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HOLMES IN THE EMPIRE: POSTCOLONIAL TEXTUAL AUTHORITY, TRANSCULTURAL ADAPTATION, AND CRIME FICTION AS WORLD LITERATURE by Michael Brandon Harris-Peyton A dissertation submitted to the Faculty of the University of Delaware in partial fulfilment of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy in English Summer 2019 Copyright 2019 Michael Brandon Harris-Peyton All Rights Reserved HOLMES IN THE EMPIRE: POSTCOLONIAL TEXTUAL AUTHORITY, TRANSCULTURAL ADAPTATION, AND CRIME FICTION AS WORLD LITERATURE by Michael Brandon Harris-Peyton Approved: __________________________________________________________ John R. Ernest, Ph.D. Chair of the Department of English Approved: __________________________________________________________ John Pelesko, Ph.D. Dean of the College of Arts and Sciences Approved: __________________________________________________________ Douglas J. Doren, Ph.D. Interim Vice Provost for Graduate and Professional Education and Dean of the Graduate College I certify that I have read this dissertation and that in my opinion it meets the academic and professional standard required by the University as a dissertation for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy. Signed: __________________________________________________________ Emily S. Davis, Ph.D. Professor in charge of dissertation I certify that I have read this dissertation and that in my opinion it meets the academic and professional standard required by the University as a dissertation for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy. Signed: __________________________________________________________ Thomas M. Leitch, Ph.D. Professor in charge of dissertation I certify that I have read this dissertation and that in my opinion it meets the academic and professional standard required by the University as a dissertation for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy. Signed: __________________________________________________________ Siobhan Carroll, Ph.D. Member of the dissertation committee I certify that I have read this dissertation and that in my opinion it meets the academic and professional standard required by the University as a dissertation for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy. Signed: __________________________________________________________ Stewart King, Ph.D. External member of the dissertation committee ACKNOWLEDGMENTS I wish to thank my advisors, Emily S. Davis and Thomas Leitch. I am eternally grateful to Emily Davis for her generosity with her time, her capacity to glean the best ideas from a roving discussion, and for pushing me to be a better postcolonialist. For first introducing me to the academic study of crime fiction, genre and adaptations, for supporting my theoretical claims while simultaneously challenging them, and for his limitless capacity to correct punctuation in drafts, I am indebted to Thomas Leitch. I also want to thank my dissertation committee. I thank Siobhan Carroll for patiently reading several very rough drafts, encouraging me to explicitly state my interventions, and reminding me that there is writing beyond the academy. For shepherding spin-off articles related to this project through conferences and publication, and for his patience with international post, I thank Stewart King. I also want to thank the Department of English at the University of Delaware, for funding all the writing time, research trips, and conference travel that fueled this project. I reserve a particular thank-you to the department chair, John Ernest, for patiently listening to a young graduate student who, years ago, came to his office to see what he thought of this project and its punny title. There are countless others to thank: Gabriella Ibieta, Abioseh Porter, Jennifer Yusin, and Stacey Ake, who collectively set me on the path of postcolonial genre critique as an undergraduate at Drexel University. My friends varied acts of emotional and moral iv support. My parents and in-laws, for believing in the project, and in me. My students, who reminded me to take my own writing advice. Fellow crime fiction enthusiasts, like Andrew Pepper, Patrick Deer, Louise Nilsson, and Jesper Gulddal, who engaged with this project’s ideas and made academic conferences less intimidating. It takes a village to raise a dissertation. For first sharing with me a pencil-annotated English translation of Satyajit Ray’s Feluda mysteries, for tolerating my tendency to do research all night and sleep during the day, and for explaining her husband’s obsession with postcolonial crime fiction to friends and relatives, I especially want to thank my wife, Pujashree Das. v TABLE OF CONTENTS TABLE OF FIGURES ..................................................................................................... viii ABSTRACT ....................................................................................................................... ix Chapter 1. A STUDY IN CRISIS ............................................................................................. 1 1.1 An Unrequired Introduction ........................................................................ 1 1.2 A Case History of Originality ..................................................................... 7 1.3 The Object of Investigation ...................................................................... 19 1.4 Witnesses and Methods............................................................................. 22 1.5 Enter the Detective .................................................................................... 35 1.6 The Plan of Investigation .......................................................................... 42 REFERENCES ..................................................................................................... 48 2. THE SIGN OF THE FORE .................................................................................. 54 2.1 Colonizing the Textual Past ...................................................................... 54 2.2 The Empire Looks Back ........................................................................... 59 2.3 Transatlantic Roads All Lead to Holmes .................................................. 74 2.4 Disinterring Textual Bones ....................................................................... 84 2.5 Neither Kith nor Kin in England ............................................................... 94 REFERENCES ..................................................................................................... 99 3. CASES OF IDENTITY ...................................................................................... 101 3.1 Rehistorizing Detective Fiction .............................................................. 101 3.2 Critical Circulation, Strategic Subordination .......................................... 106 3.3 The Price of Entry: Cheng Xiaoqing’s Authorship ................................. 113 3.4 The Guru and the Indian Holmes: Ray’s Homage .................................. 123 3.5 Signs of Alterity: Huo Sang and Feluda as Uncomfortably Holmesian . 134 3.6 Rehistorization and Its Discontents ........................................................ 148 REFERENCES ................................................................................................... 151 vi 4. THE SPECULED BRANDS .............................................................................. 156 4.1 Local Traditions, Refashioned Genres .................................................... 156 4.2 Tropic Justice, Tropic Adaptation........................................................... 161 4.3 Byomkesh Bakshi: Truth-Seeking Without State Justice ....................... 165 4.4 Bakshi Via Feluda’s Ray ........................................................................ 178 4.5 Feluda: Incidental Justice and States of Exception in Emergency India 186 4.6 Huo Sang: Justice-Seeking Without the Truth........................................ 199 4.7 Reference Versus Reverence .................................................................. 215 REFERENCES ................................................................................................... 218 5. THE FINAL PROBLEM, DEFERRED ............................................................. 221 5.1 Reintegration: Into the Cultural Commons ............................................. 221 5.2 The Curious Case of the Period Revival ................................................. 232 5.3 The Contemporary Reboot Mystery ....................................................... 246 5.4 The Eighty-Seven Percent Solution: On Fandom, Copyright, and Authority ................................................................................................. 261 5.5 Holmes in the Cultural Commons .......................................................... 267 5.6 Coda: World Literatures, Postcolonial Authorship, and Democracy ..... 271 REFERENCES ................................................................................................... 279 vii TABLE OF FIGURES Figure 1: The table of contents as listed in the 1941 edition of Haycraft’s Murder for Pleasure. .......................................................................................................... 79 viii ABSTRACT Scholarly and popular discussions of detective fiction, and crime fiction largely, tend to place Arthur Conan Doyle’s Sherlock Holmes stories at the center of the genre. That centralized model of the genre, where Holmes stories are afforded genre- establishing power, is maintained despite resistance from the genre’s constituent texts and historical realities.

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