot, but also in the English original title of the novel, is also located in the context of the English alumni system .

The word gaudy refers firstly to William Shakespeare's tragedy Antonius und Cleopatra (around 1607), in which Antonius says to Cleopatra: "Come, let's have one other gaudy night." (Act 3, scene 13). In this context , gaudy is translated as “extravagant”, “gaudy”, “garish”. Second, it refers to the famous student song Gaudeamus igitur .

At the colleges of the University of Oxford, a Gaudy is a party to which alumni are often invited, alumni of certain years. The highlight is a formal dinner ; the overall program can also include church services, lectures and concerts.

Creation and publication

Sayers wrote the novel in Witham , Essex , where she and her husband had owned a house since 1930 (10 Newland Street) that was originally intended to be weekend quarters. Since Sayers had given up her work for the London advertising agency SH Benson around the same time and had since concentrated entirely on her writing, this address soon became her main residence.

The London publisher Gollancz , with whom Sayers had worked since 1930, published the novel in the first months of 1935. The Sunday Times ran a review on March 10, 1935.

Significance in literary history

Elizabeth George has called uprising in Oxford a tapestry novel - a " tapestry novel " - because the work goes extraordinarily far beyond a mere detective story. In addition to fundamental topics of human life, such as the question of the moral value of work, the value and meaning of truth, friendship and love, the novel also deals with the central question of whether women can have a life that they can have intellectually and emotionally fulfilled.

Expenses (selection)

Original English editions
  • Gaudy Night . Gollancz, London 1935.
  • Gaudy Night . Harper, New York 1936.
  • Gaudy Night . Harper Paperbacks, New York 2012, ISBN 978-0-06-219653-8 .
  • Gaudy Night . Hodder & Stoughton ( Audible ), London 2015 (audio book, unabridged reading, read by Jane McDowell, 16 hours, 23 minutes).
  • Gaudy Night . Hodder Paperbacks, London 2016, ISBN 978-1-4736-2140-4 .
German editions
  • Riot in Oxford . Wagner, Hamburg 1937 (translator: Marianne von Schön).
  • Riot in Oxford . Rainer Wunderlich, Tübingen 1981 (translator: Otto Bayer).
  • Riot in Oxford . Rowohlt, Reinbek 1991.
  • Riot in Oxford . 5th edition. Rowohlt, Reinbek 2001, ISBN 978-3-499-23082-0 .
  • Riot in Oxford . Audiobuch-Verlag, 2014, ISBN 978-3-89964-770-9 (audio book, abridged reading, read by Doris Wolters, 10 CDs, 674 minutes).

Adaptations

  • 1983 - Gaudy Night (three episodes of the British television series A Dorothy L. Sayers Mystery , with Harriett Walter and Edward Petherbridge; written by Philip Broadley, directed by Michael Simpson)
  • 2005 - Gaudy Night (radio play for BBC Radio, with Joanna David and Ian Carmichael ; adapted by Michael Bakewell, directed by Enyd Williams)
  • 2006 - Gaudy Night (stage play, adapted by Frances Limoncelli)

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ a b c Sarah Crown: Gaudy Night by Dorothy L Sayers - a weighty novel that still thrills. In: The Guardian. January 6, 2016, accessed May 31, 2018 .
  2. ^ A Reunion with Old Friends - Gaudy Night. Accessed May 31, 2018 .
  3. ↑ Picture of a female graduate of London University from The Graphic. Accessed May 31, 2018 .
  4. ^ Antony and Cleopatra. Accessed May 31, 2018 .
  5. ^ Dictionary.com. Accessed May 31, 2018 .
  6. ^ Robert M. Gorrell: Watch Your Language! Mother Tongue and Her Wayward Children . University of Nevada Press, Reno, Las Vegas, London 1994, ISBN 0-87417-235-7 , pp. 28 ( limited preview in Google Book search).
  7. ↑ Christ Church Gaudy Dates. Accessed May 31, 2018 . St. Catherine's College: Gaudy Schedule. Accessed May 31, 2018 .
  8. ↑ Local History: Celebrating Sayers. Accessed May 31, 2018 . Dorothy L Sayers. Accessed May 31, 2018 . Jane Curran: Dorothy L Sayers' life and loves. In: BBC. Accessed May 31, 2018 .
  9. ↑ Catherine Kenney: The Remarkable Case of Dorothy L. Sayers . The Kent State University Press, Kent (Ohio), London 1990, ISBN 0-87338-458-X , pp. 113 ( limited preview in Google Book search).
  10. ↑ Elizabeth George: Introduction . In: Dorothy L. Sayers: Gaudy Night . Hodder & Stoughton, 2003, ISBN 978-0-450-02154-1 , pp. ix-xi .
  11. ↑ Not as Dorothy would have liked it. Retrieved May 30, 2018 .
  12. ^ Gaudy Night by Dorothy L. Sayers, adapted by Michael Bakewell. Retrieved May 30, 2018 .
  13. ^ Gaudy Night at Lifeline Theater. Retrieved May 30, 2018 .