SOURCE: Werner, James V. “The Detective Gaze: Edgar A. Poe, the Flaneur, and the Physiognomy of Crime.” American Transcendental Quarterly 15, no. 1 (March 2001): 5-21.
In the following essay, Werner identifies Edgar Allan Poe's detective C. Auguste Dupin as an example of what critic Walter Benjamin termed a “flaneur,” and asserts that Poe's use of this careful observer, who interacts within but still remains apart from the world he surveys, “represents a pivotal influence on Poe's philosophical perspective and fictional aims and strategies.”
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