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View metadata, citation and similar papers at core.ac.uk brought to you by CORE provided by Electronic Thesis and Dissertation Archive - Università di Pisa UNIVERSITÀ DI PISA Dipartimento di Filologia Letteratura e Linguistica Corso di Laurea Magistrale in Lingue e Letterature Moderne Euroamericane TESI DI LAUREA No ghosts need apply: Gothic influences in Doyle’s Holmesian Canon Candidata: Relatrice: Camilla Del Grazia Prof.ssa Roberta Ferrari Anno Accademico 2014/2015 1 Contents Contents ................................................................................................................................. 1 Introduction ........................................................................................................................... 4 I. 18th-century Gothic: parameters and perspectives ......................................................... 6 1. Gothic in context: the debate around romance and novel .......................................... 6 2. Past and politics ........................................................................................................ 12 3. Gothic spaces: settings and displacement. ................................................................ 17 4. Themes, plots and characters. ................................................................................... 21 II. From Romantic Gothic to its Victorian descendants. .................................................. 29 1. The reception of Gothic after 1790........................................................................... 29 1.1. Gothic parodies: Northanger Abbey and Nightmare Abbey................................. 35 2. Victorian Gothic ....................................................................................................... 43 2.1. Victorian novelists and the reworking of Gothic tropes ....................................... 45 2.2. Edgar Allan Poe and the American Ghost Story .................................................. 56 3. Fin de siècle Gothic .................................................................................................. 61 III. From Sensation Novel to Crime Fiction ................................................................... 71 1. Victorian Sensation Novel ........................................................................................ 71 2. British inspectors, French policemen and American detectives: first instances of crime fiction ..................................................................................................................... 85 2.1. Sensational transitions .......................................................................................... 86 2.2. The French school ................................................................................................. 92 2.3. Chevalier Dupin .................................................................................................... 95 3. Sherlock Holmes makes his entrance ..................................................................... 103 IV. Criminal Science .................................................................................................... 111 1. Controlling techno-scientific advancements .......................................................... 112 2. Heredity, atavism and degeneration ....................................................................... 120 3. Criminal doubles and melancholic detectives ........................................................ 134 V. Reinterpreting uncanny spaces ................................................................................... 147 1. Moors, ruins and bleak mansions: “classic” Gothic settings .................................. 149 2. The urban space ...................................................................................................... 156 3. Exoticism and the Empire....................................................................................... 163 VI. The Victorian society: deconstructing conformity ................................................. 179 2 1. Political intrigues and secret societies: the threat to the State ................................ 180 2. Threatened domestic harmony ............................................................................... 188 3. “Victims” or “queens”: persecuted maidens and independent women .................. 201 3.1. Holmesian Angels ............................................................................................... 207 3.2. Adventuresses and Fallen Women ...................................................................... 210 3.3. Dangerous spinsters and independent governesses ............................................ 213 Conclusions ....................................................................................................................... 218 Bibliography ...................................................................................................................... 220 Webliography .................................................................................................................... 225 3 Introduction In the last few years, the figure of Sherlock Holmes has been the object of countless rewritings, reinterpretations, and adaptations in a vast array of media, from literature, to graphic novels, to TV series, to cinematic renditions. The vast majority of these adaptations tend to present the detective and his adventures as the triumph of rationality and of the scientific method over the disruptive forces of crime, neglecting to take into account the dreadful considerations that these forces bring to light. The aim of the present study is to highlight how the presence of Gothic elements in the Holmesian Canon problematizes the normative action of the detective, illuminating the anxieties which accompanied the changing universe of Victorian and Edwardian society. For this purpose, the first chapter provides a broad overview of the rise of the Gothic novel, briefly introducing the debate around the realist novel and romances, with particular focus on the critical condemnation of “irrational” elements. Central features of classic Gothic novels are then discussed in relation to the works of Horace Walpole, Anne Radcliffe, Clara Reeve, and Matthew Lewis. Particular attention is paid to specific tropes of the Gothic novel, specifically its uncanny use of the past and of remote spaces as instruments of suppression, and to the characterization of its three main figures: the hero, the persecuted maiden, and the tyrannical villain. The second chapter investigates the evolution of the Gothic genre from its outset to its fin de siècle articulations, initially examining its reception after 1790 and the parodic adaptations that it engendered, and providing specific insight into Jane Austen’s Northanger Abbey and Thomas Love Peacock’s Nightmare Abbey. In the ensuing paragraphs, we consider the evolution of Gothic tropes in early Victorian literature, and their application in the novels of Charles Dickens and Charlotte and Emily Brontë; then focusing on their reinterpretation in the short stories of Edgar Allan Poe. Finally, a brief theoretical overview of the complex scenery of fin de siècle English literature is provided, so as to account for the Victorian Gothic novels of Robert Louis Stevenson, Oscar Wilde and Bram Stoker, and for their profound impact on the cultural milieu of the end of the century. Sensation novels are then considered as the joining link between the Gothic genre and detective fiction, with specific reference to the novels of Wilkie Collins, and his depiction of female confinement as well as private detection. To provide an exhaustive introduction to the creation of the character of Sherlock Holmes, an examination of first instances of crime 4 fiction is then provided, by comparing the works of Emile Gaboriau, Edgar Allan Poe, Wilkie Collins and Charles Dickens and the detective figures that they shaped. The second section of the present work is concerned with the identification of Gothic tropes in the Holmesian Canon, and their articulation in different categories according to their ramifications and sphere of action. The fourth chapter specifically examines the uncanny consequences of the reception of new technologies and scientific discoveries on Victorian culture and social order, analyzing instances of degeneration, regression and atavism in Holmes’ cases, and delineating a Sherlockian “criminal type”. The concept of melancholy, and its reinterpretation in light of the theorizations of criminal anthropology are then applied to the figure of the “great detective”, in order to demonstrate how his powerful normalizing influence is achieved at the cost of his exclusion from society. The perception of space is one of the spheres in which Gothic elements are more distinctively noticeable, with reinterpretations of classic Gothic tropes like the isolated mansion or the decaying ruins. The adventures of Sherlock Holmes, moreover, reinterpret the urban space in light of the criminal underworld which populates it, and adapt the Gothic device of exoticism to the disquiet caused by the colonial enterprise. Lastly, Victorian society is the subject of the analysis of the sixth and final chapter, which focuses on the climate of social tension that preceded the outbreak of the First World War. Specifically, the Gothic elements of intrigue and secret societies are analyzed in their Holmesian rewriting, while the strictly Victorian themes of the integrity of family