Well Dr. Roy, Sherlock does sound a lot like Shylock (who, though a Jew, was
an italian based in Venice).

My $0.02 folks.

Cheers,
Ravi.

On Tue, May 12, 2009 at 1:00 PM, pinaki roy <monkaroy@...> wrote:

>
>
> Dear Sherlockians,
>
> It is a great relief for me to be back with our international Sherlock
> Holmes Society and it is always reassuring as ever. Regarding the proposed
> B.B.C. programme, the details of which Sumal has so kindly posted, we are
> proud that our Society has become truly international.
>
> Come 22 May 2009, and the literary world would be celebrating the one
> hundred and fiftieth anniversary of Arthur Conan Doyle’s birthday. It is
> really amazing how the ophthalmologist of Irish descent had created a
> detective who would incorporate all the norms of Englishness within his
> demeanour and yet be loved all over the world. Doyle’s creation of Sherlock
> Holmes – of Scottish descent if William S. Baring-Gould and Leslie Klinger
> are to be believed – actually served to shift the literary world’s attention
> from the American identity of detective fiction to its popularity as a
> British ‘conception’. We may recall that modern detective fiction began with
> the American novelist and short-story-writer Edgar Allan Poe’s ‘tales of
> ratiocination’ in the 1840s. William (‘Wilkie’) Collins, an Englishman, was
> the only other detective story writer of repute before Doyle began
> enthralling readers with his Sherlock Holmes narratives, with the
> first, “A Study in Scarlet”, being published in November 1886-edition of
> “Beeton’s Christmas Annual”.
>
> General readers often tend to gloss over Doyle’s Irish ancestry, which
> might account for the ancestral and national ambiguity of his world-famous
> sleuth. Mary Foley Doyle, Arthur’s mother, hailed from the family of
> Percy-Louvain, in turn related to the Plantagenets, who had once ruled
> Britain. The litterateur’s father, Charles, had forefathers who came from
> Pont d’ Oilly (in Normandy, France) and who settled in Ireland in the 1330s
> under the patronage of King Edward III. The Doyles were Roman Catholics and
> by the 18th century they had been evicted from their lands.
>
> I would request the learned Sherlockians to shed some light on the
> ambiguity in Holmes’s nationality. The first names ‘Sherlock’ and ‘Mycroft’,
> for all things, do not sound European.
>
> Yours faithfully,
>
> (Pinaki Roy)
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
> From:
>
> Pinaki Roy, Ph.D.,
> Lecturer in English,
> Malda College,
> Rabindra Avenue, Rathbari More,
> Post Office + District: Malda - 732 101
>
>
>
>
> [Non-text portions of this message have been removed]
>
>
>



--
............................................................................
The music that can deepest reach,
And cure all ill, is cordial speech.
-Ralph Waldo Emerson, Writer & Philosopher (1803-1882)


[Non-text portions of this message have been removed]