Arthur Conan Doyle’s Quest Journey to The Land of Mist

Arthur Conan Doyle employed the quest narrative structure in his Professor Challenger novels and short stories. The themes that were embodied in the journey form were imperialism, positivist science, the male role, evolution, degeneration and atavism. However, in the last of this cycle, The Land of Mist (1926) the Victorian quest romance does not go to a lost, prehistoric world in the Amazonas. It takes on a surprising form as now the journey is to the realm of the dead. This destination can be regarded as a result of Doyle’s deep interest in spiritualism, but the article will seek to explain this in the context of its contemporary epistemology. It is the hypothesis of the article that doubts and problems of faith, both religious and ideological, could not be answered in any other way than by converting the narratological device of the quest journey into a statement of faith. Yet the positivist and imperialist metaphor of the journey of exploration imploded into morbidity and domestication as a result of the transformation, which sought to reconcile positivist science with the existence of the supernatural or paranormal of the spirit world. The double world-view and its narratological consequences will be explained by the article through its use of Michel Foucault’s concept of the episteme.