SOURCE: Whalen, Terence. “Culture of Surfaces.” In Edgar Allan Poe and the Masses: The Political Economy of Literature in Antebellum America, pp. 225-48. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1999.

In the following essay, Whalen traces the development of Poe's detective fiction.

Nor must we overlook the probability of the constant inculcation in a belief in God on the minds of children producing so strong and perhaps an inherited effect on their brains. … I cannot pretend to throw the least light on such abstruse problems. The mystery of the beginning of all things is insoluble by us; and I for one must be content to remain an Agnostic.

(Charles Darwin)¹

Despite all disagreements over art and ideology, most critics of detective fiction display a remarkable uniformity of purpose. Their mission, implicitly or explicitly proclaimed, is not so much to interpret a particular work, but rather to examine the flaws inherent in...