-----Original Message-----
>From: Stewart Wilson <
stewart@stewartwilson.com>
>
>Do you know of an alternative?� Looking around the
net, I can't find
>any sites that say Dupin isn't the first fictional
detective, merely
>sites that corroborate the claim.� It would be nice
to know who the
>first really is.
In my ENCYCLOPEDIA OF FANTASTIC VICTORIANA I spent some time
describing both the history of detective fiction in the 19th
century as well as the pre-Poe Proto-Mysteries and detective
characters.
I don't mean to slight Poe; there's a reason he's been given
as much credit as he has over the years. He added a great
deal to detective fiction. But too much of what he has been
given credit for was created by other hands, and he only
synthesized diverse elements into one package. The Great
Detective figure was established by Eugene Francois Vidocq in
his "autobiography," MEMOIRES DE VIDOCQ (1828); the
much-maligned (and unfairly so) Bulwer-Lytton made a
fictional version of Vidocq, Monsieur Favart, for his novel
NIGHT AND MORNING (1841), which Poe read before writing
"Murders in the Rue Morgue." (Poe's review of NIGHT AND
MORNING appeared in the same issue of GRAHAM'S LADY AND
GENTLEMAN'S MAGAZINE as "Rue Morgue").
Other proto-detectives can include Caleb Williams, in William
Godwin's THE ADVENTURES OF CALEB WILLIAMS (1794); E.T.A.
Hoffmann's Mme. de Scudery, from "Mademoiselle de Scudery"
(1819); Tom Richmond in RICHMOND: SCENES IN THE LIFE OF A BOW
STREET RUNNER (1828); various protagonists in the Newgate
novels of the 1820s and 1830s; and a number of characters
from the German kriminalgeschichte, including Herr von L.,
from Adolph Mulliner's
"Der Kaliber" (1828).
Poe, as I said, synthesized a lot of what came before. He
also introduced a number of motifs and genre conventions, and
so I suppose it's not inaccurate to call him one of the
fathers of the mystery genre. But he's not the only one. As
with most literary genres and character types, it's difficult
to say when the first one is--at the edges of genres, things
get fuzzy, literary history not least.
jess
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This archive was generated by hypermail 2b29 : 20 Apr 2006 EDT