Comparative Analysis of the Objective Reality in Conan Doyle’s and Edgar Poe’s Detectives: Mythological Play with Consciousness of Reader and Antimyth

Анотація

The article deals with the problem of constructing the artistic reality in the detective works of american writer E. Poe and the English writer, partly the heir of the American author's manner of detective writing, A. Conan Doyle. The detective heritage of two writers is considered in a comparative key. Since traditionally, though somewhat arbitrarily, one can distinguish three vectors of the realization of artistic reality (objective reality, social reality and psychological reality), the very first aspect is put into the center of the current research, namely the objective reality. The research of the fabric of the texts of these works and their out-of-text being made it possible to conclude that the objective reality of detectives about Sherlock Holmes is intentionally programmed on the myth. At the same time, the detectives about Dupin can be considered as an example of intentional disassembly of the myth. Actually, the pragmatics of constructing the objective reality of works was directly reflected in the images of the main characters, which are its main expressions. Comparison of the objective realities of the Canon with the reality of “The Gold-Bug” outlined new fundamental differences in the substantive reality of detective works by Poe and Conan Doyle, however, did not add any mythical potential to the objective reality of the works by the American writer.