ABSTRACT
At the beginning of her study of luck and ethics in Greek tragedy and philosophy, Martha C. Nussbaum explains that one might expect a rigorous and objective analysis to be founded on the principles of “traditional philosophical discourse” and an expedient selection of “examples”. The distinction that Nussbaum draws between a philosophical argument and the messy indeterminacy of tragic drama can be mapped fruitfully onto crime fiction. Not only is the crime scene proleptically signed, but its author is also quite reflexively designated as such, for Joyce immediately engages Oliver on the topic of the latter’s crime novels. Nussbaum is critiquing the very beginnings of a critical tradition of reading fictional texts by “philosophical” authors as vehicles for philosophy, for getting various important points across to various target audiences. Beginning-oriented readings enable the pursuit of alternative murderers and the unmooring of the text from the strictures of the detective’s final revelation.
