Detective Fiction As Classics Over The Years Of A Hundred

Both Edgar Allan Poe and Arthur Conan Doyle are the well-known creators of detective fiction. The American writer.Allan Poe writes only five detective tales in his writing career, but he sets up the classical creation mode of this kind of literary genre. Poe is regarded as the originator of detective fiction. While the British novelist Conan Doyle totally produces sixty detective fiction during his whole life time, and he successfully creates the famous detective—Sherlock Holmes. Doyle is recognized as the most distinguished detective fiction writer. After Allan Poe, Conan Doyle brings the detective fiction into a golden age. Both of them make unparalleled contributions to the development of detective fiction.Combined with the research of Allan Poe’s detective tales and Conan Doyle’s detective fiction at home and abroad, the thesis tries to make a comparative analysis. The author of the thesis finds that Conan Doyle’s detective fiction inherits and develops Allan Poe’s detective tales a lot. In terms of characters creation, plot formation and narrative characteristics, Conan Doyle’s detective fiction inherits Allan Poe’s detective tales. Characters creation includes characters sharing similar patterns, characters of same personalities and characters creation by contrast description; plot formation consists of thrills, suspenses and logical reasoning; narrative characteristics is made up of unexpected narrative perspective and unusual narrative patterns. In addition, Conan Doyle brings forth new ideas in detective with vivid imagery, broader vision to view the capitalist society, and multidimensional cases descriptions. Detective with vivid imagery includes more vividly illustrated images, wonderful abilities and dual personalities; broader vision to view the capitalist society consists of the British capitalist prosperity and paintings of the Victorian living scenes; multidimensional cases descriptions is made up of security, privacy, property, revenge and spy.Based on a review of previous studies relevant to the detective works by two writers, the thesis tries to explore the specific influence of Allan Poe’s detective tales on Conan Doyle’s detective fiction. Through comparative analysis of two writers’ detective works the author of the thesis hopes to shed some light on the future studies on American and British detective fiction.