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‘The Gift of Seeing’ – ‘The Eyes of Faith’: Visuelle Evidenz und Übersinnliches in Julian Barnes’ Arthur & George und anderen neo-viktorianischen Detektivromanen

Published/Copyright: March 15, 2014
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Zeitschrift für Anglistik und Amerikanistik
From the journal Zeitschrift für Anglistik und Amerikanistik Volume 56 Issue 1

Abstract

This article is concerned with the interlaced themes of visual and supernatural ‘evidence’ in Julian Barnes’s novel Arthur & George (2005), which rewrites an episode from the life of Arthur Conan Doyle, creator of Sherlock Holmes, concerned with a real-life criminal case. Briefly analysing how epistemological questions and modes of detection were represented in Victorian precursors of the genre (Doyle, Poe, Dickens, Collins), the article proceeds to establish the generic conventions of the ‘postmodern’ neo-Victorian detective novel, differentiating it from High Postmodernism’s ‘metaphysical detective story’ and looking, apart from Barnes’s novel, at Peter Ackroyd’s Dan Leno and the Limehouse Golem (1994), Peter Carey’s Jack Maggs (1997), and Louis Bayard’s Mr Timothy (2003). In order to make visible the invisible, not only former ophthal-mologist Doyle’s Sherlock Holmes but also other Victorian and neo-Victorian detec-tives - including the Doyle figure in Arthur & George - are relying on the latest visual aids such as photography, X-rays, microscopes and binoculars as well as on ‘pseudo’-scientific investigative techniques such as mesmerism or séances. Especially in Arthur & George the two seemingly antagonistic discourses of rationalism and spiritualism are closely intertwined

Online erschienen: 2014-03-15
Erschienen im Druck: 2008-01

© 2014 by Walter de Gruyter GmbH & Co.

Articles in the same Issue

  1. Titelei
  2. Inhalt
  3. Editorial
  4. Language and the Edges of Humanity: Orang-Utans and Wild Girls in Monboddo and Peacock
  5. Staging Restoration England in the Post-Heritage Theatre Film: Gender and Power in Stage Beauty and The Libertine
  6. ‘The Gift of Seeing’ – ‘The Eyes of Faith’: Visuelle Evidenz und Übersinnliches in Julian Barnes’ Arthur & George und anderen neo-viktorianischen Detektivromanen
  7. Passion, Plainness, Allegory: Frank Chin, American Literary Tradition, and the Question of Style
  8. Visualised Incomprehensibility of Trauma in Jonathan Safran Foer’s Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close
  9. Buchbesprechungen
  10. Bucheingänge
  11. Die Autoren dieses Heftes
https://doi.org/10.1515/zaa.2008.56.1.31

Articles in the same Issue

  1. Titelei
  2. Inhalt
  3. Editorial
  4. Language and the Edges of Humanity: Orang-Utans and Wild Girls in Monboddo and Peacock
  5. Staging Restoration England in the Post-Heritage Theatre Film: Gender and Power in Stage Beauty and The Libertine
  6. ‘The Gift of Seeing’ – ‘The Eyes of Faith’: Visuelle Evidenz und Übersinnliches in Julian Barnes’ Arthur & George und anderen neo-viktorianischen Detektivromanen
  7. Passion, Plainness, Allegory: Frank Chin, American Literary Tradition, and the Question of Style
  8. Visualised Incomprehensibility of Trauma in Jonathan Safran Foer’s Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close
  9. Buchbesprechungen
  10. Bucheingänge
  11. Die Autoren dieses Heftes
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