Sherlock Holmes between Victorian utilitarianism and aestheticism

Abstract

In A Study in Scarlet (1887), Sherlock Holmes is exclusively interested in forms of knowledge that prove functional to his professional field and even claims to be indifferent to the workings of the solar system. This utilitarian view of knowledge will be traced in the article to the Victorian debate between liberal education, based on the classics, and vocational education, scientifically oriented. Holmes, however, can be regarded not only as the scientific detective par excellence, a personification of the positivist episteme, but also as Doyle's response to the aesthetic movement of the late 19th century. It is from this tension between science and art that Holmes derives his power to appeal to the most diverse readers, as shown by his success as a myth of modernity.