Edgar Allan Poe - The Murders in the Rue Morgue - A Tale of Ratiocination and the Prototype for Detective Stories

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Seminar paper from the year 2002 in the subject American Studies - Literature, grade: 1,3 (A), Martin Luther University (Institute for Anglistics/ American Studies), course: Short Fiction, language: English, abstract: Edgar Allan Poe is generally regarded as one of the most important and famous Americanauthors. He wrote many short stories, poems and reviews. This term paper has not the aim toconcentrate on his whole work but to examine a certain story.The writer is especially famous for his tales of ratiocination (Carlson 319). One of thesestories, The Murders in the Rue Morgue , shall be the central subject of this paper. Poehimself commented on this story to be something in a new key (Silverman 173). What Iwant to prove throughout this work is why Rue Morgue nowadays signifies not onlyVRPHWKLQJ that was new, but the prototype of the modern detective story (a thesis we find inmost of the literary encyclopaedias).For reaching a satisfactory final result, it is necessary to have, at first, a look at thedefinition of the short prose narrative (Ahrends 19), which was given by Poe himself. Thisterm is closely connected to the tales of ratiocination in which the usage of Poes primaryprinciples reaches nearly perfection. This perfection is above all to be found in the story Rue Morgue , one of the best examples of Poes writing skills and the beginning of thecreation of a new establishing literary genre. The analysis of the Rue Morgue will try tojustify this thesis. Therefore, a further look at the main characters, the structure of the story,the readers expected reaction and more is required.Finally, this working process shall lead me to my actual aim: The justification of theprototypical character of the Rue Morgue for (modern) detective fiction by summarizing theimportant features and elements of this literary genre. [...]

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