Proefschrift--Leyden. / "Stellingen" ([1] l.) inserted. Bibliography: p. 188-193.

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This thesis examines how the aesthetic and queer themes in E. W. Hornung’s Raffles stories have been transmediated in the TV-series Raffles. Hornung’s Raffles stories were not only immensely popular in their time, but were also a reflection of the fin-de-siècle and of the cultural role aestheticism played in the late Victorian society. Though a number of adaptations were made in the early 20th century, none of them adapted Hornung’s original stories to the same extent as the 1975-77 Yorkshire TV-series.  In this study, material such as original scripts, notes, and correspondence from screenwriter Philip Mackie’s personal collection are examined from an adaptation theoretical perspective in relation to Hornung’s books and the finished TV-series. At the same time, a queer reading of the screenplays and of the televised series is made and compared to previous academic queer readings of Hornung’s stories. The adaptation is discussed in context with the time period in which it was produced and with the various factors that have formed it, such as financial restraints and medium related conventions.  The study demonstrates that both aesthetic and queer themes that correspond to those found in Hornung’s stories can be found in the TV-series. It argues that the political climate of the 1970s both restrained how Raffles and Bunny’s relationship was portrayed in the series but also allowed for a more faithful adaptation of Hornung’s stories, including their aesthetic and queer themes, than had previously been possible.

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This project asserts that much of the cultural anxiety found in Gothic-infused late-Victorian fiction derives from literary revelations of the nested spaces, shifting identities, and spontaneous connections inherent to the late-Victorian metropolis. The three literary texts studied here – The Hound of the Baskervilles by Arthur Conan Doyle, Raffles: The Amateur Cracksman by E.W. Hornung, and The Thirty-Nine Steps by John Buchan – all depict London as fundamentally suitable for those who seek to evade the disciplinary gaze and to pursue menacing schemes of criminality and invasion. Doyle’s text illustrates the interconnectedness of the spaces within London as well as the passable threshold between London and the English countryside; both the villain Stapleton and the hero Sherlock Holmes use these connections to attack and defend, respectively, the city and its inhabitants. Hornung’s stories depict the machinations employed by the gentleman-thief Raffles as he alters his identity and his codes of behaviour in order to free himself to pursue criminal ends and thus as he challenges cultural barriers. Buchan’s text, building on the others, explores the dissolution of cultural boundaries and identities incumbent upon the spontaneous connections made between those who attack English culture and those, like Richard Hannay, who defend it. There emerges in these texts a vision of London (and by extension Great Britain) as a swirling vortex of motion, an unknowable labyrinth perpetually threatened by menacing agents from without and within. I have employed Victor Turner’s theories of liminality and communitas to describe how criminal agents, and their equally menacing “good-guy” pursuers, separate themselves from structured society in order to move freely and to gain access to the contested thresholds they seek to infiltrate. I also invoke theories of the Gothic, surveillance, and travel, as well as Jeffrey Cohen’s monster theory, to characterize the anxiety embedded in such invasions. / The transformation of contested space : Baker Street, Grimpen Mire and the battle for thresholds in The hound of the Baskervilles -- Hornung's code-switching monster : threatening ambiguity and liminoid mobility in Raffles, the amateur cracksman -- Towards a more inclusive Britishness : Richard Hannay's transformative connections and evolving identity in The thrity-nine steps. / Department of English