Sherlock Holmes vs. postmodern: a new adaptation of the great work In a new television series Sherlock Holmes.

. However many it is shocking the main character looks like a parody of a well-established image of the great detective. Does this make sense? They wanted to emphasize the filmmakers? How does this compare to the original source of the classic Arthur Conan Doyle? Against the backdrop of the ongoing process for over 20 years of spiritual desertification of the cultural landscape any more or less interesting phenomenon in the realm of the most important of the arts cinema, is at least memorable, and certainly a landmark. Moreover, when the modern masters of cinema does not manage to debase and distort the classic examples, and saturate them relevant semantic sketches to reality. In this case, the classic spiritual capital of cinematographic works is complemented by modern mental constructs of the main characters, new technological formats of shooting, that is, filled the teeth on edge special effects and unimaginable angles. If new technology cannot psychographic enter into sharp conflict with the basic literary and artistic works of the original values, we speak of a new, original reading of the classics. Such was, perhaps, a very successful commercially, Sherlock Holmes Guy Ritchie. We do not agree with some peremptory assertions about the absence of literary continuity Guy Ritchies film characters from the classic heroes of the great Irish-Scot. On the other hand, extravagant style of Sherlock Holmes, played by John Downey Jr. magnified chudacheskie original quality Victorian detective, shading his professional and intellectual qualities. In addition, Guy Ritchie has managed to keep even a portrait of his actors compliance with the classic graphic images (see figure) Sidney Paget, in which the filtered candidates for the role of the main characters in all cinematographic works of the twentieth century, including, of course, a masterpiece of Igor Maslennikov with the best Holmes all time by Vasily Borisovich Livanov. A technological arsenal widescreen Guy Ritchie was directed solely to the restoration and visual emphasis on compelling parts of the Victorian era with the apotheosis scene of the fight in the newly built Westminster Bridge. But my review will be devoted to another significant remake the TV version, had time to ride on the first channel. The series Sherlock 2010-2012 a kind of modern, updated version of the detective Sherlock Holmes, written by Arthur Conan Doyle from 1887 to 1927. The series Sherlock managed surprisingly quickly recruited and continues to gain high rankings in the world. Internet sites that provide the ability to view this show, full of rave reviews, which is very different from comment on other movies and series, where viewers in the form of malotsenzurnoy accuse the authors of films in the stupidity and bad taste. But the new English Sherlock literally conquered the American audience, as well as, presumably, the audience the rest of World. Here are some comments on the audience. (Kept spelling and punctuation of the original source). I must admit that the show is pretty good. Here is a movie with Robert Downey Jr. is just left to expect the best, disappointing, I would say. Benedict Cumberbatch, in my opinion, perfectly entered into the role, the script is well thought out, is food for the brain. I hasten to note that even the film develops. In addition to the simple contemplatio H of holmeses feats, the audience for the series itself starts involuntarily brains and think about everything that happened, but it is definitely a plus. Overall 9.5 out of 10. Loved it! Above all, it is interesting to look line plots Conan Doyle. I wanted to read again in this sense, the film is very useful.

The key for the director was not a repeat of Sherlock, and show how it could be if he lived in our time Classics are classics it must look, of course. But what made the directors in 2010 is a masterpiece. I think Benedict is well suited to the role of the modern detective crazy. Personally, I liked, humorous, no nonsense, and most importantly, the characters are chosen very well. I look forward to continuing. I confess I have not once got a taste of this new cinema experience British detective fiction. I remember watching the first (about a year ago) when I accidentally taxied to the first channel and the cut into the theme, Sherlock and Watson chatted in a cafe, discussing and legitimizing homosexuality. Just wanted to press another button on the remote, but the effort will continue watching, because, as we all know, the rest of the channels of our moral restraint of free TV offer no more soulful production. As the story of the first series of the first season I had a feeling neuyutnosti, tension and even a certain disgust of all the events. Everything, absolutely everything, the previous film version looked much more comfortable. What is really there to remind about the Soviet version of a charm with Vasily Livanov and Vitaly Solomin. There, in each frame is bottled charm of the main characters that I would not be surprised if the psychotherapist dedicate this dissertation studies the phenomenon, and patients in psychiatric hospitals will prescribe viewing lenfilmovskogo masterpiece. Even intonation, intense notes of the soundtrack, Vladimir Dashkevich are rare thinner frames and sounds cosiness impersonation of an old fireplace with a pipe, whiskey, a proud profile of Vasily Borisovich. Very nice soothing old English film version of 1939-1946 years., Starring Basil Rathbone and Nigel Bruce. Despite the apparent desire of the creators of the famous classic series to provide the public an exciting detective with the necessary attributes of a product as a heinous criminals led by an outstanding Moriarty, whose image embodied four different actors, in spite of the above serious Holmes stressed that the surprisingly beautiful and big nose Rathbone despite the black and white, which is designed to certify as to the documentary of all events for the modern viewer, the latter does not leave a feeling of pleasant contemplation of bygone issues, which in hindsight looks like ridiculous fun. The tremendous therapeutic value in this series belongs to the great actor Nigel Bruce, embodied in the image of Doctor Watson, sneaking good-natured bumpkin and an extremely narrow-minded people the opposite of the outstanding practice of the deductive method. Open downright Russian soul Bryusov Watson, along with constant humorous scenes that accompanied the appearance of almost any doctor in the frame, served as a counterweight to the opposite qualities of Rathbones Holmes, who almost did not laugh or smile, and maybe a couple of times made fun of his hapless friend for all 13 episodes. Watson emphasized the simple-mindedness eccentric gait with Bruce pulling the right foot, which the actor did not even have to invent, because this physical disability he received during World War II, when doctors had to remove it from the legs of young Nigel dozens of fragments from exploding shells. By the way, the young officer B.Retboun also fought in the First World, and even won an award for a successful military operation. Perhaps it would not be an exaggeration to say that this wonderful British TV series 40s served as the basis for an outstanding artistic creations Yu.Maslennikova 40 years. Physiognomic similarity between Bruce and Solomin, Rathbone and Livanova nobody will deny. Maslennikov, perhaps, the closer together the characters of Holmes and Watson in their series. Solomin-Watson is not as stupid as Bryusov hero, and Livanov-Holmes is not so dry and austere, like a prototype of Rathbone. Soviet Holmes laughs a lot and is constantly making fun of Watson, it just barely slip the negative qualities that Arthur Conan Doyle was

laid in his eccentric detective. The character does not have the polished Livanova arrogance that stems from the realization of their outstanding abilities. He is not selfish and cares more about Watson than Holmes on the last. On the other hand, Solomin-Watson has often intelligent, and not only technical assistance to his friend, he is interested in analytical constructions Holmes, in contrast to the near Watson Nigel Bruce who is interested in football summaries and cocktails and able to clean except for my revolver technological support operations. However, no matter how different scenic images of Holmes 40s and 80s in them can be traced one important thing in common they get used seamlessly into the existing social environment of the modern era. Despite the fact that Conan Doyle wrote his Holmes as much as 40 years, world of the protagonist fully formed into the canonical age of Victorian England the heyday of modern culture and all the charming attributes of the bourgeois of the time a cigar, fireplace, rug, Big Ben, carts, clubs, coats, cylinders, whiskers, etc. Holmes and Watson feel comfortable in the material world, and in the social architectonics of his time. Classic Holmes, despite all movetonskie habits, and gets buzz in a comfortable chair with a glass of whiskey, and from playing the violin, and even awareness of their national importance, which is especially clear in several series of the 40s. There Holmes falls to the pompous moralizing in the final frame without a humorous or ironic subtext, why are so accustomed to Soviet viewers by the end of the Soviet era. Retbounovsky Holmes stands firmly on his feet, he was not tortured torment the meaning of life, he knows what is good and what is bad, he a patriot and a citizen of his country and knows what he lives. Livanovsky Holmes does not break the general line of understanding of the main character, but only slightly mitigates excessive exemplary in its charming sense of humor and humanity. Just another way of creating a young Holmes Cumberbatch in the new series. Already all of its appearance, rather, its no texture, the artist indicates that we are not a classic, and postmodern Holmes. Cumberbatch obscenely young for a man in his prime, which used to take the audience the classical image of a private detective. Challenging the new antisocial behavior like Holmes stems from its outstanding youth in lime wildness still lives that way brash character. Long neck womens athletic and did not become a young English actor minus androgen ideal, laid the hero, embodying one of the most heroic male professions. Hard curly hair shatena Cumberbatch passionate discord with neat black hair parting lines preceding images of Holmes. Excessive bony anglosoaksonskogo ideal for the person Cumberbatch clearly contrary to the exemplary Aryan race in the performance of Rathbone and Livanova. In short, the entire outer face of the main character seems to be saying that this character is incorrect and does not match the world around them, accustomed to see in the image of a private detective sneaking a full-grown man with good manners and indelible intelligence on his face. The behavior of the new Holmes in any series with the first frame shows its anxiety and disharmony. Cumberbatch creates an image fundamentally categorically anti-social person. His Holmes is not interested in other people lives in his world of pupation. Other persons interested in him only as part of his professional work and do not take up more space than other objects encountered along the line of investigations, such as the infamous cigarette butts, dirt tracks, etc. The young detective is clearly difficult to relax in a normal everyday situation, he is constantly tense and anxious. Anxiety the most important feature of the postmodern world view. A world in a fundamentally unstable post-modernism, the world has no clear points of reference and supporting structures, what were, for example, Atlanta and caryatids in ancient Greek

mythology. Therefore, one can not simply stand on the ground, it must constantly jump from one place to another, like the rafters of logs on the river. Kamberbetchevsky Holmes from the category of jumpers. He lives only from case to case and can not imagine himself in another capacity. Here the careful reader of short stories about Sherlock Holmes to stop me: Is a Conan Doyle detective depict a different way, is it Holmes not sullen, limited and very hard, workaholic professional who does not want to be interested in anything but his profession? Did not Holmes, Watson shocked incomprehension of basic fundamentals of the physical structure of the world because they do not understand how this knowledge will be useful in his profession? Is not social loneliness Holmes leads him to drug addiction? I agree, I do not argue. The basic similarity between the characters of classical and modern Holmes present. In this sense, A. Conan Doyle anticipated future drift of social organization in the direction of postmodernism, where the individual is becoming more and more lonely as the amplification degree of social contact. But in the new series is important nuances of postmodern, shown in detail and reveals the image of the world. Take the famous apartment landlady Mrs. Hudson in Baker Street, 221b. In the above classic series, especially the 40s, Interior Design inspires the viewer to the fundamental nature and the sanctity of this fortress, like the British Empire invincibility of the time. Mighty chair, enveloping and lulling its cosiness, in which old Watson goes to sleep like a baby. Powerful oak table in the center, full bookshelves to the ceiling, which are weighty tomes, indispensable fireplace a hotbed of comfort and other details of life the main characters seemed to inspire the audience: all is calm, all is ordered, all protected. The inhabitants of this room just have to know the measure of all things and soul rest in peace. All the more so in the way of that trouble is always proves to Mrs. Hudson, serving as a mediator, informant. In the new series, all the guests from the staircase, slightly kicking the synthetic door, just run into a total of two little rooms, and friends can witness the uncomfortable seats short, artificial fireplace, a small sofa and a general mess in the house. Absurd postmodern installation on one wall, where idleness shoots Holmes, emphasizes different style coziness is not a living room, which is also connected with doors to the kitchen and bathroom. Holmes is on everyones mind, he can not relax in solitude, for his apartment is not a fortress, and one of the logs from which to jump off in time. Neuyutnost life and unaesthetic Holmes is fully consistent with the postmodern canon: in the outside world there is no harmony at all levels, whether it is the state system or a separate apartment. Since each character in post-modernism to be ambiguous, imprecise, sliding off (one of the favorite sayings of postmodernists), and postmodernism seeks to eliminate any meaningful certainty, the signs of domestic life of Holmes intended to leave the viewer wondering: What a great detective lived, what his habits and affection? The filmmakers do not give a clear answer, but offer viewers to choose from an abundant flow of meaningful allusions to those who will come to everyones taste. We now turn to the main characters around people (Watson, like a shadow, and the antithesis of Holmes deserves to be removed from the list of other). All other people are displayed in the show deliberately small (make another exception for the main enemy Holmes Professor Moriarty), as if in passing, on the run, smear, without thoughtful picture of the inner world and the social status of the character. Instead felicitous old woman, Mrs. Hudson, who personified itself in the classics of Victorian England, we see the obscure young veselushku with uncertain interests, which supports their narrow-minded jokes homosexual affair in the relations between the main characters.

Inspector Lestreyd traditionally appeared in the form of dullish careerist and the cheerful, ready to minor mischief for the sake of promotion. Lestreyda caricature created in the classic series (especially tried our Borislav Brondukov), clearly discordant with the opposite in a professional and human sense of noble Holmes. In the new series as Lestreyda we glimpsed a serious man with a very regular features, Holmes shield in front of his superiors, and not substituted for it and do not gloat over his misfortune. We can say that the actor Rupert Graves, who plays Lestreyda much more like a real Holmes. It is not improper for young glimpses of gray indicate the acquired life experience. A neat haircut emphasizes pedantry, which should be characterized by Holmes. He always collected and businesslike. In the end, with due attention the camera, he could throw out at the audience, especially the female part of the audience, all the charm of a nice man with piercing eyes. Almost James Bond played by Sean Connery without unnecessary brutality and increased desire for sex. In the period of the culture of modern criteria for the role of Holmes, it would be in this actor and the audience is not tormented by the uncertainty would be a sign of postmodern Holmes. Actor Cumberbatch, with its small eyes (perestuplyu threshold of aesthetic correctness and every venture to say that of all animals it is more reminiscent of a pig) and obscure the nose, despite the characterization of some pretty boy in the comments on the network, much less attractive than in the role of Rupert Graves Lestreyda . This is also a characteristic sign of the postmodern vision of the world, this is another Changeling: the difference between beautiful and ugly does not exist. The beauty of the picture, the observance of proportions, the presence of any clear picture of the aesthetic all in postmodernism as an indication of primitiveness and vulgarity, a manifestation of totalitarian ideology. For these same reasons, it is unclear disclosed Lestreyda image itself. The actor was not disclosed, does not show his human qualities, he was always in a hurry, all on the run, all passing. About the other smaller characters can not talk at all. They just blend into the general mass of humanity that emphasizes the kaleidoscopic speed of the operator (of course the highest quality from a professional point of view). And the lonely Holmes does not live among the people, and if running and wade through a lot of anthropomorphic devoid of quality certainty. What is the takes episode viewers? Increased intelligence and intensity of the plot. The new Holmes characterized as outstanding visual, associative and deductive powers that believe in their reality within the normal picture of the world is impossible. The filmmakers deliberately fabricate such complex and multi-way line of reasoning and observation of Holmes to take the viewer beyond reality. A normal person in the biological sense of the word can not simply from a distance of several tens of meters in a split second to determine the color and character of the mud on the boots, the color of the hair on his jacket, and the depth of the scratches on your mobile phone and make a conclusion about the properties of this nature, addiction to alcohol and marriage status of human rights. It features a superman, an android. This is a breakthrough into a new reality, which is so eager to postmodernity. The viewer has the vague sense: a man is Holmes at all? And if he does not have a new modernized tehnosapiens? I remember how far the 70 children spread the rumor of fantasy on the theme Who was Fantomas? After our box office triumph was this peerless French trilogy with Jean Marais and Louis de Funes. One of my neighbor, a large bedroom summer pioneer camp in the Crimea, in all seriousness told me that Fantomas a robot that spans the magnets. Another no less thoroughly convinced was extraterrestrial origin of the protagonist. All the mystique and mystery of the image, created by French writers Souvestre and Allen, and beautifully filmed

the great Andre Yunebelem, based on a neidentifitsirovannosti the main villain, which gave rise to the most daring fantasies. The new Holmes goes without a latex mask, but his outstanding abilities are so worried about ordinary people, that in the last episode of season two police officers are quite sure that he organized the kidnapping of Ambassador to present their rapid release due to his superhuman qualities. Postmodern style famously twisted plot leaves ambiguous hints: probably it was. Moreover, in the same series of Holmes, Watson admits that before he knew all about his sister, not sdeduktiroval their findings on the finest features of his friends cell phone. But the main axis of the post-modern series is revealed through the confrontation of Holmes and Moriarty. Professor, possessed megalomania, is the main opponent of Holmes in his book, and any film adaptations. But if all the previous films clearly showed that Moriarty is an absolute evil, which is fighting the good representative from Baker Street, in the latest TV version of Holmes and Moriarty very close together and barely visible in the specified coordinate system. Well-conducted basic idea: two heroes do not live and play in the boring senseless world. Moriarty, and invents a brilliant ease embodies so complex criminal schemes, so that the viewer must be convinced of the incomparable genius of professor, and must feel how difficult this genius finds a zest for life. Bizarre Moriarty, posing as a clown (and in fact this style of riding is the actors art), in frequent conversations with Holmes every time the game emphasizes the nature of both characters. Moreover, he egged Holmes, carries his new game patterns and, thus, supports the interest in the life of the great detective. Playing with a distorted perception of the world social norms and even laws of physics, general relativity, the lack of clear standards of life a favorite background of post-modern works of art. In fact, post-modern world in its image is a chaotic and irrational wraith, in which nothing can be true. By quietly leaning audience once there is no clear axiological and natural landmarks, you can try to live like a dream without trying to understand anything, give up a critical perception of reality to the general madness as the norm. Moriarty had reached the top of the world in this sense, he is mad from a simple layman, but also a genius. In the last episode of season two third Moriarty commits suicide in front of Holmes, but it seems to us that he was unexpectedly resurrected, ie returns to the number of actors in some inexplicable way, the explanation that the filmmakers will construct on the brink of understanding the realities of life. After all, Holmes, committed suicide in the same series, which is a remake of the story of Reyhenbahskogo Falls, mysteriously appears in the last frame. The storyline of this series, in addition, completes the image of Holmes as a very uneasy and suspicious man, far removed from those goodies that are embodied mentioned B.Retboun and V.Livanov. Cumberbatch plays over the controversial figure of the modern Holmes. In the climactic scene of confrontation between Holmes and Moriarty at the roof of the tower blocks the viewer no longer has to feel the differences between the main characters in the ethical system of coordinates. And both are bad and good. The audience, on a plan of the film should be a clear stand to lose the moral evaluation of each. Holmes is so tarnished, and confused, he should look no better than his opponent. This is totally random. Postmodernist work just by definition can not contain delimited ideas of good and evil. Aestheticizing evil and is an expression of freedom of the spirit, the good it turns out hypocrisy and vulgarity, concealing tayascheesya villainy. Virtually all of the preceding series of progressively debunked the original authors of the noble image of Holmes, formed in the classical interpretations of the book. But a simple one-time shifter it is too primitive for this post-modern works. We should expect a few quirks inside, when smearing white again, to a certain degree of whitewashes. The general conclusion, which implicitly invites viewers could be formulated as

follows: the difference between good and evil, between high and low, between beautiful and ugly, between true and false is not there. It all depends on the point at which you look at the moment on the angle and the accompanying context. This is an imperative of post-modernism: nothing can be taken seriously, nothing serious, nothing worthy of trust and respect (and certainly more than the honor). Most of all ludicrous one who tries something to believe in something to be taken seriously, something to look for a foothold. After all, this something may be timeless, not subject to relativization, axiologically unequal to the rest hence the totalitarian. Thus, the latest TV version of the English detective classics masterfully developed those subtle features of the postmodern image of Sherlock Holmes, Conan Doyle are great prophetically laid in his hero 100 years ago in the era of the crisis of modern society. Its original Holmes hinted at his eccentricities to the reader that the protagonist lacks clear guidelines being, however, a faithful friend Watson, Mrs. Hudson and the rest of the world did not allow him to break away from the established canon. But the most important weapon in the fight against Holmes with the emerging postmodern was his wonderful deductive method as the most honed weapon of rational thinking and appropriate understanding of the world. Each another victory over the inhabitants of Holmes London underworld at the same time was a mental victory over those seeds of postmodernism, which have already appeared in the world and broadcast in the brain of the great detective. In the latter series, together with the faking and the mockery of the deductive method, taking place against a background of discrediting the positive image of the protagonist, Holmes is defenseless against the postmodern. The last bastion of the English defense collapsed under irresistible pressure from senseless and aimless kaleidoscope of general relativity.

Sherlock Holmes ~ Modernist thought, modernist cities & the solving intellect In this lecture we're looking at the Sherlock Holmes stories & considering the links between this kind of popular fiction - the classic detective story - and the wider phenomenon of literary modernism. As you move on to modernism, you'll be talking about modernist elitism, about the determination to 'make it new', and about the sheer technical difficulty that distanced high modernism from a popular audience. But it would obviously be misleading to think of modernism as a completely separate phenomenon - & one thing we gain from thinking about possible comparisons with early 20thC popular literature is a sense of common ground whatever the differences, there are some shared preoccupations. There are 2 main points of contact here that I want to focus on: first, on characteristic patterns of thought - on what we might call 'ways of knowing'; and 2ndly, on imaginative geography - specifically, on the representation of the city. In both cases, I think what we see is overlap but also difference and both the connexions and the contrasts are helpful in defining the nature of modernism. (1) Modernism and the Epistemological Dominant So - let's look first at modes of thought - at one of the central concerns that binds together the literary modernist and the writer of crime stories. The detective story has been called

'the epistemological genrepar excellence' - and it in fact is for this reason sometimes called the 'sister genre' of modernist literature. 'Epistemology' seems to me one of the more useful 'ologies', with reference both to detective and modernist fiction. Brian McHale, in Postmodernist Fiction, writes that the 'dominant' of modernist fiction is, like that of the detective story, epistemological. That is, he says, 'modernist fiction deploys strategies which engage and foreground such questions as'How can I interpret this world of which I am a part? And what am I in it?' Other typical modernist questions might be added: What is there to be known?; Who knows it?; How do they know it, and with what degree of certainty?; How is knowledge transmitted from one knower to another, and with what degree of reliability?; How does the object of knowledge change as it passes from knower to knower?; What are the limits of the knowable? And so on.' McHale's list gives us, I think, a fair idea of the sort of questions we might take to be associated with an 'epistemological' genre - epistemology simply being the study of the nature of human knowledge - of 'how we know what we know'. The detective story is epistemological in that it obviously focuses on such questions as the interpretation of evidence, the methods of finding things out, and so on. The struggle to interpret the world is also a central theme of many modernist texts. As I say, though, there are also telling contrasts. The other thing that characterises the detective story is, of course, the rational confidence of the answers it provides. If any of you have seen a recent film parody of the Holmes stories called Zero Effect, you'll have come across what Daryl Zero (the Holmes figure) calls 'the 2 obs' - observation and objectivity. Traditional detection has complete faith in the 2 obs. - (& this 'rationalist faith', as we'll see, is one of the elements in classic detection that ultimately separates it from the modernist sensibility). This focus on what we know and how we know goes - in traditional detective fiction - with a structure that foregrounds the interpretation or investigation of a crime. It's a commonplace of analyses of detective fiction that what we have are two stories - the 'first story' being that of an actual event investigated (the crime itself), the 'second story' that of the investigation - an investigation that meticulously reconstructs the 'missing' forst part of the narrative - the sequence of events leading up to the moment of the crime. When the 'right solution' is reached, then 'everything falls into place', and for us, as readers, to see it 'in place' means that the 'unknown' has been made known. Umberto Eco says that readers of the detective novel can indulge in the 'metaphysical shudder' of discovering what is hidden and secret. But (& here again we're moving towards a contrast with modernism) in the game-like structure of the traditional detective narrative, this is always a well-defined and knowable secret: the mystery isn't something that lies beyond the reach of our consciousness, but is a 'secret' which can be revealed in full during the course of the '2nd story'. It's only that a veil has been drawn over it for the duration of the novel, to keep us all in suspense. One concise summing-up of this given by Grossvogel, in Mystery and its Fictions: 'As a genre, the detective story is optimistic and self-destructing. Its coy mystery, served by its mechanistic detective and antiseptic corpse, is free of the odour of death.The duration of

the story (its reading) is the time we must wait for the pieces to fall into place; the intensity of the 'mystery' is voided by our awareness of the mystery's transitoriness.' This, then, is another of the elements of traditional detection that most obviously separates it from modernist tendencies: so Conrad's fiction, for example, often draws on the conventions of the popular crime story; a novel like The Secret Agent, for example, has a '2 story' structure that invites comparison with classic detection; in Heart of Darkness and Lord Jim the narrator, Marlowe, is struggling (as a detective struggles) to understand events, motives and mysteries. But in Conrad's work, this sort of structure is fragmented and displaced, with partial knowledge only coming accidentally and haphazardly, and the 'unknown' mostly resisting all efforts to grasp it or explain it - the unknown remaining ultimately perplexing and mysterious. What you'll see, then, as you move on to modernist texts is that they are preoccupied with epistemological questions, but that what characterises them (in contrast to the detective story) is epistemological doubt - uncertainty about how we know, and what we can know. Instead of being capable of the solving powers of the detective, those who try to penetrate what's hidden and secret are all the time being hampered by the incomplete, irrational, subjective nature of their understanding. For this lecture, though, staying with the Sherlock Holmes stories, let's think about some of the ways in which these stories embody - define - the characteristics of what's called 'the classic detective story'. (2) Understanding clues As I said at the outset, the '2 obs' - observation and objectivity - are defining elements in classic detective fiction. Sherlock Holmes above all presents himself as the practitioner of a theory of detection - a theory we would generally label 'scientific rationalism': it's methods are very similar to those of diagnostic medicine, and in fact, as you may of course know, Conan Doyle was greatly influenced in this conception by his time as a medical student at Edinburgh University, where he'd been specially impressed by Dr Joseph Bell, who is usually taken to be a kind of rough model for the character of Sherlock Holmes. For Holmes, this approach means that virtually anything he sees - inspects - is a repository of evidence. Anything and everything - mud on a sleeve, soiled knees, whiskers inadequately shaved, a dog that fails to bark - all of these can be used to support far-reaching conclusions. Science was an exciting new force in the late-19th century public mind - and Doyle was very explicit about drawing on the techniques of science in his stories - most importantly, the careful of data and the careful, logical analysis of all available information - interpreting 'material evidence' & forensic facts, & employing what Doyle calls 'the science of deduction'. Let's take as our example of Holmsian methods the famous hat that's inspected in 'The Blue Carbuncle': '[Holmes] picked it up, and gazed at it in the peculiar introspective fashion which was characteristic of him. 'It is perhaps less suggestive than it might have been,' he remarked, 'and yet there are a few inferences which are very distinct, and a few others which represent at least a strong balance of probability. That the man was highly intellectual is of course

obvious upon the face of it, and also that he was fairly well-to-do within the last three years, although he has now fallen upon evil days. He had foresight, but has less now than formerly, pointing to a moral retrogression, which, when taken with the decline of his fortunes, seems to indicate some evil influence, probably drink, at work upon him. This may account also for the obvious fact that his wife has ceased to love him. He has, however, retained some degree of self-respect. He is a man who leads a sedentary life, goes out little, is out of training entirely, is middle-aged, has grizzled hair which he has cut within the last few days, and which he anoints with lime-cream. Thhese are the more patent facts which are to be deduced from his hat. Also, by the way, that it is extremely improbable that he has gas laid on his house.' Watson (of course) is astounded, but Holmes, as usual, explains every deduction. By focusing acutely on every detail he turns the hat from something commonplace and anonymous into something singular and significant. It's used to show how the discerning eye can inspect what seems to be just an arbitrarily detached fragment of an ordinary man's life and see in it the whole unique life history of its owner. Part of Holmes reasoning depends on details akin to forensic evidence - his 'lens' discloses clean cut hair ends; the dust on the hat isn't gritty, grey street dust but the 'fluffy brown dust' found in houses; ink has been used to cover stains. This last deduction, of course, also depends on the introduction of social and moral assumptions - Holmes is equating stains with 'going down in the world'; he's taking ink to signify a remnant of self-respect, in spite of the dilapidated state of the hat. As a recent critic has pointed out, the most striking example of a deduction that's based on a quite a largescale assumption about social rules is Holmes's interpretation of the unbrushed state of the hat - which proves, he says, that the owner's wife has ceased to love him. Hat-brushing is taken to equal marital affection: if you see Holmes's deductions working by syllogistic logic, what you have is a 'middle term' in the syllogism that's based on an underlying assumption of rather a high degree of social conformity: The unbrushed hat has not been brushed by the owner's wife; [middle term:] all loving wives brush their husbands hats; therefore, this wife is not loving. Holmes isn't just a scientific rationalist. He's also in important respects a strange and eccentric individual - given to atonal violin playing, taking cocaine, aloof, bohemian and eccentric, capable of becoming so absorbed in the hunt for clues that he strikes Watson as a man transformed 'from the thinker and logician of Baker Street' into someone seized with 'animal lust for the chase' - his face darkening, his brows drawn into two 'hard, black lines', his eyes shining with a 'steely glitter'. What all of these things suggest, of course, is a man marked out from the common run of mankind - whether by mental powers or by sheer individuality and purposeful energy. The bourgeois world that Holmes is contemplating (via the hat) is something he's completely apart from - superior in his powers, detached by his eccentric habits and his compulsion to discover the truth. Holmes talks about the importance of considering the point of view of the person who is interpreting circumstantial evidence but this is a long way from his saying that all interpretation is simply subjective. What he's actually saying is that circumstantial evidence that reveals one thing (the wrong thing) to an

ordinary, unenlightened pair of eyes will reveal something quite different (the true thing) to the exceptional eyes of Sherlock Holmes. This Holmsian self-conception obviously has important implications - both in terms of the other characterisation in the Holmes stories and in terms of the kind of plot resolutions that we can more or less take for granted in most of the stories in the series. (3) The clear triangle of characters Unlike many classic detective stories, the Holmes stories dont necessarily have a murderer and in fact may not even turn out to involve an actual crime (just the appearance or threat of a crime). But like most stories that are part of the genre, they have a clear and ultimately unambiguous triangle of characters the investigator, the victim (or potential victim) and the transgressor. Holmes, as weve seen, I think, belongs to the category of Supermen investigators whose solving powers are never really in any doubt. In classic detective fiction, investigators of this kind (and even more ordinarily mortal detective figures) are always the protagonist, always at the centre of the 2nd story the story of the solution of the crime. Stories often start with Holmes being sought out by someone in need of help like Helen Stoner in 'The Speckled Band':

The victim-figures may already be dead (the sister of the young woman who comes to see Holmes in The Speckled Band), or (like the young woman herself) are in need of Holmes protection and assistance. The plea of Helen Stoner clearly sets up the basic character triangle of the story and we can feel sure as we read this scene that both the detective and the young woman will stay in the roles they occupy here neither could possibly turn out to be the source of the evil, and were confident that by the end of the story Holmes will have made sure both of the identity of the villain and of the methods he has used to kill and terrorise. But - and this is an important contradiction - the serial form itself is unresolved and indeterminate - a point that brings us, perhaps, to the second comparison with modernist texts that I wanted to touch on. This has 2 interrelated aspects - the formal quality of indeterminacy, and the actual setting of the Holmes stories - the imaginative geography of the late 19th/early 20thC city. (4) Sherlock Holmes's city

Holmes travels around, but London is one of the most characteristic locations of his investigations; the sources of the crimes are various there is often a threat from some kind of foreign secret society; or theres some crime committed in the colonies thats being covered up; in later stories, of course, Doyle pits Holmes against the master criminal, Professor Moriarty. But in the early stories were looking at, disorders and threats posed are mainly to established middle-class order to respectable bourgeois family life - coming from within (or just outside) the family and within the class, springing from selfish greed that cuts across normal family responsibilities that loosens the bonds of self-control and respectability that hold society together. The fear of social breakdown is always glimpsed behind the Holmes stories: like most classic detective stories (and, of course, like much modernist literature), they are founded on essentially conservative social attitudes. In the Holmes stories, the pull of the first story the story of crime or potential crime is a tendency towards dissolution towards loss of these bonds, loss of reliable social forms towards confusion and disorder; the 2nd story the story of Holmess resolution of the mystery exerts a pull in the opposite direction restoring order, clarifying the sources of confusion, putting everything back in a proper place. But London, the site of disorder, obviously doesnt become any less confused and disordered. Ive included a Holmes quote from a story not in your collection, A Case of Identity because it so clearly suggests the imaginative relationship between Holmes and London:.

The city itself is imaged as a place of cross-purposes, bizarre cruelties, unsuspected links, extraordinary crimes that are all the time being generated by 'ordinary life'. It's a city that in many ways is very like London as seen by Conrad - except that in the Conan Doyle stories one has Holmes himself - more than ever in this passage a Superman figure - capable of an imaginative fly-over in which he's a sort of gentle, all-seeing, detached guardian who is able to penetrate the truths that are stranger than fiction, is able to make known the hidden connections - and so is finally able to restore comfortable ordinariness. Repetitive disorder& repetitive resolution - these are the formal tensions that organise the detective story, and as I've said, this recurrent disorder is one of the things that links the city of Holmsian detection to the city of literary modernism. Martin Priestman helpfully characterises the '2 axes' of detective fiction - if you look at the way they're summarised on the handout:

What this points to, I think, is one of the main ways in which the Holmes stories intersect with some of the most characteristic themes of modernism. Raymond Williams, in an often reprinted essay on 'The Metropolis and the Emergence of Modernism', sums up key ways in which the development of 'the city' into 'the metropolis' was crucial to the formation of modernism - with the theme of urban alienation - which developed in the 19thC in Britain fostering some very persistent images of the modern city - 1st, as 'a crowd of strangers' (this, Williams suggests, originates with the mundane fact that people in a crowded street are unknown to the observer, & then interprets this strangeness as 'mystery' - as unknowability); a 2nd, closely related theme is that of the individual lonely and isolated in the crowd, alienated, involved in repetitive, mechanical activities, bereft of meaningful social contact; &, again related to the sense of the otherness of the 'crowd of strangers', a 3rd theme is the 'impenetrability' of the 'dark city' - a teeming, maze-like, fog-bound and dangerous environment. It's not hard to see, I think, how closely related Williams' list is to the Holmesian detective story, and if we glance briefly at an example from The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes, we can see how this kind of conception shapes the narrative. The examples I've included on the handout are from 'The Red-Headed League':

The whole plot of the story is premised on the idea of a mass of strangers converging in response to a newspaper advertisement - a comic but alarming and inexplicable image of countless, faceless, anonymous men converging - a mass from which the individual, Jabez Wilson, is plucked out in an inexplicable way - someone apparently singular in the midst of the vast mass of London (& Holmes ultimate solution, of course, is in part an explanation that in effect reduces the mass of red-headed men to nothing more than a strategem, designed by

one individual - the criminal - to draw in another individual - by means of a mass advertisement; and the solution is in part made possible because Holmes, uniquely, is able to discover what it really is that makes Wilson 'singular' - ie, his ownership of a shop backing onto a bank).

Once Wilson has been picked out, the job he is given is peculiar - but at the same time the very image of the soulless, pointless urban routine - arbitrarilt (it seems) set to work (contentedly enough, it's true) copying a mass object, reproducing something that's already endlessly reproducible. But of course because the task is actually part of a very singular scheme it comes to an end when it has served its criminal purpose.

Watson, without any of Holmes superior insight, perceives the approach of the conclusion as confusing and grotesque, involving as it does a descent into the dark, maze-like passages where the mystery will be unravelled. It is Holmes insight into the geography of the city itself that has enabled him to make the necessary connexion: he has connected Wilson's premises (the 'faded and stagnant square') with 'the line of fine shops and stately business premises' which 'presents as great a contrast to [Wilson's shop] as the front of a picture does to the back'. Again, something apparently labyrinthine and amorphous emerges as explicable - isn't any longer dark and mysterious, and so a satisfactory resolution can be reached. The restoration of order: As at the end of the other Holmes stories, we can count on Holmes to be instrumental in the restoration of order. In 'The Speckled Band' the Doctor - the villain is conveniently and appropriately killed by his own murderous device; in 'The Red-Headed League' Holmes takes matters in hand with a hunting-crop - and the villain politely acknowledges that Holmes has 'done the thing very completely'.

If we think of some of the other stories, we'll see that the Holmesian expulsion of disorder doesn't by any means always involve direct retribution. He sometimes lets off the transgressor (or potential transgressor) - but only if in doing so he can be assured that the person won't cause any future breaches in the social order. To emphasise finally, though, my earlier point: the resolution is structurally 'singular' - that is, only one manifestation of disorder is sorted out. The serial nature of the Holmes stories presupposes a society in which disorder is endemic: and so, in a way, the number and 'reproducibility' of the stories is itself something that cuts against the reassuring identification and expulsion of an individual evil. There must be multitudes of evils - since, without them, there wouldn't be further adventures for Holmes to have. It would be disingenuous, of course, to maintain that this seriality makes the Holmes stories as unsettling as the modernist visions of, say, Conrad or Eliot. But the echoes are definitely there - 'a crowd flowed over London bridge, so many, I had not thought death had undone so many'; 'Unreal City Under the brown fog'; 'At the violet hour, when the eyes and back Turn upward from the desk, when the human engine waits Like a taxi throbbing waiting' - the urban anonymity, pointless labours and impenetrability of the urban scene of The Waste Land could easily be the setting for a detective story - though one holding out little hope of a restitution of order. It might be argued, though, that one non-fictional type of intellect that in fact has a good deal in common with Sherlock Holmes is the superior 'solving intellect' of the modernist writer himself - aloof, detached, artistically ordering the random and depressing disorder of modern experience. Just as the isolated rational intelligence of Holmes - the consciousness of the 'private eye' - penetrates the dark recesses of the city, so - the modernist writer looks down, and confers meaning and order on the fragments he observes.