O método científico: do bicho geográfico a Sherlock Holmes

Suponhamos que sejamos grandes aventureiros, daqueles estupidamente vidrados em trilhas. Essas, dependendo do caminho percorrido, leva-nos a caminhos vários – uns já previsíveis e outros ainda inexploráveis. A investigação científica depende de um “leque multifacetado de procedimentos e vivências intelectuais e técnicas”, para que seus objetivos possam ou não ser atingidos – denominação dada aos métodos científicos. Indubitavelmente, o método é o coração pulsante de um trabalho. Quando bem empregado, demonstra aos leitores e interessados em pesquisa uma espécie de “marcação intelectual e técnica” que possibilitou-nos eastear uma bandeira num cume. Gosto, em primeira pessoa, defini-los como traços característicos da ciência com particularidades intrínsecas de criador...

Tyrannous Minds and Tamed Bodies: The Curious Case of Irene Adler from Canon to Screen

Appearing in the singular short story “A Scandal in Bohemia” in Sir Arthur Conan Doyle’s Sherlock Holmes series, the character of Irene Adler has been adapted and reconstructed in subsequent literary and visual media. Twenty-first century screen adaptations have swivelled upon postfeminist re-appropriations of the character and overt sexualisation of the ‘body’, thereby engaging in reassessment of the Irene-Sherlock relationship and problematizing gendered presentations of the character. Locating Irene in a heteronormative space, such narratives have attempted to revise the image of the cross-dressing ‘adventuress’ through varied portrayals which seemingly broaden her scope by means of her deliberate transgressions of fixed gender tropes. This article, by taking into account the gendered power-play embedded in three popular twenty first century screen adaptations of the text, namely, the films Sherlock Holmes (2009) and Sherlock Holmes: A Game of Shadows (2011), CBS’s Elementary (2012-2019) and BBC’s Sherlock (2010-2017), scrutinizes the dilemma of presentation of Irene Adler through the lenses of sexual dynamics and gendered performances.

“Make What You Can of It If You Are a Philosopher”: An Essay on Sir Arthur Conan Doyle’s “Christian Spiritualism”

A number of years ago, renowned English biographer Andrew Lycett wrote a short piece about Sir Arthur Conan Doyle that highlighted the seemingly irreconcilable tension between Doyle the creator of the “super-rational” detective Sherlock Holmes, and Doyle the passionate defender of “Christian Spiritualism”. In this essay, I aim to explore this alleged tension, ultimately arguing that these two Doyles need not be in tension—the only true tension being between the two terms in Doyle’s preferred philosophy, “Christian Spiritualism”.

‘A great traffic was going on, as usual, in Whitehall’: Public Places and Secret Spaces in Sherlock Holmes’s London

Arthur Conan Doyle is rarely considered a master of spy fiction, but several Sherlock Holmes stories were highly influential in the development of this genre in the late Victorian and Edwardian periods. This paper examines three of these stories – ‘The Naval Treaty’, ‘The Second Stain’, and ‘The Bruce-Partington Plans’ – and shows how they use the topography of London to explore themes of secrecy, concealment, and political power. Holmes investigates place and space in two ways: he discovers what happens behind the closed doors of government buildings like the Foreign Office in Whitehall and the Woolwich Arsenal, and he reads public spaces (like the London Underground and the streets of Westminster) to detect relationships not apparent to those lacking his criminological skills. These stories inspired contemporary and later authors of espionage fiction as they exemplify some of the purposes and pleasures of the genre – the romanticisation of bureaucracy and insights into secret history.

Sir Arthur Conan Doyle in London's Streets

One of the attractions of the Sherlock Holmes stories is their location in real, if somewhat disguised locations. Sherlock Holmes's address in Baker Street is one of the most famous in literature. This article sketches the history of the street and looks at the attempts made over the years to identify the exact location of Holmes's apartment. Conan Doyle first came to London to set up a specialist medical practice not far from Harley Street in 1891, though he had made a number of visits to relatives in London during his youth. He did not stay long, moving to the suburbs when he gave medical practice up in favour of full-time writing. In later life he maintained a London flat and owned and ran his own bookshop and museum nearby to further his Spiritualist crusade. These links with London are examined, highlighting the various addresses in which he and his family lived or did business.

From Hamlet to Holmes: literary detective tradition

Exposed to the mystery of his father’s suspicious death, young Hamlet followed the riddle of solving it in the longest tragedy of Shakespeare. By suspension and the lengthy nature of detective works, Shakespeare seems to have initiated a new subgenre in drama which may have later on been converted into an independent subgenre in the novel by Edgar Allan Poe, Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, and Agatha Christie through their imaginative characters, Auguste Dupin, Sherlock Holmes and the pair of Hercules Poirot with Miss Marple respectively. Fyodor Dostoevsky may have also spread the net of Hamletian subtext in his Crime and Punishment. Plotting a perfect crime by the murderers and the public approval of the plan, on one hand, and the inconvincible mind of the hero which ultimately undo the seemingly unsolvable puzzle, on the other, construct the very core of all aforementioned works of Shakespeare, Poe, and Doyle. The unanticipated and unpredicted findings of either Holmes or Hamlet defeat the expectations of the audience and bring the runaway justice back to her groom.

The Archetypes of Holmesian World: A Study of Sherlock (BBC) and Elementary (CBS) as Appropriations of Archetypes

The idea of Sherlock Holmes or what I am calling Holmesness has evolved with each of Holmes’s onscreen representations and with it has evolved his Victorian England. My paper argues that Holmes has become an emblem of victory of good over evil, thriving in his ecosystem comprised of other characters, incidents and Holmes’s Victorian England; and Holmes can only be successfully represented along with his ecosystem. To support this, I will analyse two recent television adaptations of Sherlock Holmes – Sherlock by BBC and Elementary by CBS and highlight how these series have successfully adapted Holmes and his ecosystem emblematically—not as narrative laments, but as archetypes. The chosen adaptations have not only appropriated Holmes in contemporary time, but also have appropriated his world as well.