Early Short Stories by Arthur Conan Doyle as the Pre-History of Sherlock Holmes Canon

Abstract

The article focuses on the deep analysis of two earliest Conan Doyle’s short stories: their textual, image-bearing expression, poetics, etc. The aim of the analysis is to track the stages of formation of the author’s creative identity and find out the premises of constructing the ever-lived character of Sherlock Holmes, so-called recipe of his growing and maturity in the consciousness of the author. By extracting relevant common and unique criteria in the proposed triad (“The Haunted Grange at Goresthorpe” (1877), “The Mystery of Sasassa Valley” (1879), Sherlock Holmes Canon (1887-1927) it has become possible to rebuild initial scheme of composing characters and narration by Arthur Conan Doyle, his initial conception of the fiction model of world in the very first short story and its development and means of implementation in Sherlock Holmes Canon. The methods involved are also efficient while searching the mechanisms of construction of the Overman’s myth and the individual Doyle’s variant of the archetype of Savior. The results of the research demonstrate that Sherlock Holmes is the most advanced literary character since the earliest period of Doyle’s creative work, the true top of his early and later creative laborious efforts. One more point might be concluded: despite the fact that all his life long Doyle has been escaping from the glory as an author of Sherlock Holmes, exactly the idea about this literary hero and this model of fiction was ever-presented internally, at least implicitly,in his creative subconsciousness. Thus, from the dilemma psychologist would extract almost Freud’s example of inner conflict and struggle between the Id, Ego and Super-Ego of the author.