C.

Auguste Dupin
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C. Auguste Dupin
The Purloined Letter.jpg
Auguste Dupin in "The Purloined Letter"
First appearance "The Murders in the Rue Morgue"
Last appearance "The Purloined Letter"
Created by Edgar Allan Poe
In-universe information
Gender Male
Occupation Detective (hobbyist)
Nationality French
Le Chevalier C. Auguste Dupin [ogyst dyp?~] is a fictional character created by
Edgar Allan Poe. Dupin made his first appearance in Poe's 1841 short story "The
Murders in the Rue Morgue", widely considered the first detective fiction story.[1]
He reappears in "The Mystery of Marie Rog�t" (1842) and "The Purloined Letter"
(1844).

Dupin is not a professional detective and his motivations for solving the mysteries
change throughout the three stories. Using what Poe termed "ratiocination", Dupin
combines his considerable intellect with creative imagination, even putting himself
in the mind of the criminal. His talents are strong enough that he appears able to
read the mind of his companion, the unnamed narrator of all three stories.

Poe created the Dupin character before the word detective had been coined. The
character laid the groundwork for fictional detectives to come, including Sherlock
Holmes, and established most of the common elements of the detective fiction genre.

Contents
1 Character background and analysis
2 Dupin's method
3 Inspiration
4 Literary influence and significance
5 Other writers
6 In other media
7 Notes
8 References
9 External links
Character background and analysis

Facsimile of Poe's original manuscript for "The Murders in the Rue Morgue", the
first appearance of C. Auguste Dupin
Dupin is from what was once a wealthy family, but "by a variety of untoward events"
has been reduced to more humble circumstances, and contents himself only with the
basic necessities of life.[2] He now lives in Paris with his close friend, the
anonymous narrator of the stories. The two met by accident while both were
searching for "the same rare and very remarkable volume" in an obscure library.[3]
This scene, the two characters searching for a hidden text, serves as a metaphor
for detection.[4] They promptly move to an old manor located in Faubourg Saint-
Germain. For hobbies, Dupin is "fond" of enigmas, conundrums, and hieroglyphics.[5]
He bears the title Chevalier,[6] meaning that he is a knight in the L�gion
d'honneur. Dupin shares some features with the later gentleman detective, a
character type that became common in the Golden Age of Detective Fiction.[citation
needed] He is acquainted with police prefect "G.", who appears in all three stories
seeking his counsel.

In "The Murders in the Rue Morgue", Dupin investigates the murder of a mother and
daughter in Paris.[7] He investigates another murder in "The Mystery of Marie
Rog�t". This story was based on the true story of Mary Rogers, a saleswoman at a
cigar store in Manhattan whose body was found floating in the Hudson River in 1841.
[8] Dupin's final appearance, in "The Purloined Letter", features an investigation
of a letter stolen from the French queen. Poe called this story "perhaps, the best
of my tales of ratiocination".[9] Throughout the three stories, Dupin travels
through three distinct settings. In "The Murders in the Rue Morgue", he travels
through city streets; in "The Mystery of Marie Rog�t", he is in the wide outdoors;
in "The Purloined Letter", he is in an enclosed private space.[10]

Dupin is not actually a professional detective, and his motivations change through
his appearances. In "The Murders in the Rue Morgue", he investigates the murders
for his personal amusement, and to prove the innocence of a falsely accused man. He
refuses a financial reward. However, in "The Purloined Letter", Dupin purposefully
pursues a financial reward.[11]

Dupin's method
But it is in matters beyond the limits of mere rule that the skill of the analyst
is evinced. He makes in silence a host of observations and inferences....

�?Edgar Allan Poe, The Murders in the Rue Morgue

While discussing Dupin's method in the light of Charles Sanders Peirce's logic of
making good guesses or abductive reasoning, Nancy Harrowitz first quotes Poe's
definition of analysis and then shows how "Poe the semiotician is running the gamut
of possibilities here�inferences, reasoning backwards, visual, sensual and aural
signs, reading faces. Playing cards with the man would have been an interesting
experience."[12]

There is considerable controversy about the philosophical nature of Dupin's method.

According to biographer Joseph Krutch, Dupin is portrayed as a dehumanized thinking
machine, a man whose sole interest is in pure logic.[13] However, Krutch has been
accused elsewhere of a "lazy reading" of Poe.[14] According to Krutch, Dupin's
deductive prowess is first exhibited when he appears to read the narrator's mind by
rationally tracing his train of thought for the previous fifteen minutes.[15][16]
He employs what he terms "ratiocination". Dupin's method is to identify with the
criminal and put himself in his mind. By knowing everything that the criminal
knows, he can solve any crime. His attitude towards life seems to portray him as a
snob who feels that due to his aptitude normal human interaction and relationships
are beneath him.[17] In this method, he combines his scientific logic with artistic
imagination.[18] As an observer, he pays special attention to what is unintended,
such as hesitation, eagerness or a casual or inadvertent word.[19]

Dupin's method also emphasizes the importance of reading and writing: many of his
clues come from newspapers or written reports from the Prefect. This device also
engages the readers, who follow along by reading the clues themselves.[20]

Inspiration
Poe may have gotten the last name "Dupin" from a character in a series of stories
first published Burton's Gentleman's Magazine in 1828 called "Unpublished passages
in the Life of Vidocq, the French Minister of Police".[21] The name also implies
"duping" or deception, a skill Dupin shows off in "The Purloined Letter."[22]
Detective fiction, however, had no real precedent and the word detective had not
yet been coined when Poe first introduced Dupin.[23] The closest example in fiction
is Voltaire's Zadig (1748), in which the main character performs similar feats of
analysis,[1] themselves borrowed from The Three Princes of Serendip, an Italian
rendition of Amir Khusrau's Hasht Bihisht.

In writing the series of Dupin tales, Poe capitalized on contemporary popular

interest. His use of an orangutan in "The Murders in the Rue Morgue" was inspired
by the popular reaction to an orangutan that had been on display at the Masonic
Hall in Philadelphia in July 1839.[18] In "The Mystery of Mary Rog�t", he used a
true story that had become of national interest.[8]

Literary influence and significance

Sherlock Holmes was one of several fictional detectives influenced by Dupin.

C. Auguste Dupin is generally acknowledged as the first detective in fiction. The
character served as the prototype for many that were created later, including
Sherlock Holmes by Arthur Conan Doyle and Hercule Poirot by Agatha Christie.[24]
Conan Doyle once wrote, "Each [of Poe's detective stories] is a root from which a
whole literature has developed... Where was the detective story until Poe breathed
the breath of life into it?"[25]

Many tropes that would later become commonplace in detective fiction first appeared
in Poe's stories: the eccentric but brilliant detective, the bumbling constabulary,
the first-person narration by a close personal friend. Dupin also initiates the
storytelling device where the detective announces his solution and then explains
the reasoning leading up to it.[26] Like Sherlock Holmes, Dupin uses his
considerable deductive prowess and observation to solve crimes. Poe also portrays
the police in an unsympathetic manner as a sort of foil to the detective.[27]

The character helped established the genre of detective fiction, distinct from
mystery fiction, with an emphasis on the analysis and not trial-and-error.[28]
Brander Matthews wrote: "The true detective story as Poe conceived it is not in the
mystery itself, but rather in the successive steps whereby the analytic observer is
enabled to solve the problem that might be dismissed as beyond human
elucidation."[29] In fact, in the three stories which star Dupin, Poe created three
types of detective fiction which established a model for all future stories: the
physical type ("The Murders in the Rue Morgue"), the mental ("The Mystery of Marie
Rog�t"), and a balanced version of both ("The Purloined Letter").[30]

Fyodor Dostoevsky called Poe "an enormously talented writer" and favorably reviewed
Poe's detective stories. The character Porfiry Petrovich in Dostoevsky's novel
Crime and Punishment was influenced by Dupin.[31]

Other writers

A Study in Scarlet (1887)

In the first Sherlock Holmes story, A Study in Scarlet (1887), Doctor Watson
compares Holmes to Dupin, to which Holmes replies: "No doubt you think you are
complimenting me ... In my opinion, Dupin was a very inferior fellow... He had some
analytical genius, no doubt; but he was by no means such a phenomenon as Poe
appears to imagine".[32] Alluding to an episode in "The Murders in the Rue Morgue",
where Dupin deduces what his friend is thinking despite their having walked
together in silence for a quarter of an hour, Holmes remarks: "That trick of his
breaking in on his friend's thoughts with an apropos remark... is really very showy
and superficial";[32] nevertheless, Holmes later performs the same 'trick' on
Watson in "The Adventure of the Cardboard Box".

Dupin next appears in a series of seven short stories in Ellery Queen's Mystery
Magazine by Michael Harrison in the 1960s. The stories were collected by the
Publishers Mycroft & Moran in 1968 as The Exploits of Chevalier Dupin. The stories
include "The Vanished Treasure" (May 1965) and "The Fires in the Rue St. Honor�"
(January 1967). This collection was subsequently published in England by Tom Stacey
in 1972 as Murder in the Rue Royale and Further Exploits of the Chevalier Dupin and
included a further five stories written since the original publication.

Dupin had considerable impact on the Agatha Christie character Hercule Poirot,[24]
first introduced in The Mysterious Affair at Styles (1920). Later in the fictional
detective's life, he writes a book on Edgar Allan Poe in the novel Third Girl
(1966).

The Man Who Was Poe, a juvenile novel by Avi, features Dupin befriending a young
boy named Edmund. The two solve mysteries together in Providence, Rhode Island.
Dupin is revealed to be Edgar Allan Poe himself.

Novelist George Egon Hatvary uses Dupin in his novel The Murder of Edgar Allan Poe
(1997) as detective and narrator. Dupin travels to America to investigate the
circumstances of Poe's mysterious death in 1849. In the novel, Dupin and Poe became
friends when Poe stayed in Paris in 1829, and it was Poe who assisted Dupin in the
three cases about which Poe wrote. Hatvary writes that Dupin resembles Poe, so much
so that several people confuse the two on first sight.

Dupin makes a guest appearance in the first two issues of Alan Moore's The League
of Extraordinary Gentlemen, Volume I (1999) comic book, helping to track down and
subdue the monstrous Mr Hyde (who is living secretly in Paris after faking the
death described in The Strange Case of Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde).

Dupin teams up with the Count of Monte-Cristo to fight Les Habits Noirs in the
story The Kind-Hearted Torturer by John Peel published in the anthology Tales of
the Shadowmen, Volume 1 (2005).

The search for the "real Dupin" is at the center of Matthew Pearl's novel The Poe
Shadow (2006).

Dupin makes an appearance, alongside Poe himself, in the novel Edgar Allan Poe on
Mars (2007) by Jean-Marc Lofficier & Randy Lofficier.

In Murder in the Madhouse (1935), the first of Jonathan Latimer's series of

screwball crime novels starring detective William Crane, Crane presents himself in
the sanitarium as C. Auguste Dupin. The story contains more oblique references in
the form of stylistic elements (offstage murders, Crane's theories of deduction)
that suggest Poe had an influence on Latimer's writing.

Dupin is the hero of Les ogres de Montfaucon by G�rard D�le (2004), a collection of
thirteen detective stories set in the 19th century, the last of which (� Le drame
de Reichenbach �) also provides a link with Sherlock Holmes.

Other appearances:

The Black Throne by Roger Zelazny & Fred Saberhagen � a novel about Poe which has
an appearance by Dupin.
The Work of Betrayal by Mario Brelich � Dupin investigates the mysterious case of
Judas Iscariot.
Jorge Luis Borges pays homage to Poe's Dupin in "Death and the Compass", by calling
his main detective character Erik L�nrott an "Auguste Dupin"-type detective. This
is one of the stories published by Borges in his Ficciones (1944). Borges also
translated Poe's works into Spanish.

In The Paralogs of Phileas Fogg, author James Downard has Dupin help Fogg and his
cohorts resolve some issues during the American leg of their around-the-world
adventure.

In other media

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Dupin, as he appeared in volume 10 of Detective Conan

A Pierre Dupin appears in Universal Pictures' 1932 horror-mystery film Murders in
the Rue Morgue. The Mystery of Marie Roget was also filmed in 1942. Dupin (played
by Joseph Cotten) is a character in the 1951 Fletcher Markle film The Man with a
Cloak. Dupin's true identity is revealed at the end of the film to be Poe himself.

In the comic series Batman Confidential, the creation of Batman's crime-solving

super-computer which is linked to Interpol, FBI, and CIA databases is introduced.
Commonly known as the "Bat Computer," it is originally nicknamed "Dupin," after
Batman's "hero."

Dupin was highlighted in volume 10 of the Detective Conan manga's edition of "Gosho
Aoyama's Mystery Library", a section of the graphic novels where the author
introduces a different detective (or occasionally, a villain) from mystery
literature, television, or other media.

C. Auguste Dupin is the protagonist, and the player's partner, in the "Dark Tales"
Hidden Objects series, developed by ERS Game Studios, published by Big Fish Games.
This game is based on Poe's horror works where the Dupin and the player solve
various mysteries.

In The Vile Village, Count Olaf disguises himself as "Detective Dupin" in order to
falsely accuse the protagonists of murder.

In the comic series The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen Dupin appears as a minor
character; we first meet him shortly after Mina Murray and Allan Quatermain arrive
in Paris, France in late June 1898.

Notes
Silverman 1991, p. 171
Stashower 2006, p. 20
Krutch 1926, p. 108
Thomas 2002, p. 134
Rosenheim 1997, p. 21
Silverman 1991, p. 205
Sova 2001, p. 163
Meyers 1992, p. 135
Silverman 1991, p. 229
Rosenheim 1997, p. 69
Whalen 2001, p. 86
Harrowitz 1984, pp. 187
Krutch 1926, p. 102
Pearl, Matthew, introduction to Poe's Murders in the Rue Morgue, Random House,
2009
Krutch 1926, p. 110
Harrowitz 1984, pp. 187�192
Garner 1990, p. 136
Meyers 1992, p. 123
Rosenheim 1997, p. 28
Thomas 2002, pp. 133�134
Cornelius 2002, p. 31
Thomas 2002, p. 135
Silverman 1991, p. 173
Sova 2001, pp. 162�163
Knowles 2007, p. 67
 Cornelius 2002, p. 33
Van Leer 1993, p. 65
Sova 2001, p. 162
Phillips 1926, p. 931
Haycraft 1941, p. 11
Frank 1997, p. 102
Conan Doyle
References
Conan Doyle, Arthur. "Chapter 2: The Science of Deduction" . A Study in Scarlet.
Cornelius, Kay (2002), "Biography of Edgar Allan Poe", in Harold Bloom (ed.),
Bloom's BioCritiques: Edgar Allan Poe, Philadelphia, PA: Chelsea House Publishers,
ISBN 0-7910-6173-6
Frank, Frederick S.; Magistrale, Anthony (1997). The Poe Encyclopedia. Westport,
CT: Greenwood Press. ISBN 0-313-27768-0.
Garner, Stanton (1990). "Emerson, Thoreau, and Poe's 'Double Dupin'". In Fisher,
Benjamin Franklin IV (ed.). Poe and His Times: The Artist and His Milieu.
Baltimore: The Edgar Allan Poe Society. ISBN 0-9616449-2-3.
Harrowitz, Nancy (1984), "The Body of the Detective Model: Charles S. Peirce and
Edgar Allan Poe", in Umberto Eco; Thomas Sebeok (eds.), The Sign of Three: Dupin,
Holmes, Peirce, Bloomington, IN: History Workshop, Indiana University Press, pp.
179�197, ISBN 978-0-253-35235-4
Haycraft, Howard (1941). Murder for Pleasure: The Life and Times of the Detective
Story. New York: D. Appleton-Century Company. (1984 reprint: ISBN 978-0-88184-071-
1)
Hutchisson, James M. (2005). Poe. Jackson: University Press of Mississippi. ISBN 1-
57806-721-9.
Knowles, Christopher (2007). Our Gods Wear Spandex: The Secret History of Comic
Book Heroes. San Francisco: Weiser Books. ISBN 1-57863-406-7.
Krutch, Joseph Wood (1926). Edgar Allan Poe: A Study in Genius. New York: Alfred A.
Knopf. (1992 reprint: ISBN 978-0-7812-6835-6)
Meyers, Jeffrey (1992). Edgar Allan Poe: His Life and Legacy (Paperback ed.). New
York: Cooper Square Press. ISBN 0-8154-1038-7.
Phillips, Mary E. (1926). Edgar Allan Poe: The Man. Volume II. Chicago: The John C.
Winston Co.
Rosenheim, Shawn James (1997). The Cryptographic Imagination: Secret Writing from
Edgar Poe to the Internet. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press. ISBN 978-0-
8018-5332-6.
Silverman, Kenneth (1991). Edgar A. Poe: Mournful and Never-Ending Remembrance
(Paperback ed.). New York: Harper Perennial. ISBN 0-06-092331-8.
Sova, Dawn B. (2001). Edgar Allan Poe: A to Z (Paperback ed.). New York: Checkmark
Books. ISBN 0-8160-4161-X.
Stashower, Daniel (2006). The Beautiful Cigar Girl. New York: Penguin Books. ISBN
0-525-94981-X.
Thomas, Peter (2002). "Poe's Dupin and the Power of Detection". In Hayes, Kevin J.
(ed.). The Cambridge Companion to Edgar Allan Poe. Cambridge: Cambridge University
Press. ISBN 978-0-521-79326-1.
Van Leer, David (1993). "Detecting Truth: The World of the Dupin Tales"". In
Silverman, Kenneth (ed.). The American Novel: New Essays on Poe's Major Tales.
Cambridge University Press. ISBN 0-521-42243-4.
Whalen, Terance (2001). "Poe and the American Publishing Industry". In Kennedy, J.
Gerald (ed.). A Historical Guide to Edgar Allan Poe. New York: Oxford University
Press. ISBN 0-19-512150-3.
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C. Auguste Dupin � the predecessor of Sherlock Holmes