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Rozprawa usiłuje pokazać kształtowanie się formy powieści detektywistycznej oraz zainteresowania zbrodnią i zbrodniarzami w kulturze i literaturze poprzedniego stulecia. Niezależnie od tego, nieco przed wystąpieniem w niej detektywa, Poe stworzył w 1841 r. w opowiadaniu The Murders in the Rue Morges takie spojenie tematyczne, które w trójkroku: Poe — Gaboriau — Doyle stało się wiernie przestrzeganym schematem powieści detektywistycznej, jak też opowiadania detektywistycznego. Sherlock Holmes, mistrzowski detektyw Artura Conan Doyla, spopularyzował od lat dziewięćdziesiątych poprzedniego wieku ten schemat powieściowy oraz bohatera-detektywa we wszystkich warstwach społecznych jako nowy gatunek epicki. Współczesna Kafce powieść detektywistyczna rozgrywa się także w świecie grozy — usymbolizowanej przez zagadkowość mordu i zbrodni, która jednak wyjaśniona zostaje przez „Bogu-podobnego” detektywa i która stanowi dla czytelnika zagubionego w przedstawionym porządku świata uspokojenie; „kryminał” sugeruje świat zdrowy (heile Welt), określony przez Chestertona jako „zabobon świata wyzbytego wiary”. Rozprawa usiłuje naszkicować przeglądowo dalsze — po Conan Doyle'u — losy tego gatunku i zamknąć je wypowiedzią dwóch autorek z rodzinnego kraju tego gatunku, z Anglii; A. E. Murch ustala w swoim znakomitym studium The Development of the Detective Novel (London 1958), że wskutek przewagi intrygi ("The handling of the plot takes precedence over all else”) powieść detektywistyczna zaledwie może wznieść się na wyżyny artyzmu, a — jak stwierdza Dorothy Sayers, sama ceniona autorka powieści detektywistycznych — jest niemożliwe, by mogła ta powieść osiągnąć najwyższy poziom literackiej pełni z racji swych założeń. Jako podstawowy paradoks powieści detektywistycznej uznana została jej pretensja do realizmu przy równoczesnym najwyższym jej nieprawdopodobieństwie.

σ. [245]-264 Δωδώνη : επιστημονική επετηρίδα της Φιλοσοφικής Σχολής του Πανεπιστημίου Ιωαννίνων; Τόμ. 11 (1982)

The problematics of trauma and testimony are perforce in a closely-knit relation with the issue of evil, in particular with the strand of evil that made possible the concentration camps in Auschwitz. Edgar Allan Poe’s Narrative of Arthur Gordon Pym will be considered as primarily an event of speech, and its testimony as a mode of truth’s realization beyond what is available as statement. What emerges from the comments on Pym, from the explication of some of the death scenes, from the gratuitousness of the violence, and the nonchalance of Pym’s report, is not the horror, but a sense of the casualness of death, the “banality of evil” that Poe opposes to the “grandeur of evil,” looking ahead to Auschwitz and the Gulag. In Pym, Poe presents us with a rare instantiation of pure (and banal) evil in the casually-reported scene of the cannibalization. I intend to supplement the philosophical response to the question of (banal) evil provided by Hannah Arendt and Giorgio Agamben by a psychoanalytical one, with a footing in the signature terminology of Melanie Klein.

A unified theory of Poe’s works, bringing his diverse writing together into one coherent story can be found in his cosmogony, that is to say, in his understanding of universal mechanics. This latter understanding is based on the idea of a god dividing himself into the almost infinity of matter that makes up the universe, building it in his literal image. The division of the divine soul is, according to Poe, echoed by the intrinsic division of the human soul. As such, Time, Death, and Destiny are fundamentally interconnected: cosmic history and human history are one and the same, ruled by time and circumscribed by death. This story can be found all throughout Poe’s works and is thus the archetypal pattern at the core of this unified theory.; Une théorie unifiée donnant à Poe une cohérence dans sa diversité est possible lorsqu’on base l’analyse de son œuvre sur sa cosmogonie, c’est-à-dire sur sa conception de l’univers. Celle-ci repose sur un dieu devenu universel en se matérialisant, puis en se divisant en la quasi-infinité de matière formant le monde que nous connaissons. La division de l’âme divine est selon lui reflétée dans la nature intrinsèquement divisée de l’âme humaine. En cela, les notions de temps, de mort et de destinée sont interconnectées : l’histoire cosmique est identique à celle de l’homme, toutes deux régies par le temps et circonscrites par la mort. Cette même histoire se répétant tout au long de son œuvre, elle constitue donc le motif archétypal qui l’unifie.

U članku se raspravlja o autoreferencijalnim postupcima Vladimira Nabokova koje taj autor temelji na djelima i biografiji Edgara Allana Poea, pritom upozoravajući i na one Poeove priče u kojima također možemo pronaći postupke poput parodije, zrcaljenja, postupka ekphrasis i intertekstualnosti. Uspoređuje se djela obojice autora te upućuje na sličnosti i razlike u njihovom pristupu autoreferencijalnosti. Kao polazište razmatranju poslužio je rad Magdalene Medarić Od Mašenjke do Lolite: pripovjedački svijet Vladimira Nabokova te uvod u The Annotated Lolita koji je napisao Alfred Appel.

Tout au long du XIXe siècle, la catalepsie demeure un « désordre » assez mystérieux qui suscite l’intérêt des médecins comme il inspire la scène littéraire. Souvent associée à l’hystérie, à l’épilepsie ou encore à la transe et au mesmérisme, la catalepsie se retrouve fréquemment au cœur des débats médicaux, le premier étant celui sur les signes de la mort et les limites entre les états de vie et de mort. Mais la catalepsie est également liée à toute une tradition littéraire assez noire ou gothique.

This thesis examines the meaning, origin and influence of Edgar Allan Poe’s notion of the ‘Bi-Part Soul’, and the associated theme of duality, in selected texts of nineteenth-century detective fiction. Poe’s detective opus, ‘The Murders in the Rue Morgue’ (1841), ‘The Mystery of Marie Rogêt’ (1842) and ‘The Purloined Letter’ (1844), features the eccentric and complex Monsieur C. Auguste Dupin and establishes Poe as a significant pioneer in the cultural genesis of the detective genre. Poe’s idea of a ‘double’ detective with a ‘Bi-Part Soul’, who is both ‘creative and resolvent’ but also exhibits a ‘diseased intelligence’, provides a compelling psychological ‘blueprint’ for subsequent fictional detectives.The meaning of the ‘Bi-Part Soul’ and how it relates to Poe’s divergent philosophical beliefs of Transcendental Idealism and Materialism are evaluated before establishing a strong connection between the ‘Bi-Part Soul’ and a more general notion of duality, manifested in the literary motifs of doubling, the divided self and the doppelgänger. This is followed by a discussion of the origins of the ‘Bi-Part Soul’. The thesis argues that its derivation can be found in Aristotle’s (384 – 322 BC) bipartite psychology which reflects the same split between the rational and irrational human virtues. The explication of the tropes which evolve from ‘The Bi-Part Soul’ are explored in a Case Study focusing on ‘The Murders in the Rue Morgue’ (1841). The presence and influence of ‘The Bi-Part Soul’ and duality in British nineteenth-century fiction, which acts as a prologue to the conception of the detective genre, are examined in the context of the Newgate novel and Sensation fiction (1830 – 1868), Charles Dickens’ Bleak House (1853), Wilkie Collins’ The Moonstone (1868) and Robert Louis Stevenson’s Strange Case of Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde (1886). Dupin’s ‘Bi-Part’ psychological mould is traced throughout the fictional detectives in these texts and culminates in an analysis of Arthur Conan Doyle’s fin-de-siècle Sherlock Holmes. This dissertation suggests that Poe’s notion of the ‘Bi-Part Soul’ established an enduring and influential model for subsequent writers of detective fiction and continues to shape the culture of the genre to this day.

The American scholar Burton R. Pollin established literary connections between Edgar Allan Poe and the Victorian English writer Edward Bulwer-Lytton, tracing the influence the latter exerted over many of Poe’s tales (1965;1996; 2000). Similarly, Allan Conrad Christensen stated that Bulwer-Lytton was one of the writers that had exerted a most powerful influence on Poe’s early prose (2004). Moreover, as a literary critic, Poe also reviewed many of Bulwer-Lytton’s novels and declared himself an admirer of the English writer (1835; 1836; 1840; 1841a; 1841b; 1842). In 1830, when Poe was expelled from West Point Academy, Bulwer-Lytton was already a highly acclaimed writer about to publish Paul Clifford; the novel that inaugurated his cycle of Newgate fiction which incorporated the novelty of featuring a criminal as the hero of the story. This characteristic would be widely displayed in many of Edgar Allan Poe’s subsequent short-stories such as “The Tell-Tale Heart”, “The Black Cat”, “The Imp of the Perverse”, or “The Cask of Amontillado.” Taking these precedents into consideration, this article aims at gaining insight into the intertextuality established between Edward Bulwer-Lytton and Edgar Allan Poe, identifying thematic links and disparities through a comparative analysis of Bulwer-Lytton’s Paul Clifford and Edgar Allan Poe’s tales, as well as examining the idiosyncratic characteristics which differentiate the novel and the short-story in nineteenth-century England and America

Burton Pollin argues that, despite Edgar Allan Poe‟s evident legacy in Stephen King‟s fiction, Poe‟s influence on the writings of this author from Maine has often been overlooked and even ignored by Poe scholars. Pollin suggests that King‟s most acclaimed horror novel The Shining (1977) was mostly inspired by Poe‟s gothic tales “The Masque of the Red Death” and “The Fall of the House of Usher.” Taking Pollin‟s premise as a point of departure, this article aims to retrace examples of transtextuality – to use Gerard Genette‟s term − between King‟s novel The Shining and some of Poe‟s gothic tales, thus following Pollin‟s initial proposal, but with the view to analyse different passages from King‟s novel in comparison with other Poe‟s tales that have been hardly mentioned in relation to The Shining.RESUMEN: Burton Pollin defiende que, pese al evidente legado que Edgar Allan Poe atesora en la ficcion de Stephen King, la influencia que Poe ha ejercido en las obras del escritor de Maine a menudo ha sido menospreciada o includo ignorada por parte de los estudiosos de la obra de Poe. Pollin sugiere que la novela de terror mas aclamada de King, El resplandor (1977), fue inspirada principalmente por los relatos goticos de Poe “La mascara de la muerte roja” y “La caida de la casa Usher.” Tomando la premisa de Pollin como punto de partida, este articulo pretende identificar ejemplos de transtextualidad – utilizando el termino de Gerard Genette – entre la novela de King “El resplandor” y relatos de Poe, siguiendo la propuesta inicial de Pollin, pero con el objetivo de analizar diferentes pasajes de la novela de King comparandolos con otros relatos de Poe que apenas han sido mencionados en relacion a El resplandor.