SOURCE: Dameron, J. Lasley. “Poe's C. Auguste Dupin.” In No Fairer Land: Studies in Southern Literature Before 1900, edited by J. Lasley Dameron and James W. Mathews, pp. 159-71. Troy, N.Y.: The Whitston Publishing Company, 1986.

In the following essay, Dameron delineates why Edgar Allan Poe's fictional detective C. Auguste Dupin is considered “a major hero in American literature.”

Edgar Allan Poe's super detective, C. Auguste Dupin, as every English teacher knows, appears in three of Poe's most familiar so-called “detective stories”: “The Murders in the Rue Morgue,” “The Mystery of Marie Rogêt,” and “The Purloined Letter.”¹ He is significant, I argue, because like the American cowboy he is a part of our cultural heritage. We see him not only in a myriad of modern British and American detective stories and novels, but especially in the traits of several prominent and popular detectives of our time: Hercule Poirot...