A study in character : an analysis of Sherlock Holmes Characterization in A study in Sarlet and elementary's "pilot"

Abstract

This study aims at analyzing the characterizations of the fictional detective Sherlock Holmes in Arthur Conan Doyle’s text, A Study in Scarlet (1887), and in a contemporary television appropriation, Elementary (CBS, 2012-), in order to investigate its representations, as well as some of the choices made when adapting the original first person narration into film. This is carried out through a close reading and analysis of the source text in order to identify how the character is (re)presented in the novel – mainly through the specific point of view of the narrator, John Watson – and later in the television adaptations, focusing on the transposition of narrative elements and language specific of a first person literary narrator into filmic ones, also considering how they aid in the construction of the image of a contemporary Sherlock Holmes.