Arthur Conan Doyle and the Swiss Literary Landscape. The Description of the Reichenbach Falls in The Final Problem

Abstract

The essay examines A. C. Doyle's short story The Final Problem (1893) set in the Bernese Alps, where the detective falls  down the Reichenbach Falls while struggling with Moriarty. In a first stage, the article higlights  the central role that the Alps from the 18th century onwards played in literature and art, especially in Switzerland (e.g. Haller, Rousseau, Hodler) and in Great Britain (Byron, Ruskin, Turner) and it  contextualises the text within Doyle's biography. In a second stage, the essay    deals with  the representation of space,  in particular with  the implications of the dimension of verticality in the short story, which alludes to and  transvaluates culturological discourses particularly rooted in the Swiss context  such as the sublime and the dichotomy between Alpine microcosm and city.