Naked Is the Best Disguise
Naked Is the Best Disguise: The Death and Resurrection of Sherlock Holmes (ISBN 0-14-004030-7) is a 1974 book by Samuel Rosenberg speculating on alleged hidden meanings in the works of Arthur Conan Doyle.[1]
Rosenberg also examines the influence of Conan Doyle's writings on other works, especially James Joyce's Ulysses. The book argues for a surprising relationship between the Sherlock Holmes stories and Nietzsche, Oscar Wilde, Dionysus, Christ, Catullus, John Bunyan, Robert Browning, Boccaccio, Napoleon, Racine, Frankenstein, Flaubert, George Sand, Socrates, Poe, General Charles George Gordon, Melville, Joyce's Ulysses, T. S. Eliot, and many others.
The title comes from lines in William Congreve's The Double Dealer (1694).
- No mask like open truth to cover lies,
- As to go naked is the best disguise.
It alludes to Rosenberg's premise that Conan Doyle left clues throughout his works, revealing his innermost hidden thoughts.
Rosenberg's book was received with disdain by Sherlock Holmes enthusiasts and scholars in the 1970s. It is recognized as the first book of literary criticism about Doyle to appear in print; many other more respected works have followed.
See also
Notes
- ^ Christopher Redmond (2 October 2002). In Bed With Sherlock Holmes: Sexual Elements in Arthur Conan Doyle's Stories of the great Detective. Dundurn. pp. 127–. ISBN 978-1-77070-037-6.
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- A Study in Scarlet (1887)
- The Sign of the Four (1890)
- The Hound of the Baskervilles (1902)
- The Valley of Fear (1915)
- The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes (1892)
- The Memoirs of Sherlock Holmes (1894)
- The Return of Sherlock Holmes (1905)
- His Last Bow (1917)
- The Case-Book of Sherlock Holmes (1927)
- "The Field Bazaar" (1896)
- "The Story of the Lost Special" (1898)
- "How Watson Learned the Trick" (1924)
- Sherlockian game
- Holmesian studies
- The New Annotated Sherlock Holmes
- The Private Life of Sherlock Holmes
- From Holmes to Sherlock
- The Great Detective
- Naked Is the Best Disguise
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