Sightseeing the Anthropocene: tourism, moorland management, andThe Hound of the Baskervilles

Mapping enchanted landscapes in Philip Weller’s The Dartmoor of The Hound of the Baskervilles

“…74 Shawna Ross, writing about The Hound of the Baskervilles and its Gothic narrative, quotes Derek Gladwin on the slippery potential of bogs, peat and moorland: 'bogs are central to Gothic literature because, being "visually deceptive, physically volatile, and conceptually elusive", they help authors construct "certain slippages, or purposeful confusions"'. 75 For Doyle and his contemporary readers, this potential for slippage and confusion creates the narrative tension at the heart of The Hound of the Baskervilles: the potential, frighteningly possible for Victorian and Edwardian audiences, for atavistic slippage between modern, scientific man and dangerous precursor forms. 76 For Weller, it works to encourage the kinds of 'confusion of categorial boundaries' 77 that often leads to enchanted encounters -although in this case, the confusion applies more to actuality and fiction, rather than rationality and the Gothic.…”