A study in holmes

The Hound of the Baskerville was published on the Strand Magazine from august 1901 to april
1902.
Many Victorian novels were serialized: every chapter has a sense by itself.
Sensational fiction: they create addicton in the reader that were curious to see what would
happen in the next chapter of the story and wanted to buy the installements every month or
week. Sensational author: Charles Dickens.
Probably the tradition of the sensational fiction came from the story A pair of blue eyes: the main
characters is hanging from a cliff. He thinks about his possible future during all the story.
The recipe for sensation book was: make them cry (melodrama), laugh (comedy) and make them
wait.
The realm was the one of the popular literature: the success was also due to a netwotk of
distribution. The first stage of publication was the serialization, then they were published in multi-
volume. This stage was before the installements so people who were too curious to see how the
adventure was going to end they could buy the book.
They were distribuited by circulating library. The most famous one was The woman in white. After
that, it was republished in more economic edition that were sold in railway kiosk: people could
read because the train were mechanic. They couldnt do it before, because the train was a carriage
drive by horses.
From the cover of this economic book you can see the sensational element: there was a parody of
what happens in the story.
The turn of the screw: published one year after Dracula. There are a group of people that tell real
crime story that they have experienced. In that time, crime story has supernatural element.
The main character experience strange event that are true or that they have only imagined.
In sensation story the detective is an amateur one,they are not professional. They are directive
involved in what happened and they investigate to discharge somebody else.
The law and the lady: a woman wants to prove that his husband is innocent. There are a lot of
woman that become detective. They fight against the villain and the god providence helps them.
Arthur Conan Doyle
A study in scarlet: first scientific detective. In this story there are gothic element. When he wrote
it, he was very young. No one wanted to published it.
In the first two chapter the new detective was introduced.
He worked as a physician but he didnt have a lot of client so he decided to write. Watson was an
invalid after the second Afghanian war: he was a doctor there. In the first chapter, London was
described as the gravity centers for the one that are not engage in imperial adventure or the one
that have already returned. There is a sense of corruption and danger in the city. A lot of people
involved in the cases of Holmes, are people that have returned from war.
Watson is in search of a house, the first meeting between the two happen in a laboratory. Readers
didnt know that Holmes was a detective: he looks like a criminal than a detective.
He is strange to live with because he has strange habit: Watson begin to think that he use some
narcotic. Watson is surprised by his selective knowledge: he is as ignorant In some subject as
intelligent in other. One time Watson try to explain to him how the solar system work; Holmes
listen carefully but at the end says that he will forget all. He doesnt want to know about them. His
mind is like an attic: if there are too much thing, there is no possibility to take out thing that are
important.
We are in the age of specialized knowledge: debate between the liberal education(free aducation,
also for poor people) and the specialized form.
He is not a machine, there is also an emotional side. But he has problem with relation with other
people people.
In a cover of the book A study in scarlet, the crime was presented in the man dressed in red. After
having heard about the case, he invite Watson to lunch and to a concert of violin. The crime is
related to the art.
He play the violin but he improvises. The music is a language of humanity, it was created before
the language.
Holmes thinks through music:
The violin was the strument is associated with the davil: Niccolo Paganini( a violinist) was not
buried for his association with the devil. The violin enable him to connect with his inconscio.
He needs very strong stimulants to escape his enemy: boredom.
During the narration of the adventure, things change: with the passing of years, he become
interested in every subject, becoming famous and famous.
The brother is omniscient: he is more intelligent than Sherlock. He has a great memory. The
brother is presented in the case that inquire the geo-political balance.

The murders of the rue morgue

Godwin: deterministic view of crime, response to the envirorment. Reverse composition to have a
coherent plot.
Poe knows about Godwins technique, in fact he said he wrote The Raven following his
technique, he said so also in A chapter of suggestion (1845) This form of writing requires an
active reader. Also Poe was wrong in saying that his type of writing had never been defined
because actually Aristotle talked about it , but in relation to tragedy.
Also Horace Walpole in the preface of his book wrote about something like that.suspence=terror
The reader is captivated by the plot.
Gothic element: dareness, night (which the detective loved, poe loves paradox). He does not good
in communicating, the fact that the friend is telling the story means that we dont know what is
happening in his mind. Poe with this story is shaping a new kind of reader: the use of we (what
were writing is objective, the truth, introduction presented in the form of an essay, intermediate
stage of the wind-writing in which we see Dupins rational way of thinking; investigative attitude=
you need a broader view not to close. Also when he goes to the rue morgue, he goes first around
on the backyard to look at the building all around.
Importance of the language: the two voices (Frenchmen plus the other). Poe was obsessed with
the language. He was interested in criptografy (The Gold Bug). One of the Poes epistemological
hero was Chaupellion.
Detective: analysis plus imaginative (guess): ingenuity=memory/ alalysis=creativity
Fancy(police=routine) vs imagination(detective:thinking outside the box): st Coloridge
imagination=creativity, fancy=memory
Orangotans motive= unintentional, he wanted to shave. Uncanny= something that remember a
human but it is not
Dupin observes, hes above preconstituited ideas, the bodies of the victim speak. They give Dupin
the clues he needed to discover the identity of the murderer.