1. Introduction
Detective fiction is a relatively young genre of literature: “The idea that crime, particularly murder, provided entertainment was only born in the first decades of the nineteenth century, but it would bloom into one of the greatest mass-media interests of all time” (Worsley 17, italics in the original). In spite of its youthfulness, this genre has already developed its own rules and regulations/conventions, as well as established its own canon.
Sir Arthur Conan Doyle’s detective stories as well as Dame Agatha Christie’s whodunits are placed among/considered the classic works of the genre//are the classical representatives of the genre. While the former creates Sherlock Holmes at the time when detective fiction just appeared…show more content… Although both characters are featured/appear in both novels and short stories, it is the latter ones that are in focus in this paper. The purpose of the paper is to compare Sherlock Holmes stories with Hercule Poirot stories in order to trace similarities as well as differences between these two detective series. The research concerns/is focused on, first, the character/person of the protagonist – his characteristics and skills, as well as his cooperation with the sidekick; second, on the category of crime, including different kinds/types of crime and characters of both criminals and…show more content… The main part, in its turn, is subdivided into three sections. The first section discusses some general questions in the development of the British detective fiction: it touches upon historical and literary preconditions of the emergence of the genre, discusses Arthur Conan Doyle’s contribution to the popularization of detective literature and explains Agatha Christie’s position as the Queen of Crime. The second section is dedicated to Sherlock Holmes and Hercule Poirot series. Special attention is paid to the character of the sleuth, his methods of investigation and his assistant. Furthermore, the way how crime, criminals and victims are depicted in the series are also discussed. In the last section of the main part the results of close reading are represented. Taking into consideration the information discussed in the first two sections, two collection of the short stories are compared – Adventures of Sherlock Holmes and Poirot Investigates.
Christie’s novels have been on the limelight, although she also wrote short stories featuring the same character, being it Miss Marple or Hercule