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A.C. DOYLEВ’S HOLMESIAN SAGA AND THE MODERN WORLD: ALTERNATIVE REALITY IN THE TELEVISION SERIES SHERLOCK

Evita Badina, I. Presnakova, J. Semeneca

Abstract

In 1887 Arthur Conan Doyle acquainted the world with the first adventure of a consulting detective from 221B Baker Street, London. After a few years, Sherlock Holmes became an iconic figure of fictional detective - he was read about, admired, parodied, and adapted both for stage and screen. Sherlock Holmes has become one of the symbols of the Late Victorian Age. But in the 21st century, Sherlock Holmes is still popular. Long time ago the famous detective broke the spatial and temporal borders set by his creator. In the British-American television series Sherlock (2010 - 2017) re-imagination of Holmes' world is interrelated with the realia of the 21st century - nicotine patches, drones, Closed-Circuit Television cameras, smart phones, computers, memory sticks, the Internet. Sherlock Holmes' life is too often dependent on virtual reality: the great detective is a great manipulator and mystificator, but sometimes he is manipulated and mystified. In the television series, different expressions of virtual reality are represented with two dominating ones: as an inevitable characterization of the 21st-century life and as a metaphor of the image of a detective-computer whose brain is hard disk drive represented by so-called mind palace. The present research is the study of phenomenon of virtual reality in the 21st-century screen adaptation of Holmesian saga applying comparative and structurally-semiotic methods, thus focusing on the representation of spatial and temporal landmarks of traditional and modern Sherlock HolmesВ’ world and the depiction of a detectiveВ’s figure.

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DOI resolver: doi.org/10.5593/sgemsocial2018/6.2/S26.035

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