Legacies of the Rue Morgue: Science, Space, and Crime Fiction in France PDF
Preview Legacies of the Rue Morgue: Science, Space, and Crime Fiction in France
Legacies of the Rue Morgue CRITICAL AUTHORS & ISSUES Josué Harari, Series Editor A complete list of books in the series is available from the publisher. LEGACIES OF THE RUE MORGUE SCIENCE, SPACE, AND CRIME FICTION IN FRANCE ANDREA GOULET University of Pennsylvania Press Philadelphia Copyright © 2016 University of Pennsylvania Press All rights reserved. Except for brief quotations used for purposes of review or scholarly citation, none of this book may be reproduced in any form by any means without written permission from the publisher. Published by University of Pennsylvania Press Philadelphia, Pennsylvania 19104-4112 www . upenn . edu / pennpress Printed in the United States of Ame rica on acid- free paper 1 3 5 7 9 10 8 6 4 2 Library of Congress Cataloging- in- Publication Data Goulet, Andrea, author. Legacies of the Rue Morgue : science, space, and crime fi ction in France / Andrea Goulet. pages cm. — (Critical authors & issues) Includes bibliographical references and index. ISBN 978-0-8122-4779-4 (alk. paper) 1. Detective and mystery stories, French—H istory and criticism. 2. French fi ction—19th century— History and criticism. 3. French fi ction—20th century— History and criticism. 4. French fi ction—21st century— History and criticism. 5. Science in literature. 6. Space and time in literature. 7. Poe, Edgar Allan, 1809–1849— Infl uence. I. Title. II. Series: Critical authors & issues. PQ637.D4G68 2016 843'.087209— dc23 2015024072 For Jed, Jonah, and Maya Contents Prologue: Poe 1 Chapter 1. Introduction: Mapping Murder 11 PART I: ARCHAEOLOGIES Chapter 2. Quarries and Catacombs: Underground Crime in Second Empire Romans- feuilletons 39 Chapter 3. Skulls and Bones: Paleohistory in Leroux and Leblanc 80 Chapter 4. Crypts and Ghosts: Terrains of National Trauma in Japrisot and Vargas 118 PART II: INTERSECTIONS Chapter 5. Street- Name Mysteries and Private/Public Vio lence, 1867–2001 159 PART III: CARTOGRAPHIES Chapter 6. Terrains Vagues: Gaboriau and the Birth of the Cartographic Mystery 187 Chapter 7. Mapping the City: Malet’s Mysteries and Butor’s Bleston 208 viii Contents Chapter 8. Zéropa- Land: Balkanization and the Schizocartographies of Dantec and Radoman 224 Notes 253 Index 279 Ac know ledg ments 293 Prologue: Poe Why France? readers of Edgar Allan Poe’s “Th e Murders in the Rue Morgue” may ask.1 What led the American tale- teller of gothic suspense to set the fi rst modern detective story in contemporary Paris and to name it, morbidly, for a fi ctional street in the real Quartier St. Roch?2 As Baudelaire enjoyed pointing out, Poe had never set foot in France when he wrote the fi rst Dupin mystery, published in the April 1841 issue of Graham’s Magazine.3 But he had feathered the path of his worldly ambitions with French or French-s ounding pseudonyms (“Henri Le Rennet”), characters (“Th e Duke de l’Omelette”), and epigraphs (La Bruyère’s “Ce grand malheur, de ne pouvoir être seul”) for years.4 Still, the specifi city of “Th e Murders in the Rue Morgue” ’s location and its linkage of criminality to nationhood goes beyond the mere patina of glamor associ- ated with Paris. Th is was a city where the Gazette des Tribunaux spread grisly details about domestic crimes to a readership in the thousands,5 and where a former thief, Eugène François Vidocq, could become director of the Sûreté Nationale, establish a detective agency, and publish his memoirs to world- wide renown.6 By referencing the Gazette and Vidocq in his tale of ratiocina- tion, Poe was speaking in 1841 what may now be called “Global French,” a language that paradoxically reaches transnational proportions through local particularity.7 Local: a double murder in a home situated between the fi rst arrondisse- ment’s Rue St. Roch and Rue Richelieu; Global: shifting demographics and topographies of crime in modern metropolitan areas like Paris, London, and New York. Local: witnesses in the apartment building are questioned for testimony; Global: interpreters are called in, as these inhabitants of Paris hail from Italy, England, Spain, Holland, and France (Dupin calls them “den- izens of the fi ve great divisions of Eu rope”). Local: an amateur detective faces off with the Prefecture of Police; Global: nation- states of the early nineteenth century negotiate between vigilantism and offi cial institutions of judiciary power.8 Local: Dupin consults both the Gazette des Tribunaux and Le Monde
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