• Gothic
• Sherlock Holmes
• Victorian Literature

Sherlock Holmes is generally portrayed as a beacon of rationality, the scientific detective par excellence who with his logic solutions acts as a guardian and normalizer of late Victorian society. The aim of this thesis is to demonstrate how these normalizing efforts are inextricably intertwined with Gothic echoes, which sometimes challenge the felicitous clarification of the mystery.
The first chapter provides a theoretical introduction to the Gothic genre, beginning with the complex dialectic between novel and romance and subsequently covering the main specific features of early Gothic novels.
The second chapter offers a diachronic assessment of the evolution of the classic Gothic into Romantic Gothic and, later, into Victorian fin de siècle novels. The analysis includes an evaluation of the Gothic parodies of Jane Austen and Thomas Love Peacock; particular attention is also paid to the work of Edgar Allan Poe.
Sensation novels are then considered as the joining link between the Gothic genre and detective fiction, focusing in particular on the work of Wilkie Collins. This third chapter successively dwells upon the development of crime fiction through the works of Collins, Dickens, Poe and Gaboriau, culminating then into a brief introduction to the figure of Sherlock Holmes.
Following this theoretical overview, three specific chapters are dedicated to illustrating how Doyle reinterpreted Gothic tropes in structuring Holmes’ adventures, and to which effect. In particular, the fourth chapter considers the anxieties produced by scientific and technologic development in the Victorian era, covering Darwinian regression, Lombrosian criminal anthropology and the uncanny construction of the figure of the detective.
Similarly, the fifth chapter analyzes the perception of spaces and of the Imperial enterprise in the Holmesian Canon, exploring its portrayal of the countryside, of the metropolis, and its problematic relationship with exoticism.
Finally, the last chapter examines the emergence of disruptive forces which act upon the object of Holmes’ protection, the late Victorian society and its apparent solidity. The focus will be primarily placed on family as the key nucleus of the social construction, on secret societies and criminal organization as disruptive inner forces, and on the changing role of women.