The Secret Marriage of Sherlock Holmes

by Atkinson, Michael

• ISBN13: 9780472107100
• ISBN10: 0472107100
• Format: Hardcover
• Copyright: 1996-12-01
• Publisher: Univ of Michigan Pr

Summary

The Secret Marriage of Sherlock Holmes rereads nine of Arthur Conan Doyle's detective fictions, using the tools of modern literary theory, from depth psychology to deconstruction. Bluebeard, the kundalini serpent, and Conan Doyle's mother pop up alongside Jung, Nietzsche, and Derrida as guides to new understandings of these classic stories. Each chapter treats a different tale from a distinct critical perspective."Michael Atkinson gives us literary criticism at its best; the sheer fun of watching a bold and imaginative reader breathe into well-loved, but well-worn, fictions new and enchanting life. Atkinson's mind races as nimbly as Holmes's own, and he makes the stories our hansom cab through human nature itself. A tour de force!" -- Norman Holland, University of Florida, author of Murder in a Delphi Seminar

Author Biography

Michael Atkinson is Associate Professor of English and Comparative Literature, University of Cincinnati.

Table of Contents

Introduction	p. 1
"The Red-Headed League": Reading Holmes with a Holmesian Eye	p. 7
The Subtle Serpent in "The Adventure of the Speckled Band"	p. 23
"A Scandal in Bohemia": Virginity Preserved and the Secret Marriage of Sherlock Holmes (with a coda on Poe's "The Purloined Letter")	p. 41
Psychologizing the Text of A Study in Scarlet: Repression and the Textual Unconscious	p. 67
Small Change: Money and Transformation in "The Man with the Twisted Lip"	p. 93
Sherlock Holmes and the Empirical Imagination in "A Case of Identity"	p. 109
A Search for Truth and the Elusive Woman in "The Adventure of the Copper Beeches"	p. 125
Staging the Disappearance of Sherlock Holmes: The Aesthetics of Absence in "The Final Problem"	p. 141
Envoi: The Iconoclastic Detective: Overreading "The Adventure of the Six Napoleons"	p. 155
Critical Appendix	p. 173
Notes	p. 187
Works Cited	p. 197
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