DISSOCIATION AND DRUIDISM IN THE MYSTERY OF EDWIN DROOD

Key Words: Dickens, Drood, Druidism, Symbolism, Solution

Scholarly consensus holds that the underlying theme of Charles Dickens’ The Mystery of Edwin Drood is one of dissociation and suppression. The prevalent theories built upon hermeneutical analyses and presupposed a conventional detective genre orientation, adding psychodynamic layers of interpretation apace with the growth of the field of depth psychology. The problem treated in the research contained in Dissociation and Druidism is that the theories fail to adequately treat clues (astronomical, allusion and symbolism), many of which their own inquiries have upturned.
The results of this research find that Dickens embedded a second layer of story in the text of the apparent one. This “shadow story,” achieved through the use of various devices, contains a plot concerned with pre-Christian (Druidic) religion, the original religion of the British Isles, thought to be extinct.