Sherlockiana

A piece about the possible response Seneca would have made to Lucilius about the literature and discussion on some minor details of the Sherlock Holmes stories.

He probably would have wrote to Lucilius that there are some silly, and useless, discussions going on in that perimeter, and  that despite the pseudo-erudition that they can provide, his friend should avoid that type of studies.

Analiza “Der Hund von Baskerville” Richarda Oswalda z 1929 r.

Piszę o tym, co odróżnia film Oswalda od pozostałych ekranizacji przygód Sherlocka Holmesa. Wyjaśniam, czemu ten film zaginął na ponad pół wieku. Opisuję rolę, jaką odegrał fandom w procesie rekonstrukcji.

Staram się dociec, z jakiego powodu akurat ta adaptacja filmowa Psa Baskerville’ów jest kultowa.

The Worst Man in London: A Facsimile of the Original Manuscript of “Charles Augustus Milverton” by Arthur Conan Doyle, with Annotations and Commentary. Ed. Daniel Stashower and Constantine Rossakis. New York: The Baker Street Irregulars, 2019. 165-70. Print.

A discussion of Doyle’s Sherlock Holmes stories’ history of reception. This paper gives a general overview  of a collection of articles, published by literary journalists in intellectual weeklies, which gave birth to the Sherlockian movement at the end of the 1920s and early 1930s. That historical sequence can be considered as its Golden Age (1927-34).

Amusement, acumen, and the joy to explore literary puzzles were the main components of the early studies on Sherlock Holmes and Dr. Watson. The higher criticism of the Sherlock Holmes stories, scrutinizing every detail of the text with methods borrowed from literary and textual criticism gave birth to a unique and vivid scholarship.

Sources: http://earlysherlockiana.blogspot.com

Printed version in Clausson, N. (ed.), Re-examining Arthur Conan Doyle, Cambridge Scholars Publishing, Newcastle upon Tye, 2021, pp. 141-161.

You really do, don't you?" Sherlock's voice was quiet, not a whisper but more like he was talking to himself than to John, "Even after everything. You still… believe in me." -from "I Believe in Sherlock Holmes," a Sherlockian fanfic by Cennis I was on my way to a job talk, weaving through the crowd of students that poured out from the corridors leading to the lecture hall, when my eye caught a flash of that unmistakable silhouette: the turned up collar, the distinct deerstalking cap that could only belong to the immortal detective. The crowd continued to mill around me, forgotten, as I paused to get a better look. It was a flyer announcing "I Believe in Sherlock Holmes" in bold block-type. Strips of paper bearing the same intriguing phrase dangled enticingly from the bottom of the flyer. I grabbed one and placing it in my pocket could not shake the thrilling feeling that a game was afoot.

Une étude sur les "Études sur la Littérature de Sherlock Holmes" (1912) de Ronald Knox en deux parties:

1) Examen du jeu d’esprit littéraire produit par Knox, mêlant fiction et réalité, dont on montre qu'il est autorisé par le texte même de Doyle ;

2) Knox utilise les ressources et les débats de la critique littéraire et philologique, qui lui sont contemporains, en les travestissant et en donnant ainsi de la dignité à des récits qui ont toujours été considérés comme de la pure littérature d’évasion.

Nous montrons que l’interprétation du texte de Knox proposée depuis des décénnies-comme étant une satire de la critique biblique– n’a pas de fondement sérieux et qu’il faut se tourner vers les études shakespeariennes et homériques afin d’expliquer l’aspect satirique et humoristique de ses "Études sur la Littérature de Sherlock Holmes".
http://www.diogenes-club.com/studies.htm

Comme tous les hors série de Marginalia publiés jusqu'ici, cette compilation des écrits sur Conan Doyle et Sherlock Holmes est une bibliographie de base où, je l'espère, on retrouvera l'essentiel de ce qui a été écrit sur ce que les mordus et les spécialistes appellent au mieux "le Canon" ou au pire les "Écritures saintes" (Ce que je trouve excessif...). Un très grand nombre de ces "études" sont des brochures, des pamphlets, souvent publiés à compte d'auteur et qui dans certains cas, ne comptent que quelques pages. Introuvables, ils peuplent les rêves les plus fous des collectionneurs et des maniaques. Pour des raisons évidentes de longueur, j'ai omis nombre d'écrits mineurs ou triviaux, les livres de jeux, de mots croisés, de recettes gastronomiques (à une exception près), etc... Tout comme le roman policier a ses textes dits "patristiques", le corpus sherlockien a ses textes "canoniques. , des classiques, des incontournables, des textes qui ont marqué l'histoire. Je les ai indiqués avec une note spéciale en couleur. Il existe de nombreuses bibliographies sherlockoises et sherlockiennes. Elles pullulent sur internet, mais, vérification faite, elles sont souvent fragmentées, dispersées sur de nombreux sites et, exception faite du monumental opus de De Waal (consultable en ligne, mais qui ne couvre pas non plus ces dernières années) elles sont rarement multilingues. Ce hors série double vous propose donc une biblio up to date, partiellement annotée (les textes sont des quatrièmes de couverture, des notes d'éditeur, etc) des écrits sur Conan Doyle et son célèbre détective. Cette bibliographie (publiée en deux hors série) est divisée en quatre parties: 1. Les ouvrages de référence (bibliographies, chronologies, etc), 2. Les études sur Conan Doyle (biographies, correspondance), 3. Les études sherlockiennes, et 4. Les ouvrages qui s'intéressent à Sherlock Holmes et/ou Conan Doyle dans les médias (cinéma, télévision, théâtre, radio). Sherlock Holmes 1 contient les parties 1, 2 et 3 (de A à G) et Sherlock Holmes 2, contient les parties 3 (H à Z) et 4. Cette contribution aux études sherlockiennes est dédiée à René Paul, webmestre émérite, avec remerciements.

Sherlock's season four came and went, solving the mystery of the final Holmes sibling. But was it clever or hackneyed? Which classic cases did it flip? And for that matter what about the Victorian episode The Abominable Bride? Come share your loves and hates and discover all the homages, references, and deeper literary significance. Where is Sherlock going? And do we approve?  (Presented at Clockwork Alchemy,  May 26, 2016, San Jose, CA)

The BBC’s Sherlock has undoubtedly had a powerful impact on its fans, who transform what is already an adaptation of Arthur Conan Doyle’s literature into fanart and fanfiction. Although this high level of fan involvement is unprecedented in the age of the Internet, it is far from new. Since as early as the beginning of the twentieth century, scholars have written about the “Sherlockian game,” describing fans’ attempts to resolve the missing pieces of Conan Doyle’s literature by pretending that the Sherlock Holmes characters were actually real individuals. This paper will draw upon early essays on the “Sherlockian game,” ranging from the more obscure Arthur Bartlett Maurice and Frank Sidgwick, who introduced the concept in 1902, to the theorist who popularized the concept in the UK in 1911, Ronald Knox, and the one who brought it to America, Christopher Morley. However, since most of the scholarship on the Sherlock canon and the BBC’s Sherlock concentrates on the audience’s reception and artistic contributions to the series, my paper will shift the focus to how the show itself participates in promoting its fan culture. Sherlock’s writers, Steven Moffatt and Mark Gatiss, are hyper-aware of the fan culture that surrounds their show. In a 2013 BAFTA interview, Moffatt comments on the “Johnlock ship,” suggesting that it is mostly an object of the fans’ projection and imagination. However, Moffatt and Gatiss are long-term fans of the Sherlock Holmes franchise themselves, referring to their adaptation as a work of “fan-fiction” in its own right. Their show both explicitly refers to and playfully denies any romantic relationship between Sherlock and Watson. The writers even insert a character into the series that represents a contemporary fangirl. Furthermore, the series displays metafictional qualities as Watson constantly blurs the boundaries between the show and its audience with his refrain, “people might talk.” These not-so-subtle hints have led Sherlock fans to compile video evidence for the show’s perpetuation of homoerotic relationships, or as Tumblr users call it, “ships.” This paper will use Wimsatt Jr. and Beardsley’s theory of “intentional fallacy” to suggest a critical approach towards the denial that Moffatt and Gatiss display about the show’s participation in feeding its fandom’s desires for homoeroticism. Conversely, I will argue that the BBC’s Sherlock may be read as a text that encourages its fans to see the characters in romantic relationships with its explicit references to fan culture and the fans’ interests in homoeroticism. Following Walter Benjamin’s notion of an artwork’s “aura,” I will argue that the BBC’s Sherlock is aware of itself as an inauthentic adaptation and uses this self-awareness to market itself towards its particular fan culture. Thus, my paper will ultimately focus on the BBC’s Sherlock’s metafictional awareness of itself as situated within a larger context of the Sherlock canon, including Conan Doyle’s original literary texts, their numerous adaptations, and the vibrant fan culture that begun as early as the Sherlock publications and has flourished with the advent of the internet.

Sherlock Holmes zählt seit jeher zu den am meisten beachteten Detektiven der Kriminalliteratur und hat die Entstehung zahlreicher Pastiches angeregt, von der Hommage bis zur Parodie, von Büchern und Kurzgeschichten über Theaterfassungen und Hörspielen bis zu Filmen.
Diese Arbeit befasst sich neben der literarischen Vorlage des Sherlock Holmes Kanons von Arthur Conan Doyle mit der Fernsehserie der BBC „Sherlock“ von Steven Moffat und Mark Gatiss, die die Handlung entschlossen in das 21. Jahrhundert versetzten, aber dennoch ein größtmögliches Maß an Treue dem Kanon gegenüber wahrten.
Speziell wird hier die Gender-Thematik betrachtet: Wie, in welcher Hinsicht und in welchem Ausmaß wurden die weiblichen Figuren die an das neue Zeitalter angepasst, und inwiefern hat sich das Verhalten des Detektivs ihnen gegenüber verändert?

El año 1878 me gradué de doctor en Medicina por la Universidad de Londres, y a continuación pasé a Netley con objeto de cumplir el curso que es obligatorio para ser médico cirujano en el Ejército. Una vez realizados esos estudios, fui a su debido tiempo agregado, en calidad de médico cirujano ayudante, al 5.°d e Fusileros de Northumberland. Este regimiento se hallaba en aquel entonces de guarnición en la India y, antes que yo pudiera incorporarme al mismo, estalló la segunda guerra del Afganistán. Al desembarcar en Bombay. me enteré de que mi unidad había cruzado los desfiladeros de la frontera y se había adentrado profundamente en el país enemigo. Yo, sin embargo, junto con otros muchos oficiales que se encontraban en situación idéntica a la mía, seguí viaje, logrando llegar sin percances a Candahar, donde encontré a mi regimiento y donde me incorporé en el acto a mi nuevo servicio. Aquella campaña proporcionó honores y ascensos a muchos, pero a mí sólo me acarreó desgracias e infortunios. Fui separado de mi brigada para agregarme a las tropas del Berkshire, con las que me hallaba sirviendo cuando la batalla desdichada de Malwand. Fui herido allí por una bala explosiva que me destrozó el hueso, rozando la arteria, del subclavio. Habría caído en manos de los ghazis asesinos, de no haber sido por el valor y la lealtad de Murray, mi ordenanza, que me atravesó, lo mismo que un bulto, encima de un caballo de los de la impedimenta y consiguió llevarme sin otro percance hasta las líneas británicas. Agotado por el dolor y debilitado a consecuencia de las muchas fatigas soportadas, me trasladaron en un gran convoy de heridos al hospital de base, establecido en Peshawur. Me restablecí en ese lugar hasta el punto de que ya podía pasear por las salas, e incluso salir a tomar un poco el sol en la terraza, cuando caí enfermo de ese flagelo de nuestras posesiones de la India: el tifus. Durante meses se temió por mi vida, y cuando, por fin, reaccioné y entré en la convalecencia, había quedado en tal estado de debilidad y de extenuación, que el consejo médico dictaminó que debía ser enviado a Inglaterra sin perder un solo día. En consecuencia, fui embarcado en el transporte militar Orontes, y un mes después tomaba tierra en el muelle de Portsmouth, convertido en una irremediable ruina física, pero disponiendo de un permiso otorgado por un Gobierno paternal para que me esforzase por reponerme durante el período de nueve meses que se me otorgaba. Yo no tenía en Inglaterra parientes ni allegados. Estaba, pues, tan libre como el aire o tan libre como un hombre puede serlo con un ingreso diario de once chelines y seis peniques. Como es natural, en una situación como esa, gravité hacia Londres, gran sumidero al que se ven arrastrados de manera irresistible todos cuantos atraviesan una época de descanso y ociosidad Me alojé durante algún tiempo en un buen hotel del Strand, llevando una vida incómoda y falta de finalidad y gastándome mi dinero con mucha mayor esplendidez de lo que hubiera debido. La situación de mis finanzas se hizo tan alarmante que no tardé en comprender que, si no quería yerme en la necesidad de tener que abandonar la gran ciudad y de llevar una vida rústica en el campo, me era preciso alterar por completo mi género de vida. Opté por esto ultimo, y empecé por tomar la resolución de abandonar el hotel e instalarme en una habitación de menores pretensiones y más barata. Me hallaba, el día mismo en que llegué a semejante conclusión, en pie en el bar Criterios, cuando me dieron unos golpecitos en el hombro; me volví, encontrándome con que se trataba del joven Stamford, que había trabajado a mis órdenes en el Barts (1) como practicante. Para un hombre que lleva una vida solitaria, resulta por demás grato ver una cara amiga entre la inmensa y extraña multitud de Londres.

Between 1983 and 2001 an American lawyer named David Hammer, a self-confessed fan of Arthur Conan Doyle’s Sherlock Holmes stories, wrote a series of ‘Sherlockian’ travel guides to England. Hammer’s series provides a case study of the role that ordinary people, not authors or tourism promoters, have played in the production of heritage as a tourist commodity in the late-twentieth and early-twenty-first centuries. I argue here that David Hammer used his travel guides as a means of creating Sherlock Holmes’s England as a material manifestation of this idea of Holmes as heritage: one that could and should be visited by Sherlockian reader-tourists. He used pieces of England’s Holmes-related past – places from Doyle’s life, locations from the Sherlock Holmes stories, and even sites from his own past – to create a new story of the past for Sherlockians: one that made tourism into a necessary part of the Sherlockian reader’s experience.

This article offers a preliminary exploration of the ironical paratexts accompanying published articles and books of Sherlockian Scholarship.  This beloved genre, a specialty of Sherlockian enthusiasts, features playful expository texts that investigate the "real" world of Sherlock Holmes through the nonfictional prose of Doctor Watson.  From Dorothy L. Sayers to William S. Baring-Gould, Sherlockian authors slyly winked at readers through their ludic paratexts including introductions, footnotes, and graphics.

In 1929, the BBC Radio broadcast "Miniature Biographies," a quirky series of six installments that was rooted in the experimental hybrids of fact and fiction associated with the New Biography.  Not only did this series include contributions by modern biographers Virginia Woolf and Harold Nicolson, it also featured another member of the Bloomsbury Group, literary critic Desmond MacCarthy, who focused his essay on Dr. John Watson.  MacCarthy was a key figure in developing a writing style that Sherlock Holmes enthusiasts later adopted as "The Game" or "Scholarship."  These expository investigations treat Holmes and Watson as actual people rather than fictional characters.  As a tribute to MacCarthy, I have adopted this style in my paper.  MacCarthy's radio essay "Dr. Watson" demonstrates that modern biography was a vibrant topic within the popular culture of the late 1920s.  This paper also explores connections between Sherlockian authors and modernist publications, revealing an intriguing intersection between modernist writing and the Sherlockian Game.

When Arthur Conan Doyle resurrected Sherlock Holmes in "The Adventure of the Empty House" (1903), the detective was instantly confronted with "the most cunning and dangerous criminal in London" -Colonel Sebastian Moran (Doyle 801). Introducing such a serious adversary, the right hand of the late Professor Moriarty, served to both grip the readers' interest and re-establish the detective's invincibility. Even though Holmes managed to expose Moriarty's gang, his victory over the "Napoleon of crime" (Doyle 719) was not complete -the final duel was physical and both men were presumed dead; as it turned out, only the latter perished in the Reichenbach Falls. While in nearly all the adaptations the Professor's counterparts outgrow the character presented in the source texts, Moran's role has been diminishing, culminating in the neo-Victorian productions. The term neo-Victorian is used here to denote works that are "self-consciously engaged with the act of (re)interpretation, (re)discovery and (re)vision concerning the Victorians" (Heilmann and Llewellyn 4, original emphasis), and the analysed titles reinterpret the Holmesian canon: Guy Ritchie's Sherlock Holmes films (2009 and 2011) retain Victorian aesthetics but deliver a fast-paced and action-packed version of the detective's adventures; the CBS's Elementary (2012-) and the BBC's Sherlock (2010-) rediscover the sleuth's modernity and transport him into the twenty-first-century reality. Their revisions of Doyle's characters, adjusted to modern audiences' needs and expectations, result in quite a few alterations and while certain characters gain in importance, others have to lose significance.

« Le récit est par nature incomplet. Aucun auteur ne dit absolument tout sur la situation qu'il décrit. Tout récit pose un nombre indéterminé de pré-supposés, et c'est aux lecteurs de les compléter. Suivre une histoire consiste en partie à compléter ce que le narrateur ne dit pas. S'il s'agit de Sherlock Holmes, on va présupposer que c'est un homme, et non un androïde, même si Conan Doyle ne le précise jamais. » Noël Carroll (1996)

https://www.sshf.com/articles.php?id=88

Depuis sa première apparition sur papier jusqu'à ce jour, le personnage de Sherlock Holmes a toujours su captiver lecteurs et (télé)spec-tateurs. On ne compte plus les nombreuses adaptations filmiques qui constituent une partie du matériel dérivé des écrits de Conan Doyle pu-bliés entre 1887 et 1930. Alors que deux séries se sont dernièrement ins-pirées de l'oeuvre de l'écrivain, cette résurgence du héros sur nos écrans semble produire un nouvel engouement pour le « great detective », plus d'un siècle après sa création. Dans un contexte où les nouvelles technologies de communication ont un impact important sur les pratiques de réception, on constate que le fan est largement représenté dans la série britannique "Sherlock" (BBC). S'inspirant de l'important succès littéraire des textes originaux, et forts des réactions dithyrambiques du public après la diffusion des premiers épisodes de la série, ses créateurs Mark Gatiss et Steven Moffat décident d'inclure dans leur récit ces communautés qui ont marqué l'évolution romanesque des aventures du détective. Cette re-présentation du fan interpelle particulièrement si l'on connaît la légende tenace autour de l'existence réelle de Sherlock Holmes. Nous verrons que la porosité de la frontière entre réalité et fiction concerne également le personnage romanesque dont l'ambiguïté est sciemment cultivée. L'intégration de cet aspect à la diégèse et son impact hors de celle-ci nous amènera à analyser certaines séquences mais aussi à rendre compte des moyens utilisés par la production pour entretenir ces limites flottantes.  À l'aune du numérique et des nouvelles technologies, les créateurs de séries télévisées doivent inévitablement composer avec la masse de sites, blogs, forums et autres points de rencontre virtuels hébergés sur le Web. De nouvelles activités (telles que les fanfictions, héritières des fanzines) apparaissent alors, réunissant sur la Toile les fans d'un même univers.

Sherlock Holmes has had a long afterlife as a character of public use. In 2013, in America, this fact was given legal authority by the American courts. In this paper, I consider the role played by representations of geographical mobility in fan fictions about Sherlock Holmes in distancing the character from his Canonical origins and 'commoning' him.

I use Brewer's theory of 'imaginative expansion' and his metaphor of the 'textual commons' to identify the ways in which fans have 'commoned' Holmes - through building on Doyle's story's 'rough edges' and contributing to the 'felt iterability' of Holmes, to adapting the 'felt (im)materiality' of the character by imagining him as a real person.

I also raise the question why Sherlockian fan fictions always seem to imagine Holmes existing in the real world. I briefly consider evidence that not all readers have imagined the character this way and throw out the question why this might be.

Three recent television and film adaptations testify to the continuing popularity of Arthur Conan Doyle’s consulting detective Sherlock Holmes. The fast-paced novella that introduces detective duo Holmes and Watson, A Study in Scarlet involves some astonishing elements, and not just in the plot. With just a little probing, collegiate readers may wonder whether Conan Doyle plagiarized his most famous character, invented forensic science, despised Mormons, and accidentally wrote a Western.

The novel was adapted as A Study in Pink, the first episode of the BBC’s series Sherlock created by Steven Moffat and Mark Gatiss. Their vision of Holmes set in present-day London will thrill students and also leave them wondering what happened to the second half of the novel. Beyond the predictable (yet exciting) classroom discussion topic of adaptation, A Study in Scarlet presents a rich context for research and discussion by challenging students’ modern-day notions of genre, historical truth, political correctness, and academic credibility. Although this novel is well-suited for high-level secondary or freshman composition classes, advanced students of English literature will find much to explore. This book analysis contains a summary of A Study in Scarlet with explication of its literary features and associated pedagogical issues for the freshman composition class. Topics for more advanced students are also identified. Instructors can make a free virtual casebook of ancillary readings with the Internet links provided. 

Keywords: college composition, first-year writing, freshman composition, Arthur Conan Doyle, Sherlock Holmes, A Study in Scarlet, detective fiction, adaptation, pseudo-scholarship, fanfiction

Manchester: Manchester UP, 2022. Print.

Mapping Arthur Conan Doyle's Modernities: 1887-1929 brings together original contributions by leading scholars Ian Duncan, Owen Dudley Edwards, Michael Saler, Jeremy Tambling, Conan Doyle biographers Jon Lellenberg and Daniel Stashower, and early career academics. Early definitions of modernity (usually proffered by social scientists) were teleological, positing it as progressive, secular, and rational. Others (often humanists) have distinguished 'modernism,' with its faith in essences, foundations, and 'metanarratives' in general, from 'postmodernism,' with its rejection of essentialist metanarratives and embrace of metafictions and privileging of the discursive turn (see, for instance, Matei Călinescu, who identifies modernity as a symptom of five faces: modernity, avant-garde, decadence, kitsch, and postmodernism). Conan Doyle's work and its reception clearly challenges both received models. His oeuvre embraces the imagination as well as reason, spirituality and secularity, the presence of the past in the future—all undermining the teleological definition. His work, and that of the mass culture of the fin de siècle in general, was frequently ironic and metafictional, challenging the modernist/postmodernist divide. The analyses of Conan Doyle's works and their reception in this volume present a far more complex picture of modernity than neater models allow.

This anthology illustrates the underlying links between two popular modern genres: detective fiction and science fiction. The fact that these genres are central to modern popular culture expresses something specific about the nature of modernity. By highlighting the commonalities between the two genres in Conan Doyle's work (especially the commingling of reason and the imagination), we will gain a more nuanced understanding of its complexities. Underscoring fundamental features of modernism and modernity, while showing how they combine the Romantic imagination with Enlightenment reason, this anthology will appeal to literature and mass culture students, scholars, enthusiasts, and beyond.

Contents:
Tom Ue, Introduction: Narrative Twists and Ethical Turns in The Hound of the Baskervilles

1. Narration, Form, and Literariness
Sarah Weaver, 'How Smart Is Watson? or, The Role of the Sidekick'
Michael Mayo, '"Every Possible Combination of Events May Be Expected": The Epistemology of Sherlock Holmes'
Tom Dillon, '"No Room for Romance": Arthur Conan Doyle’s Challenger Novels and the Development of Science Fiction'
David Beck, '"Who Will Say What Is Possible In Such A Country?" Lord John Roxton—Psychic Investigator in The Land of Mist'
Ian Duncan, 'Blank Spaces in the Map: Conan Doyle's Poetics of Extinction'

2. Print and Material Contexts
Jon Lellenberg and Daniel Stashower, 'Arthur Conan Doyle, Nineteenth Century Man'
Richard Burnip, '"It Is, In My Opinion, the End of the World": Conan Doyle and The Strand Magazine Approach the Great War'
Owen Dudley Edwards, 'No Holmes to Go to'

3. Faith and Identities
Luke Seaber, '"Many Acquaintances, and Those in the Most Different Classes of Society": Sherlock Holmes as Social Explorer'
Charlotte Charteris, '"British Prejudice in all its Queer Manifestations": Sherlock Holmes, Spy Fiction and the Appeal of the Queer'
Jonathan Elukin, 'Do Jews and Judaism Matter in the Holmes Canon?'
Jeremy Tambling, 'Doyle, Freud, and Professor Challenger: Civilization and its Missing Links'
Michael Saler, 'From Ironic Belief to Certain Knowledge: Challenger as Conan Doyle's Doppelganger'

Current work on conceptual integration and literary texts often features detailed analysis of a single reading of a text in terms of the conceptual integration networks involved in constructing that interpretation. However, a single linguistic form can inspire manifold readings. This article takes a historical view of the conceptual blends involved in a range of different literary interpretations generated by different groups of readers of a single set of texts, the Sherlock Holmes detective stories by Arthur Conan Doyle. First, it examines the case of the numerous and diverse historical readers who took these fictional texts to be non-fiction, and how their conceptions mirror and diverge from the ways readers become immersed in texts they know to be fiction. This is followed by an analysis of the early ‘Sherlockian’ essays, criticism operating under the pretense of a historical Holmes and a historical Watson who recorded his adventures with varying accuracy. In the Sherlockian trad...

This article takes a historical view of the conceptual blends involved in a range of different literary interpretations generated by different groups of readers of a single set of texts, the Sherlock Holmes detective stories by Arthur Conan Doyle. First, it examines the case of the numerous and diverse historical readers who took these fictional texts to be non-fiction, and how their conceptions mirror and diverge from the ways readers become immersed in texts they know to be fiction. This is followed by an analysis of the early ‘Sherlockian’ essays, criticism operating under the pretense of a historical Holmes and a historical Watson who recorded his adventures with varying accuracy. In the Sherlockian tradition, something very like the naïve believer stance independently emerges from this playful and parodic novel blend. The history of this stance among its practitioners is then shown to be an example of the routinization of a blend within a discourse community. These complex discourse blends turn out to have much the same capacity for entrenchment and semantic change as any grammatical construction.

This talk looks at the presence, influence and purpose of animals in popular detective fiction, ranging from some of its earliest incarnations in Edgar Allan Poe’s short ‘Dupin’ stories of the 1840s, through to the infamous Sherlock Holmes stories of the late Victorian era, right up to the ‘Golden Age’ of detective fiction in the early twentieth century. It explores the sheer diversity of animals’ representation in the genre, and discusses some of the impacts animals have had on its development. It also looks at the conceptualisation of the detective themselves as somehow animalistic, whereby sleuths are often depicted as ‘stalking’ their quarry or following a scent in the manner of a bloodhound, and juxtaposes this idea against the common perception of detectives as distanced, calm, rational and observant.

En 1990, le service Radio Fiction de la RTBF lançait un concours d'écriture basé sur la nouvelle policière et la nouvelle noire. En quatre ans, 1062 nouvelles sont passées entre les mains du jury. Ce jury, présidé depuis sa création par André-Paul Duchâteau, s'est réuni huit fois. Il a lu les textes envoyés par plus de huit cents auteurs, il a sélectionné soixante nouvelles qui ont été enregistrées par dix-neuf comédiens et diffusées sur Radio IJne d'abotd, sur La Première ensuite pendant plus de neuf cents minutes. De ces nouvelles, quarante-huit ont été publiées et vingt-quatre sont parues dans la presse périodique. Enfin, une nouvelle a été éditée... dans un manuel de français à l'usage des lycéens norvégiens !