scholarly journals Bayesian Thought in Early Modern Detective Stories: Monsieur Lecoq, C. Auguste Dupin and Sherlock Holmes

2009 ◽  
Vol 24 (2) ◽  
pp. 238-243 ◽  
Author(s):  
Joseph B. Kadane
Keyword(s):  
Early Modern ◽  
Sherlock Holmes ◽  
Auguste Dupin ◽  
Detective Stories

What Is Left of the Genius? Sherlockian Legacy in Contemporary Crime Fiction

2021 ◽  
Vol 36 (1) ◽  
pp. 137-150
Author(s):  
Jacek Mydla
Keyword(s):  
Scientific Knowledge ◽  
Crime Fiction ◽  
Time Of Death ◽  
Sherlock Holmes ◽  
Arthur Conan Doyle ◽  
Scientific Expertise ◽  
Detective Stories ◽  
Working Out

Arthur Conan Doyle famously popularised science in his series of detective stories by placing its three constitutive elements (scientific knowledge, the collection of evidence, and art of making inferences), in his protagonist Sherlock Holmes. The legacy is present in contemporary crime fiction, but the competencies have been distributed among a group of individuals involved in the investigation. This distribution has affected and changed the position of the detective vis-à-vis scientific expertise. Science, chiefly in the form of different branches of forensics, is as indispensable as the detective, and authors have been working out different ways of making the two work together. As an example of this cooperation, the paper examines Mark Billingham’s 2015 novel Time of Death.

The nineteenth-century opium complex: From Thomas Love Peacock to Sherlock Holmes

2020 ◽  
Vol 29 (1) ◽  
pp. 3-18
Author(s):  
Josephine McDonagh ◽  
Briony Wickes
Keyword(s):  
Nineteenth Century ◽  
Literary History ◽  
East India Company ◽  
Colonial History ◽  
Special Issue ◽  
Sherlock Holmes ◽  
Commercial Activities ◽  
Opium War ◽  
Thomas Love Peacock ◽  
Detective Stories

This introduction to the special issue proposes that two discrete nineteenth-century histories of opium – a literary history, initiated by the drug confessions of De Quincey, and a colonial history, exemplified by the commercial activities of the East India Company (in which Thomas Love Peacock participated) in cultivating opium in Bengal for export to China, leading to the first Opium War – are common elements in a nineteenth-century ‘opium complex’, a set of interlocking practices of individuals and (quasi)state actors, extending across the globe. Sherlock Holmes detective stories are read as compressed registers of tensions that inhere in this complex.

British Detective Fiction in the 19th and Early 20th Centuries

2017 ◽  
Author(s):  
Anne Humpherys
Keyword(s):  
20Th Century ◽  
19Th Century ◽  
Short Story ◽  
Detective Fiction ◽  
The United States ◽  
Sherlock Holmes ◽  
Auguste Dupin ◽  
Agatha Christie ◽  
The 19Th Century ◽  
Critical Interest

From ancient Greece on, fictional narratives have entailed deciphering mystery. Sophocles’ Oedipus must solve the mystery of the plague decimating Thebes; the play is a dramatization of how he ultimately “detects” the culprit responsible for the plague, who turns out to be Oedipus himself. In the Poetics, Aristotle defines a successful plot as one that has a conflict (which can include, and often does include, a “mystery”) that rises to a climax, followed by a resolution of the conflict, a plot line that describes not only Oedipus Rex but also every Sherlock Holmes story. A particular genre of mystery writing is defined by the mystery at the center of the story that is crucially, definitively solved by a particular person known as a detective, either private or police, who by ratiocination (close observation coupled with logical patterns of thought based on material evidence) uncovers and sorts out the relevant facts essential to a determination of who did the crime and how and why. The form of detective fiction throughout most of the 19th century was the short story published in various periodicals of the period. A few longer detective fictions were published as separate books in the 19th century, but book-length detective fiction, such as that by Agatha Christie, was really a product of the 20th century. Most critics of detective fiction see the beginning of the genre in the three stories of Edgar Allan Poe which feature his amateur detective, Auguste Dupin, and were published in the 1840s. Although Poe’s 1840s stories as well as Arthur Conan Doyle’s Sherlock Holmes stories, which first appeared in the 1880s, are probably the most well known of 19th-century detective fictions, a number of other writers of generically recognizable detective fiction published stories in the almost fifty years between Poe and Conan Doyle, including a number that featured female detectives. Finally, from the 1890s into the early 20th century, a plethora of new detective fictions, still in short-story form for the most part, appeared not only in Britain but also in France and the United States. Detective fiction has always been popular, but serious critical interest in the genre only developed in the 20th century. In the second half of that century, this critical interest expanded into the academic world. The popularity of the genre has only continued to grow. Both detective fictions (now nearly all novel length) and critical interest in the genre from a variety of perspectives are now an international phenomenon, and detective novels dominate many best-seller lists.

THE CESSPOOL OF EMPIRE: SHERLOCK HOLMES AND THE RETURN OF THE REPRESSED

2006 ◽  
Vol 34 (1) ◽  
pp. 233-247 ◽  
Author(s):  
Yumna Siddiqi
Keyword(s):  
South Africa ◽  
South American ◽  
Sherlock Holmes ◽  
Actual Fact ◽  
Andaman Islander ◽  
Indian Mongoose ◽  
Detective Stories ◽  
The Ganges

ASTRIKING NUMBER OF CHARACTERSin Arthur Conan Doyle's detective stories who return to England after a sojourn in the colonies have an outlandish aspect. One, a contorted and bilious ex-soldier, owns a pet Indian mongoose. Another has lost a leg to a crocodile in the Ganges and has a poison-toting Andaman Islander in tow. A third keeps a fiendish hound and passes his South American wife off as his sister. A fourth returns from South Africa with a “blanched” face and a furtive manner. Many of these returned colonials are portrayed as menacing, and their presence in England precipitates a crisis, either a crime or a mysterious tragedy. In actual fact, return from the colonies to the metropole was a routine phenomenon, and returned colonials were familiar figures on the metropolitan landscape. Why does Doyle depict the phenomenon of return from Empire as so problematic if it was in fact quite commonplace?

Pengaruh Media Sosial terhadap Rancangan Cerita Detektif Penulis Perempuan KPPI Bandung

Metahumaniora ◽  
2018 ◽  
Vol 8 (3) ◽  
pp. 399
Author(s):  
Lestari Manggong
Keyword(s):  
Social Media ◽  
Qualitative Methods ◽  
Sherlock Holmes ◽  
Detective Story ◽  
Observational Methodology ◽  
The World ◽  
Female Writers ◽  
Detective Stories

AbstrakPembahasan dalam tulisan ini berfokus pada hasil kegiatan pelatihan bagi Komunitas Penulis Perempuan Indonesia (KPPI) Bandung untuk penulisan cerita detektif yang struktur alur ceritanya merujuk pada pola dalam cerita detektif Sherlock Holmes. Tujuan dari pembahasan ini adalah untuk meneorikan pengaruh media sosial terhadap rancangan cerita detektif penulis perempuan, yang dalam hal ini diwakili oleh anggota KPPI Bandung. Pembahasan yang dijabarkan dalam tulisan ini menggunakan metode kualitatif dengan metodologi observasional. Dari hasil brainstorming dan clustering yang dilakukan ketika pelatihan, diperoleh daftar 6 topik cerita. Dari daftar topik tersebut, 4 di antaranya mengemuka sebagai akibat dari pengaruh media sosial. Simpulan yang diperoleh dari pembahasan tentang hasil tersebut adalah bahwa dunia yang dikenal oleh partisipan pelatihan adalah dunia yang dipengaruhi kuat oleh keberadaan media sosial, sehingga hal ini berpengaruh terhadap kecenderungan pengumpulan topik cerita.Kata kunci: cerita detektif, media sosial, penulis perempuan, brainstorming, clustering.AbstractThe discussion in this essayfocuses on the workshop results conducted for the Indonesian Women's Writers Community (KPPI) Bandung for detective stories writing with storyline structure referring to Sherlock Holmes. The purpose of this discussion is to theorize the influence of social media on the design of female writers' detective stories, represented by members KPPIBandung. The discussion described in this essay uses qualitative methods with observational methodology. From the results of brainstorming and clustering, a list of 6 topics for the stories was obtained. From the list of topics, 4 emerged as a result of the influence of social media. The conclusion obtained from the discussion about these results is that the world known to participants attending the workshop is a world that is strongly influenced by the existence of social media, which causes an effect on the tendency in the topics of stories obtained.Keywords: detective story, social media, women’s writers, brainstorming, clustering.

How Sherlock Holmes Got His Start

2013 ◽  
Author(s):  
James O'Brien
Keyword(s):  
Edgar Allan Poe ◽  
Great Influence ◽  
Sherlock Holmes ◽  
Extensive Reading ◽  
Drinking Problem ◽  
Arthur Conan Doyle ◽  
University Of Edinburgh ◽  
Detective Stories ◽  
Jesuit College ◽  
Catholic Schooling

One can achieve somewhat of an understanding of how Sherlock Holmes came to exist by looking at the contributions of three people: Conan Doyle himself, Edgar Allan Poe, and Conan Doyle’s mentor in medical school, Dr. Joseph Bell. First we shall look at Conan Doyle, focusing on those aspects of his life that led to his writing of the Sherlock Holmes stories. Arthur Conan Doyle was born on May 22, 1859, in Edinburgh. His father, Charles Altamont Doyle, was English and his mother, Mary Foley, was Irish. His father had a drinking problem and was consequently less a factor in Conan Doyle’s upbringing than was his mother. Charles would eventually end up in a lunatic asylum (Stashower 1999, 24). Mary Doyle instilled in her son a love of reading (Symons 1979, 37; Miller 2008, 25) that would later lead him to conceive of Sherlock Holmes. Conan Doyle’s extensive reading had a great influence on the Sherlock Holmes stories (Edwards 1993). He was raised a Catholic and attended Jesuit schools at Hodder (1868–1870) and Stonyhurst (1870–1875), which he found to be quite harsh. Compassion and warmth were less favored than “the threat of corporal punishment and ritual humiliation” (Coren 1995, 15). Next he spent a year at Stella Matutina, a Jesuit college in Feldkirch, Austria (Miller 2008, 40). As Conan Doyle’s alcoholic father had little income, wealthy uncles paid for this education. By the end of his Catholic schooling, he is said to have rejected Christianity (Stashower 1999, 49). At the less strict Feldkirch school, his drift away from religion turned toward reason and science (Booth 1997, 60). At this time he also read the writings of Edgar Allan Poe, including his detective stories. So, although Sherlockians debate the “birthplace” of Holmes, a claim can be made that Holmes was conceived in Austria. In 1876, Conan Doyle began his medical studies at the highly respected University of Edinburgh. These years also played a large role in shaping the Holmes stories. One obvious factor was his continued exposure to science.

Converging Precincts: Sociology and Sherlock Holmes

2018 ◽  
Vol 67 (1) ◽  
pp. 67-83
Author(s):  
Ketaki Dwivedi
Keyword(s):  
19Th Century ◽  
European Society ◽  
Literary Texts ◽  
Sherlock Holmes ◽  
Science Discourse ◽  
Rational Science ◽  
Crime Detection ◽  
Multi Level ◽  
Detective Stories ◽  
The 19Th Century

The article using literary texts attempts to draw similarities in the trajectories of emergences and concerns of the 19th-century sociology and crime/detection fiction represented in particular by Arthur Conan Doyle’s Sherlock Holmes. It attempts to contextualise the conditions of emergences, common intellectual moorings and their negotiations with similar themes in the domain of modern rational science discourse and tenet, where everything was to be open to query and testing. The article proposes that the shared intellectual inspirations in science and reason, the engagements with positivism-empiricism and redressal of the disorder and anxiety that European society experienced at the time show that there are multi-level connections between the detective stories and science of society.

scholarly journals Detectives of Agathe Christie as a philosophy of everydayness: a postmodernist analysis

2020 ◽  
Vol 10 (19) ◽  
pp. 13-21
Author(s):  
Viktoriya Sukovata ◽  
Keyword(s):  
Cultural Values ◽  
20Th Century ◽  
Life Experience ◽  
Sherlock Holmes ◽  
Social Thinking ◽  
The World ◽  
Methodological Approaches ◽  
Agatha Christie ◽  
Detective Stories ◽  
Detective Genre

The article is devoted to the study of the detective genre as a model of philosophical cognition of the world and a system of cultural values. The goal of the article is to study how the attitude to the detective genre evolved in the academic discussions of the 20th century: transformation of status of the detective from an “entertainment genre” to the object of the philosophical reflection was the result of evolution of the philosophical paradigms from semiotics and postpositivism in the Modern epoch to postmodernism and theories of everyday thinking in the Postmodern epoch. The actuality of the article is due to insufficient study of the epistemology of the detective in the contemporary Cultural studies. The research methods of the article are based on the "archeology of knowledge" by M. Foucault and the cultural-semiotic approaches of R. Barthes and U. Eco. Author argues that although both detectives of A. Conan Doyle and Agatha Christie belong to the intellectual type of detective, they are based on different epistemological images of the world. Author of the article investigates the epistemological paradigms which the base in the detective stories of A. Conan Doyle and in the novels of Agatha Christie. The author analyzes the methodological approaches to the detective genre in the works of the leading theorists of the 20th century, including V. Shklovsky, M. Bakhtin, Z. Krakauer, U. Eco, and others. The author proposes to consider the modern detectives not only as the entertaining genre, but as a way to know various different forms of culture and traditions. The author notices that Finnish philosopher J. Hintikka has created a tradition of using the stories on Sherlock Holmes as an explanatory model of the principles of operation of artificial intelligence systems which goes back to Aristotle's logic. As a rule, the detectives in Agate Christie’s novels represent not formal logic (which prevailed in the stories about Sherlock Holmes), but searches of criminal through intuition, own life experience, knowledge of people and their typical behavior (habitués). Recognition of a criminal or a victim in the novels of Christie occurs through knowing the lifestyle of a person which becomes a source of the formation of his / her “idea”, his motives, desires and disappointments, which lead to certain decisions and actions. There concludes that A. Christie's detectives were based on the ideas of the philosophy of “everyday social thinking” (by A. Schütz) as the epistemological and culturosophical model. The author argues that the detectives of A. Conan Doyle and A. Christie are determined by different philosophical paradigms which represent the different epochs.

scholarly journals OS “DETETIVES” DOS ROMANCES POLICIAIS MÍSTICO-RELIGIOSOS

2015 ◽  
Vol 12 (2) ◽  
pp. 187
Author(s):  
Fernanda Massi
Keyword(s):  
Sherlock Holmes ◽  
Auguste Dupin

Tendo em vista que o detetive é o personagem mais importante da narrativa policial, este trabalho analisa, sob o viés da semiótica discursiva, a caracterização do perfil dos sujeitos que realizam as investigações nos chamados “romances policiais místico-religiosos” mais vendidos no Brasil de 1980 a 2009. Nessas narrativas, além de encontrar o sujeito que realizou o crime e entregá-lo a um destinador-julgador, responsável por sua punição, o “detetive” deve proteger um segredo místico-religioso pertencente a uma sociedade fechada. Além de não serem sujeitos extraordinários (como Auguste Dupin, Sherlock Holmes, Hercule Poirot etc.), os “detetives” dos romances policiais místico-religiosos nem sempre conseguem ser eficazes no cumprimento de suas tarefas.

scholarly journals D’une étonnante dextérité dans l’art de l’enquête

2014 ◽  
Vol 30 (1-2-3) ◽  
pp. 137-146
Author(s):  
Bertrand Gervais
Keyword(s):  
Edgar Allan Poe ◽  
Sherlock Holmes ◽  
Auguste Dupin

Quelle est la particularité de ces enquêteurs qui envahissent l’écran de télévision aux heures de grande écoute? Ils multiplient les raisonnements à l’emporte-pièce, armés de dispositifs techniques ultrasophistiqués qui leur servent d’arguments d’autorité. Je me propose dans ce bref article d’examiner les fondements sémiotiques des raisonnements de ces enquêteurs. En me servant d’un cas d’espèce, en l’occurrence le travail de Dexter Morgan, dans la série américaine Dexter, j’examinerai les stratégies mises de l’avant dans ces enquêtes policières à caractère scientifique. Elles sont fondées sur ce que C. S. Peirce a nommé l’abduction. Comme l’avaient bien compris Edgar Allan Poe et Conan Doyle, en créant Auguste Dupin et Sherlock Holmes, l’abduction en acte permet le spectacle d’un esprit qui, lorsqu’en pleine possession de ses moyens, est capable d’inférer rapidement et efficacement les bonnes hypothèses, celles permettant d’attraper le coupable. Ces raisonnements sont évidemment truqués; mais, comme pour tout tour de magie, l’art de feindre a non seulement ses vertus esthétiques, mais surtout ses propres leçons à donner sur les modalités de perception et d’interprétation du monde.

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