Dupin is not a professional detective and his motivations for solving the mysteries change throughout the three stories. Using what Poe termed "ratiocination", Dupin combines his considerable intellect with creative imagination, even putting himself in the mind of the criminal. His talents are strong enough that he appears able to read the mind of his companion, the unnamed narrator of all three stories.
Poe created the Dupin character before the worddetective had been used for a profession. The character laid the groundwork for fictional detectives to come, includingSherlock Holmes,Hercule Poirot and many others. Through Dupin, Poe also established many of the common elements of the detective fiction genre.
Facsimile of Poe's original manuscript for "The Murders in the Rue Morgue", the first appearance of C. Auguste Dupin
Dupin is from what was once a wealthy family, but "by a variety of untoward events" has been reduced to more humble circumstances, and contents himself only with the basic necessities of life.[2] He now lives inParis with his close friend, the anonymousnarrator of the stories. The two met by accident while both were searching for "the same rare and very remarkable volume" in an obscurelibrary.[3] This scene, the two characters searching for a hidden text, serves as a metaphor for detection.[4] They promptly move to an old manor located inFaubourg Saint-Germain. For hobbies, Dupin is "fond" of enigmas, conundrums, andhieroglyphics.[5] He bears the titleChevalier,[6] meaning that he is a knight in theLégion d'honneur. Dupin shares some features with the latergentleman detective, a character type that became common in theGolden Age of Detective Fiction.[citation needed] He is acquainted with police prefect "G.", who appears in all three stories seeking his counsel.
In "The Murders in the Rue Morgue", Dupin investigates the murder of a mother and daughter in Paris.[7] He investigates another murder in "The Mystery of Marie Rogêt". This story was based on the true story ofMary Rogers, a saleswoman at a cigar store in Manhattan whose body was found floating in theHudson River in 1841.[8] Dupin's final appearance, in "The Purloined Letter", features an investigation of a letter stolen from the French queen. Poe called this story "perhaps, the best of my tales of ratiocination".[9] Throughout the three stories, Dupin travels through three distinct settings. In "The Murders in the Rue Morgue", he travels through city streets; in "The Mystery of Marie Rogêt", he is in the wide outdoors; in "The Purloined Letter", he is in an enclosed private space.[10]
Dupin is not actually a professional detective, and his motivations change through his appearances. In "The Murders in the Rue Morgue", he investigates the murders for his personal amusement, and to prove the innocence of a falsely accused man. He refuses a financial reward. However, in "The Purloined Letter", Dupin purposefully pursues a financial reward.[11]
But it is in matters beyond the limits of mere rule that the skill of the analyst is evinced. He makes in silence a host of observations and inferences....
While discussing Dupin's method in the light ofCharles Sanders Peirce's logic of making good guesses orabductive reasoning, Nancy Harrowitz first quotes Poe's definition of analysis and then shows how "Poe thesemiotician is running the gamut of possibilities here—inferences, reasoning backwards, visual, sensual and aural signs, reading faces. Playing cards with the man would have been an interesting experience."[12]
There is considerable controversy about the philosophical nature of Dupin's method. According to biographer Joseph Krutch, Dupin is portrayed as a dehumanized thinking machine, a man whose sole interest is in pure logic.[13] However, Krutch has been accused elsewhere of a "lazy reading" of Poe.[14] According to Krutch, Dupin's deductive prowess is first exhibited when he appears to read the narrator's mind by rationally tracing his train of thought for the previous fifteen minutes.[15][16] He employs what he terms "ratiocination". Dupin's method is to identify with the criminal and put himself in his mind. By knowing everything that the criminal knows, he can solve any crime. His attitude towards life seems to portray him as a snob who feels that due to his aptitude, normal human interaction and relationships are beneath him.[17] In his method, he combines his scientific logic with artistic imagination.[18] As an observer, he pays special attention to what is unintended, such as hesitation, eagerness, or a casual or inadvertent word.[19]
Dupin's method also emphasizes the importance of reading and writing: many of his clues come from newspapers or written reports from the Prefect. This device also engages the readers, who follow along by reading the clues themselves.[20]
Poe may have derived the name "Dupin" from a character in a series of stories first publishedBurton's Gentleman's Magazine in 1828 called "Unpublished passages in the Life ofVidocq, the French Minister of Police".[21] The name also implies "duping" or deception, a skill Dupin shows off in "The Purloined Letter."[22] Detective fiction, however, had few precedents and the worddetective had not yet been coined when Poe first introduced Dupin.[23] The closest example in fiction isVoltaire'sZadig (1748), in which the main character performs similar feats of analysis,[1] themselves borrowed fromThe Three Princes of Serendip, an Italian rendition of a famous poem calledHasht Bihisht written by the Persian poetAmir Khusrau, which itself is based on theHaft Paykar byNizami Ganjavi, written around 1197 AD, which in turn takes its outline from the earlier epicShahnameh written by the Persian poetFirdausi around 1010 AD.[24]
It is often interpreted that Poe borrowed the name fromAndré Marie Jean Jacques Dupin. The first Dupin story coincided inGraham's Magazine with Poe's review of a translation ofLouis de Loménie's biographical sketches. Both André Dupin and his brilliant brotherCharles are profiled by Loménie.[25][26] It has also been argued that Poe adapted the autobiographical persona ofThomas De Quincey's "The Opium-Eater" into Dupin.[27]
In writing the series of Dupin tales, Poe capitalized on contemporary popular interest. His use of anorangutan in "The Murders in the Rue Morgue" was inspired by the popular reaction to an orangutan that had been on display at the Masonic Hall in Philadelphia in July 1839.[18] In "The Mystery of Marie Rogêt", he used a true story that had become of national interest.[8]
It is sometimes speculated that Poe conceived the idea of Dupin from his investigation of the authenticity of an automaton calledThe Mechanical Turk, which he published in his essay "Mälzel's Chess Player".[28]
Sherlock Holmes was one of several fictional detectives influenced by Dupin.
C. Auguste Dupin is generally acknowledged as the first detective infiction. The character served as the prototype for many that were created later, includingSherlock Holmes byArthur Conan Doyle andHercule Poirot byAgatha Christie.[29] Conan Doyle once wrote, "Each [of Poe's detective stories] is a root from which a whole literature has developed... Where was the detective story until Poe breathed the breath of life into it?"[30]
Manytropes that would later become commonplace in detective fiction first appeared in Poe's stories: theeccentric but brilliant detective, the bumblingconstabulary, the first-person narration by a close personal friend. Dupin also initiates the storytelling device where the detective announces his solution and then explains the reasoning leading up to it.[31] Like Sherlock Holmes, Dupin uses his considerable deductive prowess and observation to solve crimes. Poe also portrays the police in an unsympathetic manner as a sort offoil to the detective.[32]
The character helped establish the genre of detective fiction, distinct from mystery fiction, with an emphasis on the analysis and not trial-and-error.[33]Brander Matthews wrote: "The true detective story as Poe conceived it is not in the mystery itself, but rather in the successive steps whereby the analytic observer is enabled to solve the problem that might be dismissed as beyond human elucidation."[34] In fact, in the three stories which star Dupin, Poe created three types of detective fiction which established a model for all future stories: the physical type ("The Murders in the Rue Morgue"), the mental ("The Mystery of Marie Rogêt"), and a balanced version of both ("The Purloined Letter").[35]
Fyodor Dostoevsky called Poe "an enormously talented writer" and favorably reviewed Poe's detective stories. The character Porfiry Petrovich in Dostoevsky's novelCrime and Punishment was influenced by Dupin.[36]
In the first Sherlock Holmes story,A Study in Scarlet (1887),Doctor Watson compares Holmes to Dupin, to which Holmes replies: "No doubt you think you are complimenting me ... In my opinion, Dupin was a very inferior fellow... He had some analytical genius, no doubt; but he was by no means such a phenomenon as Poe appears to imagine."[37] Alluding to an episode in "The Murders in the Rue Morgue", where Dupin deduces what his friend is thinking despite their having walked together in silence for a quarter of an hour, Holmes remarks: "That trick of his breaking in on his friend's thoughts with an apropos remark... is really very showy and superficial";[37] nevertheless, Holmes later performs the same 'trick' on Watson in "The Adventure of the Cardboard Box".
Louisa May Alcott parodied Dupin and Poe in her 1865 thriller "V.V., or Plots and Counterplots", which has been credited by literary critic Catherine Ross Nickerson as the second-oldest work of modern detective fiction after only Poe's Dupin stories themselves. A short story published anonymously by Alcott, the tale concerns a Scottish aristocrat who tries to prove that a mysterious woman has killed his fiancée and cousin. The detective on the case, Antoine Dupres, is a parody of Auguste Dupin who is less concerned with solving the crime than he is in setting up a way to reveal the solution with a dramatic flourish.[38]
InMurder in the Madhouse (1935), the first ofJonathan Latimer's series ofscrewball crime novels starring detective William Crane, Crane presents himself in the sanitarium as C. Auguste Dupin. The story contains more oblique references in the form of stylistic elements (offstage murders, Crane's theories of deduction) that suggest Poe had an influence on Latimer's writing.
Jorge Luis Borges pays homage to Poe's Dupin in "Death and the Compass", by calling his main detective character Erik Lönrott an "Auguste Dupin"-type detective. This is one of the stories published by Borges in hisFicciones (1944). Borges also translated Poe's works into Spanish.
Dupin next appears in a series of seven short stories inEllery Queen's Mystery Magazine byMichael Harrison in the 1960s. The stories were collected by the PublishersMycroft & Moran in 1968 asThe Exploits of Chevalier Dupin. The stories include "The Vanished Treasure" (May 1965) and "The Fires in the Rue St. Honoré" (January 1967). This collection was subsequently published in England by Tom Stacey in 1972 asMurder in the Rue Royale and Further Exploits of the Chevalier Dupin and included a further five stories written since the original publication.
In "The New Murders of the Rue Morgue" (1984), a short story in volume two of Clive Barker'sBooks of Blood. Set presumably in 1984, the story features Lewis, a descendant of Dupin, who stumbles upon a nearly identical case.
The Man Who Was Poe, (1991) a juvenile novel byAvi, features Dupin befriending a young boy named Edmund. The two solve mysteries together inProvidence, Rhode Island. Dupin is revealed to be Edgar Allan Poe himself.
NovelistGeorge Egon Hatvary uses Dupin in his novelThe Murder of Edgar Allan Poe (1997) as detective and narrator. Dupin travels to America to investigate the circumstances of Poe's mysterious death in 1849. In the novel, Dupin and Poe became friends when Poe stayed in Paris in 1829, and it was Poe who assisted Dupin in the three cases about which Poe wrote. Hatvary writes that Dupin resembles Poe, so much so that several people confuse the two on first sight.
Dupin is the hero ofLes ogres de Montfaucon byGérard Dôle (2004), a collection of thirteen detective stories set in the 19th century, the last of which (« Le drame de Reichenbach ») also provides a link with Sherlock Holmes.
Dupin is referenced inThe Rook (2008) bySteven James.
InThe Paralogs of Phileas Fogg (2016), authorJames Downard has Dupin help Fogg and his cohorts resolve some issues during the American leg of their around-the-world adventure.
C. Auguste Dupin and Edgar Allan Poe are a sleuthing duo in Karen Lee Street's gothic mystery trilogy:Edgar Allan Poe and the London Monster (2016);Edgar Allan Poe and the Jewel of Peru (2018); andEdgar Allan Poe and the Empire of the Dead (2019).
Dupin teams up with the husband of alleged murdererDelphine LaLaurie to tackle supernatural threats in Jason Martin's 2023 novel,Witches in the Morgue: An Auguste Dupin Investigation. A second book in the series,Auguste Dupin and the Wolves of God, was expected for release in 2024.
Suspense: "The Purloined Letter: (1952). An episode of a CBS anthology series. Dupin does not appear.
Die Galerie der großen Detektive: "Auguste Dupin findet den entwendeten Brief" (1954). An episode of a West German anthology series, adaptingThe Purloined Letter.Walter Andreas Schwarz portrays Dupin.
Detective: "The Murders in the Rue Morgue" (1968). An episode of a BBC anthology series.Edward Woodward portrays Dupin. Here the anonymous narrator from the stories is depicted as Poe himself (played byCharles Kay).
A.C. Dupin zasahuje (1970). A Czechoslovakian TV miniseries starringLadislav Chudík as Dupin.
Ficciones: "Doble asesinato en la calle Morgue" (1972). An episode of a Spanish anthology series, adaptingThe Murders in the Rue Morgue.
Le double assassinat de la rue Morgue (1973). A French TV Film starringDaniel Gélin as Dupin.
Palabras cruzadas: "Doble crimen en la calle Morgue" (1977). An episode of a Spanish anthology series, adaptingThe Murders in the Rue Morgue.Pastor Serrador portrays Dupin.
Novela: "El misterio de María Roget" (1978). An episode of a Spanish anthology series, adaptingThe Mystery of Marie Roget.
Histoires extraordinaires: "La lettre volée" (1981). An episode of a French anthology series, adaptingThe Purloined Letter.Pierre Vaneck portrays Dupin.
The Murders in the Rue Morgue (1986). A CBS TV movie.George C. Scott plays an ageing Dupin. The film presents Dupin as a retired police detective, who lives with his daughter, Claire (Rebecca De Mornay). Dupin becomes involved in the case, after his daughter's fiancé becomes a suspect for the murders. Here the anonymous narrator from the stories is named Phillipe Huron (Val Kilmer).
Racconti neri: "Gli assassini della Rue Morgue" (2006). An episode of an Italian television series, in which actorGiancarlo Giannini reads excerpts fromThe Murders in the Rue Morgue.
Carl Lumbly portrays Charles Auguste Dupin inThe Fall of the House of Usher, a Netflix miniseries adapting numerous Poe stories.Malcolm Goodwin also plays a younger version of the character. Instead of the 19th century French sleuth of the original stories, Dupin is depicted here as a modern-day American federal prosecutor investigating the Usher family; a former friend of Roderick Usher, the series is told from the perspective of a conversation between Dupin and Roderick following the death of the latter's bloodline. Elements fromThe Murders in the Rue Morgue were incorporated into the third episode "Murder in the Rue Morgue".
The Murders in the Rue Morgue was adapted forThe Weird Circle, airing January 2, 1944.
In 1948,NBC University Theater aired an adaptation ofThe Purloined Letter starringAdolphe Menjou as Dupin. The anonymous narrator was presented as Poe himself (voiced by John Newland).
The long running CBS anthology seriesSuspense broadcastThe Mystery of Marie Roget on 14 December 1953.Cornel Wilde voiced Dupin.
On January 7, 1975, an adaptation ofMurders in the Rue Morgue was aired on CBS Radio Mystery Theater.
Murders in the Rue Morgue was dramatised in September 2000 forBBC Radio 4'sClassic Serial strand, withMalcolm Tierney voicing Dupin.[39]
In 2011,The Murders in the Rue Morgue was adapted as the debut episode of the BBC Radio detective anthology seriesThe Rivals, starringJames Fleet as theSherlock Holmes supporting characterInspector Lestrade.Andrew Scott portrayed Dupin.
In 1966,Ernest Dudley penned an original Dupin storyThe Flies of Isis for theBBC Light Programme'sMidweek Theatre. Rolf Lefebvre voiced Dupin.[40]
In 1988 BBC Radio broadcast two plays about featuring Dupin and Poe.The Real Mystery of Marie Roget features Dupin (Terry Molloy) visiting Poe (Ed Bishop) during his final night of life, to discuss theMary Rogers murder.The Strange Case of Edgar Allan Poe depicts Dupin (John Moffatt) investigating the death of Poe (Kerry Shale).
In May 2004, Dupin appeared on stage inMurder by Poe, anOff-Broadway production dramatizing a series of Poe stories, includingThe Murders in the Rue Morgue. Dupin was played bySpencer Aste.[41]
In the comic seriesBatman Confidential, the creation ofBatman's crime-solving super-computer which is linked toInterpol,FBI, andCIA databases is introduced. Commonly known as the "Bat Computer," it is originally nicknamed "Dupin," after Batman's "hero."
In children's bookThe Vile Village,Count Olaf disguises himself as "Detective Dupin" in order to falsely accuse the protagonists of murder.
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