想像福爾摩斯：論席德尼‧佩吉特替《岸濱月刊》繪製的福爾摩斯插畫

Abstract

本研究聚焦於英國插畫家席德尼‧佩吉特（Sidney Paget）替《岸濱月刊》（Strand Magazine）長期連載的夏洛克‧福爾摩斯（Sherlock Holmes）探案小說所繪製的插圖。自西元1891年六月以來，佩吉特為英國作家亞瑟‧柯南‧道爾（Arthur Conan Doyle）的經典偵探小說創作了多達356張插圖；插畫家和作者、及出版社三方建立起長期的合作關係。在佩吉特的畫筆詮釋下，小說中近乎傳奇的偵探福爾摩斯以及他忠實的助手華生得以具象化。佩吉特的插圖不僅形塑出福爾摩斯的經典原型，更影響日後福爾摩斯偵探小說及各種大眾媒體改編的視覺表現。

本文第一部分藉由回顧維多利亞時期出版文化（Victorian publishing culture）和圖像報刊雜誌盛行（pictorial journalism）的時空脈絡，深入探討畫家的社會背景及風格特色。此外，也將從維多利亞晚期圖像印刷的技術層面切入，討論原稿及印刷成果的差異，及其帶給讀者的視覺經驗。文章第二部分以圖文關係為重心，並同時爬梳、彙整《岸濱月刊》的出版史，重新回歸至社會歷史的脈絡，觀察佩吉特所創作的插圖如何與柯南‧道爾的文本彼此呼應，形成特有的乾淨印象及反煽情表現，反映出該時期社會中，一股亟欲淨化讀者心靈的道德改革風潮。並進一步延續該脈絡，嘗試解讀Paget福爾摩斯插畫的特色和繪製策略。最後一節企圖追溯大眾印象中的夏洛克‧福爾摩斯典型之形成。從《岸濱月刊》插圖開始，延伸觀察現今沿用Paget插圖的相關影視改編作品，嘗試界定出逐漸定型成熟的「神探夏洛克」形象。This study focuses on the illustrations drawn by the British illustrator Sidney Paget of the Sherlock Holmes stories published by the widely-circulated monthly periodical Strand Magazine. Starting from June 1891, Paget had produced a total amount of 356 drawings for Sir Arthur Conan Doyle’s detective narratives over the course of his long-term collaboration with both the author and the Strand. His distinctive depictions of the legendary sleuth and his loyal sidekick are deemed as the authority among the vast visual representations based on the canon of Sherlock Holmes.

In the first section of my study, the artist’s milieu and stylistic traits will be examined in the context of the prosperous pictorial journalism and publishing culture during the period, and a more technical discussion of the reproduced images, as seen by the readers in the magazine, will follow. Focusing on the relationship between image and text, the second part of my proposal aims to probe further into the social and historical contexts embedded within these images and lay bare the Strand’s discourse that corresponds to Doyle’s text and the puritanical ideology during the Victorian era. Both the complex interplay between Doyle’s text and Paget’s images and the particular illustrative strategies adopted by Paget and the other crime stories in the periodical will be analysed in the same vein. The final part tries to trace back the formation of Sherlock Holmes’ iconic image from the Paget illustrations to the current media adaptations, and further attempts to pinpoint a certain Sherlockian iconography within Paget’s corpus.