History, mystery, myth: A comparative study of narrative strategies in the 'Baija gongan' and 'The Complete Sherlock Holmes'

My dissertation delineates some of the possibilities of Comparative Literature beyond the context of Western civilization. Defining comparison as an operation which includes both similarity and contrast I demonstrate, through an analysis of difference, that a detailed examination of works from completely independent literary traditions is both feasible and fruitful.; I focus on structure and order in an anonymous collection of Chinese courtcase fiction from 1594 featuring Bao Zheng and the British detective stories featuring Sherlock Holmes by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle. I perform a close reading in tandem of the beginning of the two works, showing that they move in opposite directions: the Baijia gongan from a strongly historical opening to a mythic organization, and the Complete Sherlock Holmes from an historical to a scientific mode of representation. Both texts draw heavily upon their separate literary traditions to furnish their point of departure, but each collection reacts against earlier models to achieve something different. More importantly for my central thesis, reading the two texts together brings out these and other features, such as the differing role of illustrations and kinship systems in the two collections.; I then move to a consideration of larger blocks of text and how they are arranged and re-arranged over time. The manipulation of chronological sequence by Doyle, his editors, and later anthologizers furnish evidence that Holmes's status as the myth of scientific order is partly a result of manipulation of chronology, and that other re-orderings of the stories produce new meaning; this conclusion allows me to suggest that the Baijia gongan also achieves a mythic sense of the character Bao Zheng through the obscuring of chronological sequence.; Finally, I apply the conclusions drawn in the four preceeding chapters to literary criticism and offers suggestions for further avenues in comparative studies. Specifically, I note that the Baijia gongan employs a serial structure not unlike that found in the Sherlock Holmes stories, where it had been linked to its serial format in a magazine. I use this parallel to suggest that the linkage between literary texts and their historical and social milieu is not a simple or necessary one.