Wilkie Collins, Dorothy Sayers, and the genre of the detective novel

Statement of the problem. Despite the well-documented influence of Wilkie Collins’ work on the detective prose of D.L. Sayers, the issue is yet to receive sufficient attention from Russian literary scholars. Its more detailed study will yield a more complete picture of what D.L. Sayers saw as W. Collins’ principal contribution to the detective genre and how she further developed his principles and techniques in her own fiction and literary criticism. The purpose of the study is to trace the nature and key points of the influence W. Collins’ prose had on D. L. Sayers’s detective fiction in terms of establishing and developing the principal conventions of the detective genre. The following methods are applied in the research: biographical, historical, and cultural, as well as structural-typological and structural-semiotic analysis of texts. The theoretical base includes works of modern literary scholars on the general issues of the detective genre as well as on the life and work of W. Collins and D.L. Sayers. Novels by W. Collins and D.L. Sayers as well as D.L. Sayers’ letters, literary articles, essays, and unpublished speeches were used as the material for the study. Research results indicate the depth and significance of W. Collins’ influence on the contribution D.L. Sayers made to the study and development of the modern detective novel, postulating such important genre conventions as the principle of “fair play”, accuracy of details, a polyphonic narrative, multilateral characterization of characters, a high standard in terms of language and literary quality of the prose, as well as inclusion of wider philosophical, theological, social issues into mainstream detective novels.