Dupin, the Purloiner of the Purloined Letter: A Hero? Or A Plagiarist? (original) (raw)

The 'Seminar on "The Purloined Letter"'

Reading Lacan’s Écrits: From ‘Overture' to ‘Variations on the Standard Treatment', 2024

Abstract of Chapter 2 in Lacan's Écrits: A reader's guide - Volume 1: From 'Seminar on “The Purloined Letter"' to On the Subject Who is Finally in Question (Callum Neill (Editor), Derek Hook (Editor), Stijn Vanheule (Editor)): The ‘Seminar on “The Purloined Letter”’ appeared at the beginning of the Écrits; Lacan thought the seminar adumbrated important and lasting insights, e.g. repetition compulsion as determined by the Symbolic Order and the letter as “pure signifier,” the referent of which depends upon the subject’s place in a chain of signifiers. Using Edgar Alan Poe’s "The Purloined Letter", Lacan shows Poe’s use of a subjective logic to drive its narrative. It is not a typical detective story. Its style and interesting narrative echo psychoanalytic ideas on repetition, the act of enunciation, and powers of the letter as pure signifier. The chapter explicates Lacan’s views on the logic of speech, which contains a writing that can be deciphered within speaking and shows the stakes of the intersubjective circuit. This writing, found in the deductive method of Poe’s Detective Dupin, leads to cybernetics and probability theory. Using formulations from these fields, Lacan shows the autonomous functioning of the Symbolic. The final section is devoted to this explication and intimates the importance of topology and mathemes in the ‘later’ Lacan. In Poe’s tale, Dupin’s facsimile of purloined letter reveals a compact of jouissance, returning the text to repetition and the death drive.

Edgar Allan Poe’s Chevalier Auguste Dupin: The Use of Ratiocination in Fictional Crime Solving

Edgar Allan Poe’s influence on detective fiction writers has been so large that his fictional detective became the prototype for many later ones, most notably Arthur Conan Doyle’s Sherlock Holmes and Agatha Christie’s Hercule Poirot. The character of the amateur detective Chevalier Auguste Dupin is featured in three of his stories, also known as The Dupin Tales: “The Murders in the Rue Morgue” (1841), “The Mystery of Marie Rogêt” (1842-1843), and “The Purloined Letter” (1844). In these stories, Dupin solves various crime mysteries with the aid of his unnamed helper. The first tale is an example of a locked room mystery, the second portrays Dupin as an armchair detective, and the third introduces the motif of an unlikely perpetrator. All three stories show Dupin’s unique method of crime solving which strongly binds his observations and conclusions by the principle of ratiocination showing that no matter how extraordinary a crime is its solution always adheres to the principles of cold logic.

The Thousand-Second Dupins Created by the Father of Modern Detective Fiction, 2010

This chapter covers pages 47 to 58 of A Descent into Edgar Allan Poe and His Works: The Bicentennial. Throgh the chapter it is established that although, traditionally, only a few of Poe’s tales are regarded as belonging to the detection genre, if his complete production is studied closely, it can be discovered that Poe’s rationalization is at work in many of his stories, and that Dupin is just but one of the several “detectives” invented by him.

Power and Intellect: Exploring the Major Themes of "The Purloined Letter"

The present study explores the major themes in Edgar Allan Poe's short story "The Purloined Letter", including power and authority, the use of secrecy and obscurity, the value of reason and intellect, the pursuit of justice and morality, and the nature of evil. This paper examines each of these crucial areas by carefully reading the story and analysing how Poe's narrative presents and ultimately resolves each of these issues. The study goes on to evaluate the implications and significance of each of these subjects in more detail, highlighting how the story can be viewed as a reflection of the human experience as a whole and how its portrayal of these concepts might be instructional for contemporary readers. The paper concludes with the message that although "The Purloined Letter" is a fictional work, its lessons are timeless and pertinent to all readers.

The ‘oldest tricks in the book’ don’t work! Reports of burglary by DUMA

Research investigating the methods and motivations of burglars has typically focused on incarcerated offenders. The Australian Institute of Criminology’s Drug Use Monitoring in Australia (DUMA) program provided an opportunity for the authors to explore the methods and motivations of those actively involved in committing burglaries, whether or not they had actually been caught or detained for that offence. The findings support Routine Activity Theory, indicating that offenders consider a number of factors in determining whether a property will be targeted for a break and enter offence. As might be expected, opportunistic burglars choose easy to access properties, stay a minimum length of time and take goods that can be disposed of easily. It was concluded that simple prevention strategies could minimise the risk of becoming a victim of opportunistic burglary, which also has implications for law enforcement, the security industry and insurance agencies.