C.auguste dupin5/31/2023 ![]() Auguste Dupin, an impoverished Bohemian intellectual with esoteric and occult tastes, one of which is analysing crimes. Introduced the first fictional detective in English, the eccentric and brilliant C. Just one clever analytical mind sifting the evidence presented in texts to arrive at a theory and witnessed by his more or less passive sidekick, the unnamed narrator. There are no subsequent events, no further puzzling discoveries, let alone a chase or race against time to find the murderer. All three lean more towards essays than stories, with long excursions into the workings of the mind, pure reason v practical reason, the normal v the abnormal mind etc etc.Ĭertainly in the first two there is a murder – and then Poe’s creation, the French philosopher Auguste Dupin, uses texts and one visit to the murder scene / in the second story, texts from newspapers and from the police alone – to piece together the course of events. Merriam-Webster defines ratiocination as ‘the process of exact thinking a reasoned train of thought’ and in these three stories Poe is more interested in the workings of the mind – the hyperanalytical mind of his hero Auguste Dupin – than in plot as such. Poe himself referred to them as ‘tales of ratiocination’. The Viking Portable Poe divides these into Tales of Fantasy, Tales of Terror, Tales of Death, Tales of Revenge and Murder – which gives a good flavour of the man.īut Poe also wrote three detective stories (classified here as Tales of Mystery and Ratiocination) and most historians of the genre now consider that these more or less founded the entire tradition. Now he is predominantly remembered as author of the ballad poem The Raven, and of a series of disturbing, macabre and fantastical Gothic short stories. Not much of it was recognised or rewarded in his lifetime, but many of the stories grew in fame and influence in the decades after his death. ![]() During Poe’s short, miserable life (1809-49) he struggled to make a living from writing in a wide range of genres: poems, tales of fantasy and horror, an adventure novel, lots of essays, criticism and piles of ephemeral journalism.
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