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    The Savage Genius of Sherlock Holmes

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    Neill_Sherlock Holmes.pdf (742.1Kb)
    Issue Date
    2012-06-01
    Author
    Neill, Anna
    Publisher
    Cambridge University Press
    Type
    Article
    Article Version
    Scholarly/refereed, publisher version
    Metadata
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    Abstract
    When Dr. Watson first meets Sherlock Holmes in A Study in Scarlet, the former is an itinerant medical veteran of the Second Afghan War who, sick and rootless, without “kith or kin” in England, is naturally drawn to London, “that great cesspool into which all the loungers and idlers of the empire are irreversibly drained” (6; ch. 1). Lacking emotional ties, physical strength, and purpose of any real kind, Watson seems to demonstrate the “feverish restlessness” and “blunted discouragement” that Max Nordau described as degenerative symptoms of the age. Watson's identification with urban refuse of the empire, together with his metaphor of the metropolitan landscape as cultural sewer, suggests Nordau's degenerative “feeling[s] of immanent perdition and extinction” (2) and emphasizes both the pervasiveness of modern social decay and the destructive potential of insalubrious influences that lurk within the civilized world as much as they do on its remote peripheries.
    Description
    This is the published version, made available with the permission of the publisher. Copyright 2009, Cambridge University Press.
    URI
    http://hdl.handle.net/1808/12710
    DOI
    https://doi.org/10.1017/S1060150309090378
    Collections
    • English Scholarly Works [308]
    Citation
    Neill, Anna. "The Savage Genius of Sherlock Holmes." Victorian Literature and Culture 37 (2009): 611-626. http://dx.doi.com/10.1017/S1060150309090378

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    Contact KU ScholarWorks
    785-864-8983
    KU Libraries
    1425 Jayhawk Blvd
    Lawrence, KS 66045
    785-864-8983

    KU Libraries
    1425 Jayhawk Blvd
    Lawrence, KS 66045
    Image Credits
     

     

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