Critical Essay | Critical Essay by William Crisman

Critical Essay by William Crisman

SOURCE: Crisman, William. “Poe's Dupin as Professional, The Dupin Stories as Serial Text.” Studies in American Fiction 23, no. 2 (autumn 1995): 215-29.

In the following essay, Crisman investigates the character Dupin's status as a professional detective.

The reader of Poe's Dupin stories is caught between two contrary models of Dupin's professional status. On the one hand, Susan Beegel considers it “obvious” that Dupin is the “prototypical amateur detective” and thus by definition not a professional at all. Indeed, on a different level of theoretical discourse, Jacques Lacan experiences Dupin's interest in fees as a “clash with the rest” of “The Purloined Letter.”¹ On the other hand, in such neo-historicist readings as Terence Whalen's, Dupin appears so money-focused that the actual solution to his mysteries becomes unimportant, and Dupin becomes the extreme opposite of the amateur puzzle solver.² Adjudicating between such views requires exploring the kind of professional Dupin is...
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