A Wicked Facility in Quotation: Dorothy L. Sayers’ Allusions

This chapter explores Dorothy L. Sayers’ allusions to Shakespeare and the Bible in her detective fiction. It argues that the general anxiety over shared textual resources in the period is focused by Sayers into a dramatic and even passionate desire for shared quotation. Examining a series of her novels in turn, it reveals the knotty and difficult forms of allusion which test the ability of these texts to make sense of the contemporary world.