The Consulting Artist: Notes on the Hermeneutics of Detection in the Sherlock Holmes Canon.

Abstract

The following pages tackle the Sherlock Holmes canon (in the late Victorian period) by probing into the hermeneutical nature embedded in the system of detection it develops. After discussing the notion of “revealing,” the article delves into several strategies that lead up to the construing of Sherlock Holmes not so much as a detective, but as an artist, specifically, a decadent, fin-de-siècle type of artist, in the aesthetic vein of Oscar Wilde. Furthermore, the overall reinterpretation of the character helps disclose the postmodern momentum that sits at the core of the Sherlock Holmes canon in particular and the decadent movement in general. Lastly, the article analyses the novel The Sign of Four (1890) in order to illustrate the general principles posited here and how they bespeak part of the attraction the character of Holmes showcases nowadays. 1