C. Auguste Dupin

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Facsimile of Poe's original manuscript for "The Murders in the Rue Morgue", the first appearance of C. Auguste Dupin
Facsimile of Poe's original manuscript for "The Murders in the Rue Morgue", the first appearance of C. Auguste Dupin

C. Auguste Dupin is a fictional detective created by Edgar Allan Poe. Dupin made his first appearance in Poe's "The Murders in the Rue Morgue" (1841), widely considered the first detective fiction story.[1] He reappears in "The Mystery of Marie Roget" (1842) and "The Purloined Letter" (1844).

Dupin is not a professional detective and his motivations for solving the mysteries throughout the three stories change. 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. It is unclear what inspired him but the character's name seems to imply "duping", or deception. The character laid the groundwork for fictitious detectives to come, including Sherlock Holmes, and established most of the common elements of the detective fiction genre.

Contents

[edit] Character background

Dupin 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.[2] This scene and the two characters' search for a hidden text serves as a metaphor for detection.[3] For hobbies, Dupin is "fond" of enigmas, conundrums, and hieroglyphics.[4] He bears the title Chevalier,[5] meaning that he is a knight in the Légion d'honneur.

In "The Murders in the Rue Morgue", Dupin investigates the murder of a mother and daughter in Paris.[6] He investigates another murder in "The Mystery of Marie Roget". 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.[7] 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".[8] 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 Roget" he is in the wide outdoors; in "The Purloined Letter" he is in an enclosed private space.[9]

[edit] Method

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.[10] 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.[11] In this method, he combines his scientific logic with artistic imagination.[12] As an observer, he pays special attention to what is unintended, such as hesitation, eagerness or a casual or inadvertent word.[13] Dupin is portrayed as a dehumanized thinking machine, a man whose sole interest is in pure logic.[14]

The character 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 reader, who follows along by reading the clues himself.[15]

Dupin is not actually a professional detective and his motivations change throughout 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.[16]

[edit] 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".[17] The name also implies "duping" or deception, a skill Dupin shows off in "The Purloined Letter."[18] Detective fiction, however, had no real precedent and the word detective had not yet been coined when Poe first introduced Dupin.[19] The closest example in fiction is Voltaire's Zadig (1748), in which the main character performs similar feats of analysis.[1] Poe also capitalized on popular interest at the time. 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.[12] In "The Mystery of Mary Roget", he used a true story that had become of national interest.[7]

[edit] Literary influence and significance

Sherlock Holmes was one of several fictional detectives influenced by Dupin.
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.[20] Doyle once said, "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?"[21]

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.[22] 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.[23]

The character helped established the genre of detective fiction, distinct from mystery fiction, with an emphasis on the analysis and not trial-and-error.[24] 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."[25] 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 Roget"), and a balanced version of both ("The Purloined Letter").[26]

Fyodor Dostoevsky called Poe "an enormously talented writer" and favorably reviewed Poe's detective stories. The character Porfiry Petrovich in Dostoevsky's novel The Brothers Karamazov was influenced by Dupin.[27]

[edit] Other writers

"A Study in Scarlet" (1887)
"A Study in Scarlet" (1887)

In the first 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,"[28] despite the fact that the detective was evidently inspired by the other.

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. Honoré" (January 1967).

Dupin also had considerable impact on the Agatha Christie character Hercule Poirot,[20] 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 later revealed to be Edgar Allan Poe himself.

Novelist George Egon Hatvary uses Dupin in his novel The Murder of Edgar Allan Poe (1997) as both detective and narrator. In the novel 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 circa 1829, and it was Poe who assisted Dupin in the three cases Poe wrote about. Hatvary writes that Dupin bears an exceptional resemblance to 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 (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).

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.

[edit] In other media

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."

[edit] References

  1. ^ a b Silverman, Kenneth. Edgar A. Poe: Mournful and Never-ending Remembrance. New York: Harper Perennial, 1991: 171. ISBN 0060923318
  2. ^ Krutch, Joseph Wood. Edgar Allan Poe: A Study in Genius. Alfred A. Knopf, Inc., 1926: 108.
  3. ^ Thomas, Peter. "Poe's Dupin and the Power of Detection" as collected in The Cambridge Companion to Edgar Allan Poe, edited by Kevin J. Hayes. Cambridge University Press, 2002: 134. ISBN 0521797276
  4. ^ Rosenheim, Shawn James. The Cryptographic Imagination: Secret Writing from Edgar Poe to the Internet. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1997: 21. ISBN 9780801853326
  5. ^ Silverman, Kenneth. Edgar A. Poe: Mournful and Never-ending Remembrance. New York: Harper Perennial, 1991: 205. ISBN 0060923318
  6. ^ Sova, Dawn B. Edgar Allan Poe: A to Z. New York: Checkmark Books, 2001: 163. ISBN 081604161X
  7. ^ a b Meyers, Jeffrey. Edgar Allan Poe: His Life and Legacy. New York: Cooper Square Press, 1992: 135. ISBN 0815410387
  8. ^ Silverman, Kenneth. Edgar A. Poe: Mournful and Never-ending Remembrance. New York: Harper Perennial, 1991: 229. ISBN 0060923318
  9. ^ Rosenheim, Shawn James. The Cryptographic Imagination: Secret Writing from Edgar Poe to the Internet. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1997: 69. ISBN 9780801853326
  10. ^ Krutch, Joseph Wood. Edgar Allan Poe: A Study in Genius. Alfred A. Knopf, Inc., 1926: 110.
  11. ^ Garner, Stanton. "Emerson, Thoreau, and Poe's 'Double Dupin'," collected in Poe and His Times: The Artist and His Milieu, edited by Benjamin Franklin Fisher IV. Baltimore: The Edgar Allan Poe Society, 1990: 136. ISBN 0961644923
  12. ^ a b Meyers, Jeffrey. Edgar Allan Poe: His Life and Legacy. New York: Cooper Square Press, 1992: 123. ISBN 0815410387
  13. ^ Rosenheim, Shawn James. The Cryptographic Imagination: Secret Writing from Edgar Poe to the Internet. Johns Hopkins University Press, 1997: 28. ISBN 9780801853326
  14. ^ Krutch, Joseph Wood. Edgar Allan Poe: A Study in Genius. Alfred A. Knopf, Inc., 1926: 102.
  15. ^ Thomas, Peter. "Poe's Dupin and the Power of Detection" as collected in The Cambridge Companion to Edgar Allan Poe, edited by Kevin J. Hayes. Cambridge University Press, 2002: 133-134. ISBN 0521797276
  16. ^ Whalen, Terance. "Poe and the American Publishing Industry" collected in A Historical Guide to Edgar Allan Poe, J. Gerald Kennedy, editor. New York: Oxford University Press, 2001: 86. ISBN 0195121503
  17. ^ Cornelius, Kay. "Biography of Edgar Allan Poe" in Bloom's BioCritiques: Edgar Allan Poe, Harold Bloom, ed. Philadelphia: Chelsea House Publishers, 2001: 31. ISBN 0791061736
  18. ^ Thomas, Peter. "Poe's Dupin and the Power of Detection" as collected in The Cambridge Companion to Edgar Allan Poe, edited by Kevin J. Hayes. Cambridge University Press, 2002: 135. ISBN 0521797276
  19. ^ Silverman, Kenneth. Edgar A. Poe: Mournful and Never-ending Remembrance. New York: Harper Perennial, 1991: 173. ISBN 0060923318
  20. ^ a b Sova, Dawn B. Edgar Allan Poe: A to Z. New York: Checkmark Books, 2001: 162–163. ISBN 081604161X
  21. ^ Knowles, Christopher. Our Gods Wear Spandex: The Secret History of Comic Book Heroes. San Francisco: Weiser Books, 2007: 67. ISBN 1578634067
  22. ^ Cornelius, Kay. "Biography of Edgar Allan Poe" in Bloom's BioCritiques: Edgar Allan Poe, Harold Bloom, ed. Philadelphia: Chelsea House Publishers, 2001: 33. ISBN 0791061736
  23. ^ Van Leer, David. "Detecting Truth: The World of the Dupin Tales" collected in The American Novel: New Essays on Poe's Major Tales, Kenneth Silverman, editor. Cambridge University Press, 1993: 65. ISBN 0521422434
  24. ^ Sova, Dawn B. Edgar Allan Poe: A to Z. New York: Checkmark Books, 2001: 162. ISBN 081604161XM
  25. ^ Phillips, Mary E. Edgar Allan Poe: The Man. Volume II. Chicago: The John C. Winston Co., 1926: 931
  26. ^ Haycraft, Howard. Murder for Pleasure: The Life and Times of the Detective Story. New York: D. Appleton-Century Company, 1941: 11.
  27. ^ Frank, Frederick S. and Anthony Magistrale. The Poe Encyclopedia. Westport, CT: Greenwood Press, 1997: 102. ISBN 0313277680.
  28. ^ Conan Doyle, Arthur. "A Study in Scarlet", Chapter 2