Influences of the Scottish Enlightenment in the Sherlock Holmes Stories of Sir Arthur Conan Doyle

Georgia State University ScholarWorks @ Georgia State University English Dissertations Department of English 5-10-2017 Influences of the Scottish Enlightenment in the Sherlock Holmes Stories of Sir Arthur Conan Doyle Helen Cauley Georgia State Follow this and additional works at: https://scholarworks.gsu.edu/english_diss Recommended Citation Cauley, Helen, "Influences of the Scottish Enlightenment in the Sherlock Holmes Stories of Sir Arthur Conan Doyle." Dissertation, Georgia State University, 2017. https://scholarworks.gsu.edu/english_diss/179 This Dissertation is brought to you for free and open access by the Department of English at ScholarWorks @ Georgia State University. It has been accepted for inclusion in English Dissertations by an authorized administrator of ScholarWorks @ Georgia State University. For more information, please contact [email protected]. INFLUENCES OF THE SCOTTISH ENLIGHTENMENT IN THE SHERLOCK HOLMES STORIES OF SIR ARTHUR CONAN DOYLE by HELEN M. CAULEY Under the Direction of Lynée Gaillet, Ph.D. ABSTRACT Scotland in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries produced some of the most renowned thinkers and scholars whose works are still widely read and admired. This cadre of enlightened philosophers established a framework for critical thinking and reasoning, as well as a foundation for composition studies. One of the literary geniuses whose work drew on this expertise was Arthur Conan Doyle, best known for giving the world Sherlock Holmes in the late 1880s. But Doyle’s contributions are more than mere stories; the Edinburgh native endowed his character with the philosophy he himself gleaned growing up in a culture that prized reasoning, critical thinking, elocution, and elegant composition. This dissertation explores the influences Doyle drew from the great minds of the Scottish Enlightenment and connects them to the character of Sherlock Holmes. In addition, it proposes that Holmes’s philosophy establishes a basis for composition classes, where students are introduced to the concepts of critical thinking, reasoning, and logic, and the key role these concepts play in argumentative writing. INDEX WORDS: Scottish Enlightenment, Sherlock Holmes, Doyle, detective, philosophy, composition INFLUENCES OF THE SCOTTISH ENLIGHTENMENT IN THE SHERLOCK HOLMES STORIES OF SIR ARTHUR CONAN DOYLE by HELEN M. CAULEY A Dissertation Submitted in Partial Fulfillment of the Requirements for the Degree of Doctor of Philosophy in the College of Arts and Sciences Georgia State University 2017 Copyright by Helen M. Cauley 2017 INFLUENCES OF THE SCOTTISH ENLIGHTENMENT IN THE SHERLOCK HOLMES Commented [WU1]: This should look identical to the title on your abstract page—double space and all caps. STORIES OF SIR ARTHUR CONAN DOYLE by HELEN M. CAULEY Commented [WU2]: All caps Committee Chair: Lynée Gaillet Commented [WU3]: Only the first and last name of your committee members should be listed here. Please do not include their titles. In other words, do not list “Dr.” or “Ph.D.” here. Committee: Ashley Holmes Malinda Snow Electronic Version Approved: Office of Graduate Studies College of Arts and Sciences Georgia State University May 2017 Commented [WU4]: The date here must be the month and year of your graduation—not the month and year of your submission. iv DEDICATION With the utmost love and gratitude to E and T, whose accomplishments and dedication to making the world a better place inspire and humble me. v ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS This work is a lifetime in the making, though I did not realize that fact until its completion. In the perfect lens of hindsight, I now see that its roots extend back to the Enlightenment and the dedication to education that motivated and inspired my Scottish ancestors. Those influences, passed through generations of McNeills, were embodied in my mother whose own life was committed to self-improvement and the education of her five children. I hope I have passed on a measure of the encouragement she provided. Encouragement for this eight-year journey also came in the form of moral and sometimes financial support from my brothers John and Joseph, and sisters Alice and Marian. And no words can sufficiently express my gratitude to Ellen and Tom, my two children, who preceded me to Georgia State and then into the world of higher education, and whose advice and sometimes purely technical assistance proved invaluable. Go Panthers! The debt I owe to the academic community that nurtured and guided me is enormous. Saying “thank you” seems an inadequate acknowledgement for the advice and steady direction you have provided. But given the constraints of this format, those words will have to suffice to honor the contributions of Dr. Mary Lou Odom, whose consistently warm encouragement smoothed my re-entry into academia after thirty-years; Dr. Malinda Snow, whose vast and superb knowledge of the English language I can only hope to master on a partial basis; and Dr. Ashley Holmes, whose sterling advice, always offered with a cheerful disposition, has proved invaluable for this work, as well as my teaching style (and sharing the surname of my fictional hero is an added bonus). Lastly, my deepest appreciation goes to Dr. Lynée Gaillet, first, for believing that this journey into the Scottish Enlightenment was one worth taking, and second, for volunteering to take the trip with me. Thank you for shepherding me through not just this dissertation, but through five of the most memorable years of my life. Your unfailing support, from exactly the right advice for vi any situation to your willingness to answer emails in the middle of the night, is a gold standard for the dedicated educator I aspire to be. (As an homage to the character and his creator, this work is composed in the Baskerville Old Face font.) vii TABLE OF CONTENTS Commented [WU5]: Do not delete the table of contents. This table of contents is already formatted. Instead, you will update your headings in the document and then right click the table of contents ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS ............................................................................................. V and select “update field”. Then, you will select “entire table”. 1 INTRODUCTION .................................................................................................... 1 2 A REVIEW OF RELATED READINGS ............................................................... 10 2.1 Selected journal essays ................................................................................... 21 3 A DOYLE BIOGRAPHY ........................................................................................ 25 3.1 The early years ................................................................................................ 28 3.2 College and university .................................................................................... 32 3.3 The Author as Physician ................................................................................ 36 4 IN HIS OWN WORDS ........................................................................................... 39 4.1 Memories and Adventures ............................................................................. 39 4.2 Through the Magic Door ................................................................................ 46 5 THE SCOTTISH ENLIGHTENMENT: SHERLOCK AS PHILOSOPHER ..... 57 6 INFLUENCES FROM DAVID HUME .................................................................. 71 6.1 Hume and Burton ........................................................................................... 72 6.2 Hume and Chivalry......................................................................................... 78 6.3 Hume and Human Nature .............................................................................. 80 6.4 Ethics and Error ............................................................................................. 86 6.5 Hume and Imagination ................................................................................... 88 6.6 Hume and Doyle .............................................................................................. 92 viii 7 CAMPBELL. BLAIR, AND CARLYLE .............................................................. 94 7.1 George Campbell (1719-1796) ....................................................................... 95 7.2 Hugh Blair (1718-1800) ................................................................................ 106 7.3 Thomas Carlyle (1795-1881) ........................................................................ 111 8 SHERLOCK HOLMES: TEACHER OF RHETORIC AND COMPOSITION .. ................................................................................................................................. 124 8.1 Pop Culture in the Composition Classroom ............................................... 130 8.2 The Case of the Illustrious Scholars ............................................................ 135 9 CONCLUSION ..................................................................................................... 140 REFERENCES ............................................................................................................... 145 APPENDICES ............................................................................................................... 155 Appendix A ................................................................................................................ 155 Appendix B ...............................................................................................................

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