C. Auguste Dupin Explained

C. Auguste Dupin
First:"The Murders in the Rue Morgue"
Last:"The Purloined Letter"
Creator:Edgar Allan Poe
Gender:Male
Occupation:Detective (hobbyist)
Nationality:French

Le Chevalier C. Auguste Dupin in French pronounced as /oɡyst dypɛ̃/ 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. He reappears in "The Mystery of Marie Rogêt" (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, Hercule Poirot and many others. Dupin also established most of the common elements of the detective fiction genre.

Character background and analysis

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. 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. This scene, the two characters searching for a hidden text, serves as a metaphor for detection. They promptly move to an old manor located in Faubourg Saint-Germain. For hobbies, Dupin is "fond" of enigmas, conundrums, and hieroglyphics. He bears the title Chevalier, meaning that he is a knight in the Légion d'honneur. Dupin shares some features with the later gentleman detective, a character type that became common in the Golden Age of Detective Fiction. 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. He investigates another murder in "The Mystery of Marie Rogêt". 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. 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". 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 Rogêt", he is in the wide outdoors; in "The Purloined Letter", he is in an enclosed private space.

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.

Dupin's method

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."

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. However, Krutch has been accused elsewhere of a "lazy reading" of Poe.[1] 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. 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. In this method, he combines his scientific logic with artistic imagination. As an observer, he pays special attention to what is unintended, such as hesitation, eagerness or a casual or inadvertent word.

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.

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". The name also implies "duping" or deception, a skill Dupin shows off in "The Purloined Letter." Detective fiction, however, had no real precedent and the word detective had not yet been coined when Poe first introduced Dupin. The closest example in fiction is Voltaire's Zadig (1748), in which the main character performs similar feats of analysis, themselves borrowed from The Three Princes of Serendip, an Italian rendition of a famous poem called Hasht Bihisht written by the Persian poet Amir Khusrau, which itself is based on the Haft Paykar by Nizami, written around 1197 AD, which in turn takes its outline from the earlier epic Shahnameh written by the Persian poet Firdausi around 1010 AD.

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. In "The Mystery of Marie Rogêt", he used a true story that had become of national interest.

It is sometimes speculated that Poe conceived the idea of Dupin from his investigation of the authenticity of an automaton called The Turk, which he published in his essay "Mälzel's Chess Player".[2] At the time, he was working as a reporter for the Southern Literary Messenger.

One possible inspiration is André Marie Jean Jacques Dupin.[3]

Literary influence and significance

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. 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?"

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. 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.

The character helped establish the genre of detective fiction, distinct from mystery fiction, with an emphasis on the analysis and not trial-and-error. 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." 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 Rogêt"), and a balanced version of both ("The Purloined Letter").

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.

Other writers

Direct adaptations

Film

Television

The Purloined Letter (1952). An episode of a CBS anthology series. Dupin does not appear.

The Murders in the Rue Morgue (1968). An episode of a BBC anthology series. Edward Woodward portrays Dupin. Here the anonymous narrator from the stories is depicted as Poe himself (played by Charles Kay).

The Pawloined Paper (1995).

Radio

Other media depictions

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 1988 BBC Radio broadcast two plays about featuring Dupin and Poe.The Real Mystery of Marie Roget features Dupin (Terry Molloy) visiting Poe (Ed Bishop) during his final night of life, to discuss the Mary Rogers murder. The Strange Case of Edgar Allan Poe depicts Dupin (John Moffatt) investigating the death of Poe (Kerry Shale).

In May 2004, Dupin appeared on stage in Murder by Poe, an Off-Broadway production dramatizing a series of Poe stories, including The Murders in the Rue Morgue. Dupin was played by Spencer Aste.[5]

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."

In children's book 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, an aged 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.

Literary pastiches

Michael Harrison wrote a series of Dupin mysteries, collected in 1968 as The Exploits of Chevalier Dupin.

Nine new stories were collected in 2013 as Beyond Rue Morgue: Further Tales of Edgar Allan Poe's First Detective:

References

External links

Notes and References

  1. Pearl, Matthew, introduction to Poe's Murders in the Rue Morgue, Random House, 2009
  2. Web site: Eschner. Kat. July 20, 2017. Debunking the Mechanical Turk Helped Set Edgar Allan Poe on the Path to Mystery Writing. Smithsonian Magazine.
  3. Jones . Buford . Ljungquist . Kent . 1976 . Monsieur Dupin: Further Details on the Reality behind the Legend . The Southern Literary Journal . 9 . 1 . 70–77 . 20077551 . 0038-4291.
  4. Book: Ross Nickerson, Catherine. Catherine Ross Nickerson. The Cambridge Companion to American Crime Fiction. 8 July 2010. Cambridge University Press. 978-0-521-13606-8. 31. 4: Women Writers Before 1960.
  5. Book: Lachman, Marvin. The villainous stage: crime plays on Broadway and in the West End. 2014. McFarland. 978-0-7864-9534-4. 903807427.

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