The Detective Story Genre

EDGAR ALLAN POE
Poetry, Prose, Theory

The Detective Story Genre
Review : The non-scientific scientist
• Intense sense of nationality among Americans, specially after the 1812 war
(the second war of Independence).
• Support to science was considered a key national matter, related to patriotism
and self-sufficiency. (West point Academy engineering).
• Edgar Allan Poe showed somewhat a despise for progress, highlighting the
ugliness of industrialism.
• Paradoxically, he was a reader of scientific works, which served as a source
of inspiration for his work.
• He often uses science and logic to achieve emotional effects.
The Blueprint of Detective Fiction
• Poe established an enduring and influential model for writers of detective
fiction (Blueprint).
• “These three early attempts, totalling only a few thousand words, established
once and for all the mould and pattern for thousands upon thousands of
works of police fiction which have followed.” (Howrad Haycraft, Murder for Pleasure,
1941).
• “The Murders in the Rue Morgue” (1841), “The Mystery of Marie Rogêt”
(1842) and “The Purloined Letter” (1844).
• Oedipus Rex – the original detective story?
• Poe created the “private eye” character: Le Chevalier C. Auguste Dupin.
Crime in the Gothic Novel
• Gothic novels as predecessors of the detective story genre: mystery, horror,
rational thought.
• The early Gothic novel (1764 – 1818) in context: Enlightenment,
Industrialization, Modernity.
• Thematizing political and social unrest: French Revolution, Revolution in the
colonies. Civilized v. Barbaric.
• Ghosts from the past: set in the medieval world – castles, abbeys, dungeons.
• Victorian era: horror based on the development of science and industry.
• Gothic based on “criminology” and the ghost as an expression of the mind.
Law Enforcement in historical context: 1820 -1850
• Early 1800s: development and organization of police and law enforcement
agencies and its influence in Poe’s work.
• London: Bow Street Runners (est. 1750) became the Metropolitan Police (est.
1829), followed by Scotland Yard (est. 1842).
• Paris: the criminal Eugène-François Vidocq became head of the Fench
National Security or Sûreté Nationale (est. 1810).
• U.S.A: Philadelphia Police Department (c. 1833), Boston PD (c. 1838), New
York City PD (c. 1845), and the Baltimore PD (c. 1845).
• Pinkerton Detective Agency - Chicago (c. 1850).
Philosophy matters: Science tales and Detective tales
• Science tales: Baconian “inductive method” v. Aristotelian ‘deductive method”.

• Michelle Miranda: Observation, Inference and Imagination.
• The “abductive method”, by Charles S. Peirce (1839–1914).
• “Abduction is the step in between a fact and its origin; the instinctive,
perceptual jump which allows the subject to guess an origin which can then
be tested out to prove or disprove the hypothesis.”
• Indeed, to reach conclusions, human thinking is largely based on conjecture
and imagination, but, in terms of scientific thinking, such method must rely on
plausibility, probabilities and verisimilitude.
Outlining the detective genre I
• C. August Dupin: reclusive man, absorbed in his own mental life and matters.
Knowledgeable, a keen observer with the ability to see what others fail to see.
• A recurring character – a feature of the detective genre.
• The focus on reason, and self-reflexivity distinguishes the Detective narrative
from Gothic fiction.
• A form of writing (genre) dedicated to the solution of a mystery rather than
narrating adventures.
• Plot structure according to George n. Dove: Problem, First Analysis,
Complication, Period of Confusion, Dawning Light, Solution and Explanation.
Outlining the detective genre II
• The story must be narrated by a reliable character who will praise the
detective’s analytical, deductive abilities.
• Gertrude Stein on the detective novel: “the only really modern novel form that
has come into existence.” (p. 358)
• Thomas de Quincey “On Murder Considered as One of the Fine Arts,” argues
that once the crime is completed the time to moralize is over, then the act
may be contemplated as a work of art.
• Dupin: analyst and aesthete.
Outlining the detective genre III
• "As the strong man exults in his physical ability delighting in such exercises
as call his muscles into action, so glories the analyst in that moral activity
which disentangles. He derives pleasure from even the most trivial
occupations bringing his talent into play. He is fond of enigmas, of
conundrums, hieroglyphics, exhibiting in his solutions of each a degree of
acumen which appears to the ordinary apprehension preternatural. His
results, brought about by the very soul and essence of method, have in truth,
the whole air of intuition.“

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EDGAR ALLAN POE

Poetry, Prose, Theory

• Science tales: Baconian “inductive method” v. Aristotelian ‘deductive method”.

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