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Paradoxes and Their Fascination in the Sherlock Holmes Stories

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Paradoxes and Their Fascination in the Sherlock Holmes Stories LEOPOLD-FRANZENS-UNIVERSITÄT INNSBRUCK Philologisch-Kulturwissenschaftliche Fakultät Institut für Anglistik Doyle as the Prince of Paradox? Paradoxes and Their Fascination in the Sherlock Holmes Stories Diplomarbeit zur Erlangung des akademischen Grades einer Magistra der Philosophie (Mag.a phil.) eingereicht von Sabrina Innerhofer bei Univ.-Prof. Dr. Sibylle Baumbach, MA Innsbruck im März 2018 Plagiarism Disclaimer I hereby declare that this diploma thesis is my own and autonomous work. All sources and aids used have been indicated as such. All texts either quoted directly or paraphrased have been indicated by in-text citations. Full bibliographic details are given in the bibliography, which also contains internet sources including URL and access date. This work has not been submitted to any other examination authority before. March 2018 Date Signature Thank you ... ... to Prof. Sybille Baumbach for her helpful suggestions and for her valuable feedback that were of great support to me especially in the early stage of writing this thesis but also later on. ... to my family for their emotional as well as financial support during my whole studies. Without my parents, my grandparents, and my brother, it would never have been possible to write this thesis. Therefore, this thesis is dedicated to them. ... to my partner Christian for his love and for cheering me up during difficult times. ... to my friends, especially to Isabel and Theresa, who discussed several chapters of this thesis with me and gave very useful advice. Table of Contents 1 Introduction ....................................................................................................................... 1 2 State of the Art .................................................................................................................. 3 3 Paradox and Victorian Norms and Values ..................................................................... 6 3.1 Conceptualising Paradox .......................................................................................... 6 3.2 The Paradoxical Atmosphere during the Victorian Age ..................................... 10 3.3 The Relationship between Cultural Norms and Values and Literature ............. 16 4 Doyle as the Prince of Paradox? .................................................................................... 19 4.1 Logical Paradoxes in Sherlock Holmes .................................................................. 19 4.1.1 Crime-Related Logical Paradoxes ...................................................................... 19 4.1.2 Sherlock Holmes’s Superiority over Dr Watson ................................................ 25 4.1.3 Sherlock Holmes’s Relationship to Scotland Yard ............................................ 36 4.2 Sherlock Holmes – A Paradoxical Character ....................................................... 49 4.2.1 A Victorian Gentleman or a Criminal? .............................................................. 50 4.2.2 A Man, a Machine, or an Animal? ..................................................................... 60 4.3 Sherlock Holmes – The Object of Fascination ...................................................... 67 4.3.1 Literary Fascination ............................................................................................ 67 4.3.2 The Fascination with Sherlock Holmes .............................................................. 68 4.3.3 The Fascination with the Paradoxes of Sherlock Holmes .................................. 72 5 Conclusion ....................................................................................................................... 80 6 Sherlock Holmes, Its Paradoxes, and Their Fascination in the EFL Classroom ....... 83 6.1 Teaching Literature in EFL Classrooms ............................................................... 83 6.2 Proposed Lessons ..................................................................................................... 85 6.3 Teaching Materials .................................................................................................. 91 7 Works Cited ..................................................................................................................... 95 1 Introduction Ever since Arthur Conan Doyle published his first Sherlock Holmes story featuring Sherlock Holmes and Dr John Watson as private detective and assistant operating from London’s 221B Baker Street, people all around the world have been fascinated by them and their perilous adventures. No detective fiction series before or after the publication of Sherlock Holmes – be it Edgar Allen Poe’s tales about C. Auguste Dupin or Agatha Christie’s Hercule Poirot – received more public attention (cf. Clausen 105; 123). According to Frank D. McConnell, “Doyle created a myth – the myth of the private detective – that, after [more than] a century of mutations and revisions, still retains its fascination for us and for our culture” (174). The reasons for Doyle’s great success are manifold; however, one major impact for his triumph must be dedicated to paradoxes, which are constantly presented and reflected upon within the Sherlock Holmes novellas and short stories. It is not by chance that Doyle took up the theme of paradox; in fact, the Victorian age but especially the Fin de Siècle was a time in which people were faced with a paradoxical atmosphere. Their fear of letting go the old age was opposed to their faith into what was to come in the modern era. This paradoxical stance was justifiable: although the industrial revolution involved prosperity and progress, the end of the 19th century entailed disruption. Economic, technological, and social changes did not only improve the situation of many Victorian people; they also included serious problems for others. In his Sherlock Holmes narratives, Doyle tried to digest this paradoxical atmosphere during the Fin de Siècle by introducing various paradoxes on different levels. This thesis explores and analyses the paradoxes that are dealt with within A Study in Scarlet, The Sign of the Four, “A Scandal in Bohemia”, “A Case of Identity”, “The Man with the Twisted Lip”, “The Blue Carbuncle”, and “The Speckled Band”, with particular focus on logical incongruities and Holmes’s paradoxical character. Furthermore, it aims at answering the question of whether the paradoxes in and of Sherlock Holmes have led to the stories’ and the character’s success. A Study in Scarlet and The Sign of the Four are the first two novellas within the Sherlock Holmes canon; they were chosen for the analysis because they offer important insights into the personality of Holmes. The short stories were selected because they were written at the heyday of the Fin de Siècle and include paradoxical features particularly worth investigating. At some points, however, it will be necessary to refer to other 1 novellas or short stories of the Sherlock Holmes canon to support or expand certain arguments. Before taking a closer look at the paradoxes within the aforementioned novellas and short stories, I will provide information about paradoxes in literature and I will give a cultural and historical overview about the Victorian era and its paradoxical features. Moreover, I will expand on the relationship between cultural and historical norms and values and literature in order to allow a better understanding of the following analyses. Following this theoretical framework, I will elaborate on whether Doyle can be considered a prince of paradox and whether it is his use of paradoxes that has mainly led to the readers’ fascination with Sherlock Holmes. This will be done by providing close readings of the narratives and analysing selected logical and metaphysical paradoxes within them. In respect of logical paradoxes, I will focus on crime-related logical paradoxes including their most prominent type, i.e. the locked-room mystery. Moreover, I will argue that Holmes’s superiority over Watson and Holmes’s relationship to Scotland Yard constitute further logical paradoxes within the Sherlock Holmes canon. With regards to metaphysical paradoxes, I will concentrate on Holmes’s paradoxical character, discussing the discrepancy between Holmes being a gentleman as well as a criminal and Holmes uniting the trinity of human, mechanical, and animalistic features. In a concluding chapter, I will look upon all these paradoxes in the context of fascination and I will contend that, among other reasons, they have led to the Sherlock Holmes stories’ and their main character’s success. In the final part of this thesis, I will develop an approach on how to implement the topic of paradoxes and their fascination in Sherlock Holmes in an English as a Foreign Language (EFL) classroom. I will discuss the topic’s relevance for EFL students and provide a detailed lesson plan which will be based on the Common European Framework of Reference for Languages (CEFR) and the Austrian curriculum for English. This thesis aims at illustrating that in the face of the cultural and historical context of the Victorian age, the theme of the paradox is presented and reflected upon in Doyle’s Sherlock Holmes novellas and short stories in various ways. Furthermore, the thesis aims at showing that these paradoxes have substantially contributed to the narratives’ and the main character’s success. 2 2 State of the Art Even though many scholars have focused on different aspects of the Sherlock Holmes stories, little or no research has been carried out with regards to the topic
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