Imitation and subversion

Liu Bannong's postcolonial parodies The Great Failures of Sherlock Holmes series

Bibliographic Data

ID3377859
AuthorsYuqing Zhang (0000-0001-8558-6087, University of Warwick, corresponding author)
Year2025
Pages1-19
Publication date2025-09-11
Peer ReviewedYes
Open AccessYes
TypeARTICLE
VenueInterventions (JOURNAL)
Journal identifiersISSN: 1369-801X • E-ISSN: 1469-929X
PublisherInforma UK Limited (PUBLISHER • GB)
DOI10.1080/1369801x.2025.2529230
OpenAlexW4414143101
LanguageEN
References cited19

This essay studies Liu Bannong’s 劉半儂 (1891–1934) Sherlock Holmes parodies, The Great Failures of Sherlock Holmes series 福爾摩斯大失敗 (Fu’ermosi da shibai). In these parodies, Holmes is relocated from London to semi-colonized Shanghai, whose unique cityscape, people, and culture become the stumbling blocks to the British detective’s investigation. In the urban setting of Shanghai, Holmes loses all of his powers, behaving rather hilariously, and is made poignant fun of by the local tricksters. Drawing on Linda Hutcheon’s definition of parody and Homi K. Bhabha’s concept of mimicry, I explore Liu Bannong’s critique of the detective’s overreliance on a culturally biased knowledge system. By addressing Liu’s mockery of the pitfall of the Holmesian methods in interpreting Shanghai, I discuss his question of the idea that a British “saviour” could resolve Chinese issues, particularly against the backdrop of Sino-British conflicts in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. I argue that Liu Bannong’s parodic rewriting of Sherlock Holmes stories can be understood as a form of “writing back”, which exemplifies “both the configurations of domination and the imaginative and creative responses to this condition”

Criticism · Imitation · Rewriting · Australian History and Society · Hong Kong and Taiwan Politics · Japanese History and Culture

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