« This is not my hat », les accessoires de Sherlock, du canon à la série BBC

Abstract

Since 1887 and the publication of the Sherlock Holmes stories in the Strand, Doyle’s texts have been adapted, and those adaptations have been transmediatic, as exemplified in the early days of the process by Gillette’s play. The adaptability of the literary text has been continuous ever since. The last shows worth noting in that sense are TV series: Elementary and Sherlock.The point of this article will be to analyse the attibutes which allow such porosity between centuries, contexts, but also dictinct media, especially as adaptation from text to film raises questions within the narrative context of detective novels. Thus we will first focus on objects and attributes of the mythical figure of the detective to analyse the role they play in the making of that mythical dimension, before tackling adaptation as such in Moffat and Gatiss’ production, a fiction marked by irony and derision. What effect does such an ironic prism create on adaptation? Finally, we will ponder the dichotomy between continuity and rupture and the interaction between fiction and reality, a persisting facet of the canon since the 19th century which perdures with the new sleuth of the BBC Series.