- Title
- A “Horrific Breakdown of Reason": Holmes and the Postcolonial Anti-Detective Novel, Lost Ground
- Creator
- Naidu, Samantha
- Date
- 2017
- Type
- text
- Type
- book
- Identifier
- http://hdl.handle.net/10962/157980
- Identifier
- vital:40136
- Identifier
- ISBN 978-1-137-55595-3
- Description
- Using the notion of “negative hermeneutics,” this chapter examines how Michiel Heyns’s novel Lost Ground draws on the heritage of the Sherlock Holmes stories. It argues that Heyns’s representation of contemporary South Africa necessitates a shift from the emphasis on the epistemological quests of nineteenth-century detective fiction to the “negative hermeneutics” and ontological concerns of postcolonial anti-detective fiction. An analysis of Lost Ground reveals direct intertextual and metatextual references to “The Silver Blaze,” yet the novel subversively presents a detective figure that is the antithesis of Holmes. Thus the chapter demonstrates how in postcolonial social and cultural contexts the ratiocinative process is hermeneutically inadequate and socio-political analysis comes to replace, or combine with, the feats of reason epitomized by Holmes.
- Format
- 17 pages, pdf
- Publisher
- Palgrave Macmillan
- Language
- English
- Relation
- Naidu, S., 2017. A “Horrific Breakdown of Reason”: Holmes and the Postcolonial Anti-Detective Novel, Lost Ground. In Sherlock Holmes in Context (pp. 115-131). Palgrave Macmillan, London
- Rights
- Publisher
- Rights
- Use of this resource is governed by the terms and conditions of Arcadia Books Ltd Statement (http://arcadiabooks.co.uk/sales)
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Collections
Naidu, Sam (Prof)
RU Books and Book Chapters
RU Department of Literary Studies in English
| Thumbnail | File | Description | Size | Format | |||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| View Details Download | SOURCE1 | A Horrific Breakdown of Reason.pdf | 572 KB | Adobe Acrobat PDF | View Details Download |