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Quantum Entanglements in Arthur Conan Doyle’s The Hound of the Baskervilles

2022; Springer International Publishing; Linguagem: Inglês

10.1007/978-3-031-09241-1_3

2634-6346

Adrian Tait,

Contemporary Literature and Criticism

In The Hound of the Baskervilles (1901–2), Arthur Conan Doyle created one of the most memorable creatures in detective fiction: a menacing, savage hound that imperils the lives of those who come into contact with it. Yet the novella also highlights the parallels and connections between Holmes and hound, a doubling grounded in their mutual exposure to the agential presence of Dartmoor itself. Drawing on new materialist theories, and in particular, the work of Karen Barad and Donna Haraway, this chapter explores the (quantum) entanglements that define Doyle's masterful creation, its decentring of the great Holmes, and the reciprocal shift it makes in the status of the hound itself. As the chapter nevertheless argues, the creature that emerges from these entanglements cannot in the last analysis be reduced to any single reading of it: it is its own haunting self, even in death.