Author(s): Urszula Żoczek, University of Wrocław, Poland
Journal: Polish Journal of English Studies
Issue: 11.1 (2025)
Date: 15/06/2025
Page: 22
Quote As: Urszula Żoczek, Early Parodies of Arthur Conan Doyle’s Sherlock Holmes Stories, Polish Journal of English Studies 11.1 (2025): 22-33
Abstract
The main objective of this paper is to explore how parody operates within, and engages with, the genre of detective fiction. By treating the selected texts as a form of literary review of Arthur Conan Doyle’s works, the focus of the paper is on the analysis of the reception of Doyle’s Sherlock Holmes stories as carried out through the parodies and pastiches of the Great Detective. While a number of classifications of detective fiction have been proposed, little has been said about the genre’s relationship with parody. Similarly, the figure of Sherlock Holmes, arguably the most influential creation within the genre, has rarely been analyzed in this context. Although many scholars acknowledge parodies and pastiches as a reflection of the popularity of the character, few of those texts, especially those created as an early response to Doyle’s works, have been discussed. This paper examines two such texts – Charles C. Rothwell’s “Adventures of Sherwood Hoakes: An Interrupted Honeymoon” and A. Dewar Willock’s “A Study in Red,” a parody and a pastiche respectively – which, although included in collections of parodies and pastiches, have not yet been examined in any capacity. Parody, understood both as an element of the structure of detective fiction and as a commentary on its conventions, serves as a tool for examining selected texts which constituted early responses to Doyle’s work. This paper analyzes the texts as a means of literary criticism, in which the parodic device has been utilized to reflect the attitudes of Doyle’s contemporaries toward his stories, demonstrating how parodic device can be used both as a vehicle for criticism and as a means of paying homage to the co-creator of the genre.
Keywords: parody, pastiche, detective fiction, criticism, absurd
Works Cited
Benstock, Bernard, and Thomas F. Staley, eds. 1988. British Mystery Writers, 1860–1919. Detroit: Gale Research.
Dentith, Simon. 2000. Parody. The New Critical Idiom.Abingdon: Routledge.
Doyle, Arthur Conan. n.d. A Study in Scarlet. Sherlock-Holm.es. Accessed April 30, 2025. https://sherlock-holm.es/stories/pdf/a4/2-sided/stud.pdf.
Doyle, Arthur Conan. n.d. “The Adventure of the Noble Bachelor.” Sherlock-Holm.es. Accessed April 30, 2025. https://sherlock-holm.es/stories/pdf/a4/2-sided-reversed/nobl.pdf.
MacDonald, Janice. 1997. “Parody and Detective Fiction”. In Theory and Practice of Classic Detective Fiction, edited by Jerome H. Delamater and Ruth Prigozy, 61–73. Westport: Greenwood Press.
Rothwell, Charles C. n. d. “Adventures of Sherwood Hoakes: An Interrupted Honeymoon”. In The Arthur Conan Doyle Encyclopedia. Accessed April 30, 2025. https://www.arthur-conan-doyle.com/index.php/Adventures_of_Sherwood_Hoakes:_An_Interrupted_Honeymoon.
Todorov, Tzvetan. 1966. “The Typology of Detective Fiction”. Scribd. 137–144. https://www.scribd.com/document/669889790/Todorov-Typology-of-Detective-Fiction.
Watt, Peter Ridgway, and Joseph Green. 2003. The Alternative Sherlock Holmes: Pastiches, Parodies and Copies. Abingdon: Routledge.
Willock, A. Dewar. n. d. “A Study in Red”. The Arthur Conan Doyle Encyclopedia. Accessed April 30, 2025. https://www.arthur-conan-doyle.com/index.php/A_Study_in_Red.
© by the author, licensee Polish Journal of English Studies. This article is an open access article distributed under the terms and conditions of the Creative Commons Attribution license CC-BY-NC-ND 4.0 (creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/)
Received: 16.05.2025; reviewed 3.06.2025; accepted 10.06.2025