Foretelling Darwinism, Revising Race: Poe’s Scientifi c Discourse in “The Murders in the Rue Morgue”

Abstract

Having recently celebrated the bicentenary of Edgar Allan Poe’s birth, his tales still remain an invaluable source of ongoing interpretation. The first tale that conforms his detectivetrilogy, “The Murders in the Rue Morgue”, has been analysed from multiple perpectives, especially taking into consideration the discourse of race as a main focus of attention. Nonetheless, detective Auguste Dupin’s references to Georges Cuvier, an important pre-Darwinian French naturalist and zoologist, have often been unnoticed. This article aims at identifying pre-Darwinian concepts about selection and evolution in Poe’s tale so as to facilitate readings of the tale in relation to Darwinism and evolutionary theories.