I'm looking for information for an english report I have to do. I could use all the help I can get.

-- Anonymous, November 05, 2002

Answers

Poe's Dupin series has many of the elements that are the origin and foundation of the entire genre(including being a series!). The two classics are "The Murders on the Rue Morgue" and "The Gold Bug." Elements: brilliantly intuitive and analytic private detective, a dim, admiring partner, an even dimmer, stolid chief inspector, dark atmosphere and bizarre crimes, clues to solve the puzzle letting the reader participate in the whodunnit(Poe included cipher puzzles as in "The Gold Bug" in his magazines, basic mysteries(the locked room, hiding the object in plain sight, the secret code, borrowing from reallife mysteries(Marie Roget). Even the atmosphere,the wit and the structure including lectures by the great detective has been done over and over again.

What is the springboard for this unique creation? The romantic movement itself. Novelists like Godwin(the hunter and the hunted theme)experiment with new ways of perception and probing mysteries with new science. "The Purloined Letter" expalins the mind of the romantic, intuitive, progressive and able to sink within and see beyond the limiting confines of conventional wisdom. Poe's bi-fold nature as an analytic thinker enthralled by solving puzzles, exploring and uncovering mysteries(the death of Mary Rogers) is more than a Conan Doyle. For Poe it is a personal solution to life, the triumph of reason over fear and mystery, a statement of superiority more profound than that of Sherlock Holmes. The unique genius of Poe is enshrined in these dark fantasies ruled by controlling reason and may actually be the closest way for the reader to understand him rather the usual misconceptions that occur when thinking of his Gothic tales and poetry. And Poe invented the particular form of the detective story genre,NOT the Gothic which existed long before him. Both are related however.

-- Anonymous, November 05, 2002

Poe's Dupin series has many of the elements that are the origin and foundation of the entire genre(including being a series!). The two classics are "The Murders on the Rue Morgue" and "The Gold Bug." Elements: brilliantly intuitive and analytic private detective, a dim, admiring partner, an even dimmer, stolid chief inspector, dark atmosphere and bizarre crimes, clues to solve the puzzle letting the reader participate in the whodunnit(Poe included cipher puzzles as in "The Gold Bug" in his magazines, basic mysteries(the locked room, hiding the object in plain sight, the secret code, borrowing from reallife mysteries(Marie Roget). Even the atmosphere,the wit and the structure including lectures by the great detective has been done over and over again.

What is the springboard for this unique creation? The romantic movement itself. Novelists like Godwin(the hunter and the hunted theme)experiment with new ways of perception and probing mysteries with new science. "The Purloined Letter" expalins the mind of the romantic, intuitive, progressive and able to sink within and see beyond the limiting confines of conventional wisdom. Poe's bi-fold nature as an analytic thinker enthralled by solving puzzles, exploring and uncovering mysteries(the death of Mary Rogers) is more than a Conan Doyle. For Poe it is a personal solution to life, the triumph of reason over fear and mystery, a statement of superiority more profound than that of Sherlock Holmes. The unique genius of Poe is enshrined in these dark fantasies ruled by controlling reason and may actually be the closest way for the reader to understand him rather the usual misconceptions that occur when thinking of his Gothic tales and poetry. And Poe invented the particular form of the detective story genre,NOT the Gothic which existed long before him. Both are related however.

See those stories and some essays about his writing at www.eapoe.org.

-- Anonymous, November 05, 2002