Victorian Detective Fiction and the Nature of Evidence The Scientific Investigations of Poe, Dickens and Doyle

by Frank, Lawrence

• ISBN13: 9781403911391
• ISBN10: 1403911398
• Format: Hardcover
• Copyright: 2003-10-03
• Publisher: Palgrave Macmillan

Summary

Lawrence Frank investigates an intertextual exchange between 19th-century historical disciplines (philology, cosmology, geology, archaeology and evolutionary biology) and the detective fictions of Poe, Dickens, and Doyle. In responding to the writings of figures like Lyell, Darwin and E.B. Taylor, detective fiction initiated a transition from scriptural literalism and a prevailing Natural Theology to a naturalistic, secular worldview. In the process, detective fiction skeptically examined both the evidence such disciplines used and their narrative rendering of the world.

Author Biography

Lawrence Frank is Emeritus Professor of English, University of Oklahoma.

Table of Contents

Acknowledgements

Introduction: Contexts