Gyles Brandreth’s "Oscar Wilde and the Candlelight Murders"
Rewriting Oscar through Holmesian Detective Fiction
DOI:
https://doi.org/10.4454/syn.v5.1196Keywords:
Oscar Wilde, Arthur Conan Doyle, Biofiction, Detective Fiction, Gyles BrandrethAbstract
Oscar Wilde’s status as a cultural icon has sparked a diversified range of scholarly evaluations, including examinations of his various portrayals as a fictional character. Throughout the years, these portrayals have often depicted Wilde immersed in detective plots, or even assuming the role of a detective himself, from E.W. Hornung’s gentleman-thief Raffles to recent Holmesian pastiches and Gyles Brandreth’s ongoing series of novels, The Oscar Wilde Murder Mysteries (since 2007). The number of adaptations of this type raises the question of why the figure of Wilde turns out to be so productive within this particular genre. The present paper considers Brandreth’s novel Oscar Wilde and the Candlelight Murders as a blend of biofiction and detective fiction, highlighting how the two forms are here so integrated as to provide a complex picture of the author. Specifically, it looks at some of the recurrent features of what might be deemed Brandreth’s model, i.e. Doyle’s Holmesian Canon. I will consequently explore how this blend of forms takes shape in Candlelight Murders in terms of narrative structure, characterisation, and metanarrative processes.
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