Edgar Allan Poe's Detective Stories

Paper Summary:

This paper explains that the father of the detective fiction, Edgar Allan Poe, provided the detective story model for nineteenth-century British novelist Sir Arthur Conan Doyle's creation of one of the world's most famous detective Sherlock Holmes. The author reviews Poe's "The Murders in the Rue Morgue", "The Mystery of Marie Roget" and "The Purloined Letter" to illustrate the ways in which amateur sleuth Auguste Dupin was the pattern upon which Doyle created Holmes. The paper uses textual analysis and historical evidence to reveal that Doyle borrowed from Poe the logical method, the details of personal habits and personality and the narrator who purports to present the exploits of his brainy, withdrawn friend to the public.

From the Paper:

"Holmes is also influenced by Dupin and his peculiar attachment to a loyal companion who serves to document the successes of his brilliant mentor. Like Dupin's associate, Watson plays the part of the straight man in Doyle's tale. He essentially an observer whose sole purpose is to offer fumbling assistance to the detective, typically by way of inaccurate observations, suppositions, and conclusions that Holmes then corrects. It becomes very obvious that Doyle patterned the ineffectual and lovable Watson, directly after Dupin's friend."

Sample of Sources Used:

• Doyle, Sir Arthur Conan. "A Scandal in Bohemia." In Sherlock Holmes: Selected Stories (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1951), 208.
• _________ "A Study in Scarlet." In A Study in Scarlet; The Sign of the Four (New York: P. F. Collier & Son, 1904).
• _________"The Musgrave Ritual." In The Memoirs of Sherlock Holmes (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1994), 113.
• Erlich, Victor. Russian Formalism: History - Doctrine. (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 1965).
• Hutcheon, Linda. A Theory of Parody: The Teachings of Twentieth-Century Art Forms (New York: Methuen, 1985).

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