"言其未言,補其裂縫:" 論愛倫坡偵探故事中的敘事斷裂 - 政大學術集成

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(1)立. 政治大. ‧. ‧ 國. 學. n. er. io. sit. y. Nat. al. Ch. engchi. i n U. v.

(2) 國立政治大學英國語文學系博士論文. Ph. D. Dissertation Graduate Institute of the English Department National Chengchi University 0B. 1B. 2B. 指導教授：史文生教授陳音頤教授治. 政. 大. ‧. ‧ 國. 學. 立 Professor Frank W. Stevenson Thesis Advisor: Professor Eva Yin-I Chen. n. al. er. io. sit. y. Nat. 「言其未言，補其裂縫」－論愛倫坡偵探故事中的敘事斷裂 “Say the Unsaid, Repair the Fractures” －On the Narrative Ruptures in Edgar Alan Poe’s Detective Stories. Ch. engchi. i n U. v. 博士生：黃斌峰 Ph. D. Student: Billy Bin Feng Huang. 中華民國一 O 五年六月 June 2016 1.

(3) 摘要在本論文中，將借用皮埃爾‧馬舍雷的理論，深入分析愛倫坡偵探故事中的敘事斷裂。首先在第二章中，先釐清「偵探小說」的定義：偵探小說乃是一個虛構故事，主題敘述偵探或某位近似偵探的人物偵破一件案子的過程。根據該定義，即可得知愛倫坡並非第一個偵探故事的作者，卻是偵探文類的開山鼻祖。第三章處理馬舍雷的理論。首先，馬舍雷認為任何一個文本中，作者必定會留下未竟之語，即所謂的敘事斷裂。這些未竟之語讓文本中的聲音多元化，也是文本存在的原因。若將馬舍雷的已說/未竟之語之模式，與阿圖舍，伊果頓，詹明信等人關於意識形態的論述一起檢視，便能刻劃出這個相互關係：文本無法直接取得歷史，必須透過意識形態；文本無法精確反映. 政治大. 出意識形態，後者若置於前者後，前者的未竟之語便會出現。另外，馬舍雷在「文學製造理. 立. 論」一書中曾提及：文本中的未竟之語，即是文本原本可能的發展方向，或是一種潛能。若. ‧ 國. 學. 套用德勒茲虛擬/現實的觀念，即可得到此結論：馬舍雷所謂的未竟之語或敘事斷裂，即是德勒茲的虛擬，乃是儲藏潛能之處。一旦未竟之語被說出，敘事斷裂被彌補，就是開發出一種. ‧. 潛能，或是呈現出一種文本可能的發展情境。根據已上所言，筆者提出一個假設：愛倫坡的. Nat. sit. y. 偵探故事中，在故事情境¡，偵探角色刻劃，以及邏輯推演三個地方，留有敘事斷裂。而在古. n. al. er. io. 典，冷硬，以及後現代的偵探小說中，會用不同的方式，來彌補這三個敘事斷裂，也呈現出愛倫坡偵探故事三種可能的發展。. Ch. engchi. i n U. v. 第四章處理愛倫坡偵探故事中的故事情境與主題間的關係。愛倫坡的偵探故事寫於 1840 年代，當時的美國人民深信美國的富強（強勢意識形態），但實際上工業化與都市化卻帶來各種的社會問題（強勢意識形態的內部矛盾）。在愛倫坡的偵探故事中，都市乃是個陰暗之地，但卻又和故事發展無直接相關。這顯然和愛倫坡的成長背景有關（作者立場）。因此愛倫坡在此處的未竟之語：在偵探故事中，故事情境與主題應有直接關連。一些重要的古典偵探小說家，像是愛嘉莎克莉絲蒂或柯南道爾，傾向根據當時的一般意識形態（general ideology, GI）來描繪故事情境，並把故事中的犯罪看成破壞社會穩定。冷硬派的偵探小說著重社會寫實，因此故事情境多為衰敗的城市，這也是犯罪的根源。至於後現代的偵探小說，故事情境多為如迷宮般的世界，陷在其中偵探的調查最後觸礁。第五章處理偵探的角色刻劃。當時的主流意識形態，乃是強調理性的啟蒙思維，但其實社 2.

(4) 會上卻有另一股強調非理性的暗流思潮（強勢意識形態的內部矛盾），而愛倫坡對於理性的態度卻不甚明朗（作者立場）。在「莫爾格街兇殺案」與「瑪莉羅傑之謎」兩故事中的偵探角色杜賓，基本上是個平板人物（flat character），僅是理性的化身。但在「失竊的信函」中，杜賓的角色刻劃，卻和裡面的惡徒，D 部長，並無太大差別。在此的敘事斷裂：偵探故事中的偵探與惡徒間的二元對立遭到破壞。然而，在偵探小說發展的三個階段中，這個斷裂卻從未彌補：古典派的偵探看似代表理性或律法，其實常有犯法之舉；冷硬派的偵探角色刻劃複雜，而且有可能是社會上的弱勢族群，時常踩到法律界線；至於後現代的偵探，則和惡徒毫無二致。第六章處理邏輯推演與真相間的關係。首先，邏輯推演乃是啟蒙思維下的產物，深植於當. 政治大. 時的強勢論述。在愛倫坡的三個偵探故事，以及「金甲蟲」中，邏輯推演乃是找出真相的手. 立. 段。然而，若細看杜賓的邏輯推演，即知其中有所缺陷（強勢意識形態內部矛盾的顯現），這. ‧ 國. 學. 顯然和愛倫坡能吸納矛盾的能力有關（作者立場）。在此愛倫坡的未竟之語：邏輯推演並不一定能得到真相。在古典派的偵探小說中，這個敘事斷裂並未得到彌補：這類偵探故事強調故. ‧. 事結構，著重偵探以邏輯推理來解謎，甚至以規則規範，終於使得偵探文類遇到瓶頸（而馬. Nat. sit. y. 舍雷在《文學製造理論》一書中曾談及他對結構的不信任，似乎是預見了偵探文類此時的困. n. al. er. io. 境）。在之後的冷硬派偵探小說中，這個敘事斷裂終得到彌補：冷硬派偵探以實際的調查行動. i n U. v. 破案，而將邏輯推演置於次要地位。至於在後現代的偵探小說中，這個未言則更被說出：後. Ch. engchi. 現代偵探的推理往往無功，而且真相永遠無法找到。. 本章也觸及「真相議題」，即在偵探故事中案子是否該被偵破。首先，偵探文類的本質即為解謎，此乃閱讀偵探小說的樂趣，也是偵探小說屬於大眾文學的原因。若在考量這三個次文類(subgenre)其實可以相互融合，以及並非所有後現代的偵探故事都沒有真相，則可以得到這個結論：發現真相是偵探小說在大眾文學中的最後一道防線，那些沒有真相的後現代偵探故事數量應不會太多，也會進入嚴肅文學(serious literature). 第七章總結本論文的發現，列出（未）被彌補的敘事斷裂，並追溯出偵探小說文類的發展軌跡：從一般意識形態，到社會寫實，再到後現代的美學意識形態 (aesthetic ideology, AI)。. 3.

(5) Abstract In this dissertation, Pierre Macherey’s theorizations will be employed for an in-depth analysis of the narrative ruptures in Edgar Allan Poe’s detective stories. First, in Chapter Two the definition of the detective novel is clarified: a detective novel refers to a fictional story that deals thematically with a crime as well as how it is solved by a detective or someone like a detective. By this definition, we can conclude that Poe didn’t write the first detective story but is the progenitor of the detective fiction genre. Chapter Three deals with Macherey’s theorizations. Macherey thinks that the author must have left something unsaid in his text. The unsaid is responsible for the multiplicity of the voices in. 政治大. the text, enabling the text to exist. When Macherey’s said/unsaid model is examined along with. 立. Althusser’s, Eagleton’s and Jameson’s theorizations about ideology, the nature of this. ‧ 國. 學. interrelationship can be characterized: the text can’t access history directly; it has to go through the ideology. The text only reflects the ideology inaccurately; if the latter is put in the former, the. ‧. former’s unsaid will emerge. In addition, in A Theory of Literary Productions, Macherey has. Nat. sit. y. mentioned that the unsaid in the text is what a text could have been, or a potentiality. Framed with. n. al. er. io. Deleuze’s concept of virtual and actual, it can lead to this conclusion: Macherey’s so-called unsaid. i n U. v. or narrative rupture is Deleuze’s virtual(ity), or a repository of potentialities. Once the unsaid is said. Ch. engchi. or the narrative rupture is repaired, a potentiality will be tapped, or a possible case scenario of the text will be enacted. Based on the above, I postulate my hypothesis: Poe’s detective stories have three narrative ruptures pertaining to the story settings, the characterization of the detective, and the logic reasoning. And in classical, hard-boiled, and postmodern detective fiction, the three narrative ruptures have been repaired in three different ways. Thus, three possible case scenarios of Poe’s detective stories have been enacted. Chapter Four deals with the relationship between the settings and the themes in Poe’s detective stories. Poe’s detective stories were composed in the 1840’s, when the Americans were convinced of the U.S.’s prosperity (the dominant ideology). However, industrialization and urbanization also brought about various social problems. In Poe’s detective stories, the city is portrayed as a dark 4.

(6) place (the internal contradiction of the dominant ideology), but it has no bearing on the action of the story. It is clearly relevant to Poe’s upbringing (the authorial position). Thus, this is what Poe has left unsaid: in a detective story its setting should be related to its theme. Several significant classical detective novelists, such as Arthur Conan Doyle and Agatha Christie, tend to base the settings of their stories on the general ideology then, and view the crimes in their stories as the menaces to their stable society. Hard-boiled detective fiction foregrounds social realism, so the setting is usually a decaying city, which is also s seedbed of criminal activities. As for postmodern detective fiction, the setting is often a labyrinthine world, where a trapped detective’s investigation ends up stranded.. 政治大. Chapter Five deals with the characterization of the detective. The dominant ideology in Poe’s. 立. era was the Enlightenment thinking, which emphasizes reason. However, there was also an. ‧ 國. 學. undercurrent of unreason (the internal contradiction of the dominant ideology), and Poe takes an ambivalent attitude towards reason (the author’s position). In “The Murders in the Rue Morgue”. ‧. and “The Mystery of Marie Rogêt,” the detective, Dupin, is a flat character, an embodiment of. Nat. sit. y. reason. However, in “The Purloined Letter,” the characterization of Dupin isn’t so differentiated. n. al. er. io. from that of Minister D, the villain. Here, this is what Poe has left unsaid: the detective/villain. i n U. v. dichotomy has been dismantled. However, throughout the three developmental stages of the. Ch. engchi. detective fiction genre, this narrative rupture has never been repaired. Classical detectives seem to represent law or reason, but they often break the law; hard-boiled detectives are usually complex characters, or come from the minority groups in society. They often overstep the legal boundary. As for postmodern detectives, there’s no telling them from the villains. Chapter Six deals with the correlation between the ratiocinative pattern and the truth. First, ratiocination is a product of the Enlightenment; it is deeply rooted in the dominant ideology. In Poe’s three detective stories as well as “The Gold-Bug,” the ratiocinative pattern is a means to the truth. However, a close look at Dupin’s reasoning processes will reveal that it is imperfect (the internal contradiction of the dominant ideology). Here, what Poe has left unsaid is: the ratiocinative pattern doesn’t necessarily lead to the truth. This narrative rupture has never been repaired in 5.

(7) classical detective fiction. The top priority in this subgenre is the narrative structure; it focuses on how the detective has reasoned out the truth. There were even rules dictating how classical detective stories should be created. Eventually, the detective fiction genre ended up bottlenecked. (In A Theory of Literary Production, Macherey speaks about his distrust in structure, as if he had foreseen the quagmire of the detective fiction genre). The narrative rupture has finally been repaired in hard-boiled detective fiction: hard-boiled detectives often solve their cases with an active investigation, pushing ratiocination to a secondary position. In postmodern detective fiction, the unsaid has been said even more: a postmodern detective’s ratiocination is often fruitless, and the truth is not found.. 政治大. Chapter Six also touches on the “truth issue,” namely, the issue of whether the case should be. 立. solved in a detective story. First, in both classical and hard-boiled detective fiction, the truth always. ‧ 國. 學. comes out in the end. In addition, solving a mystery is an inherent attribute of the detective fiction genre. It is precisely what makes reading detective fiction fun, and it is also what puts detective. ‧. fiction in the popular literature. What’s more, the three subgenres can be combined sometimes, and. Nat. sit. y. not all postmodern detective stories have done away with the discovery of the truth. Considering all. n. al. er. io. these above, we can draw this conclusion: finding the truth is the final defense line in keeping the. i n U. v. detective fiction genre within the popular literature. Those postmodern detective stories where the. Ch. engchi. truth is lost should be few and far between, and they will end up in the serious literature. Chapter Seven sums up the findings in this dissertation, listing how the narrative ruptures have been (un)repaired. Besides, the developmental route of the detective fiction genre is retraced: it moves from GI, to social realism, and to AI.. 6.

(8) Acknowledgement At last, I have managed to complete my Ph.D. dissertation! Of course, I must ascribe my success to a number of people. First, I am most obliged to Professor Frank W. Stevenson, who agreed to be my thesis advisor on such a short notice, and remained so accommodating and supportive at all times. In addition, I must thank Professor Eva Yin-I Chen (陳音頤教授), who agreed to be my in-faculty advisor without any hesitation, and above all, offered me so many valuable pointers. Another person I am grateful to is Professor Hui Rong Peng (彭輝榮教授), my former university teacher. For old times’ sake, he never showed the slightest reluctance to come to my aid and give me plenty of advice on Marxism. What’s more, I must address my thanks. 政治大. especially to Professor Brian D. Phillips, Professor Chin-Yuan Hu (胡錦媛教授), and Professor Yi. 立. Ping Liang (梁一萍教授). All three of them participated in my oral defenses and proofread my. ‧ 國. 學. dissertation. Their efforts to improve it should be most appreciated. Last but not least, I am. ‧. sincerely thankful to all the teachers who have ever taught me, and all the classmates who have ever studied with me throughout my years in this Ph.D. program. All of them can be broadly defined as. y. Nat. n. al. Ch. engchi. 7. er. io. this dissertation would have been an arrant impossibility.. sit. my ‘co-authors,’ for each of them has more or less contributed to my research project. Without them,. i n U. v.

(9) Content Chapter I: Introduction: Macherey, Poe, and the Detective Fiction Genre I. About Poe and the Detective Fiction Genre……………………………. .10 II. About Macherey and the Intention of this Dissertation ………….....…..13. Chapter II: Poe and the Detective Fiction Genre 3B. I. The Definition of Detective Fiction. …………………………………...16. II. Poe’s Place in the History of the Detective Fiction Genre……….…..…20. Chapter III: The Theoretical Framework 政治 4B. 立. 大. I. About Macherey’s “Unsaid”……………………………………..………27. ‧ 國. 學. II. Situate Macherey Genealogically in Terms of Ideology……………..…39 III. The Unsaid: A Virtual(ity)/Potentiality……………………………...…54. ‧. er. io. sit. Nat. Chapter IV: The Setting in the Detective Story 5B. y. IV. My Hypothesis in this Dissertation…………………………………….59. I. The First Narrative Rupture in Poe’s Detective stories…………..……...61. n. a. iv. II. How Could the Unsaid Bel Said: C From Classical ton Postmodern………72. hengchi U. Chapter V The Characterization of the Detective 6B. I. Dupin Is Characterized as the Embodiment of Reason ??........................84 7B. II. ‘Could the Unsaid Really Be Said?’: From Classical to Postmodern…..94. Chapter VI. The Ratiocinative Pattern and the Truth 8B. I. Ratiocination: the Way to the Truth ??....................................................107 9B. II. Classical Detective Fiction Is Dependent on Ratiocination: A Move Towards Structuralism…………………………………………………….…......120 III. How Could the Said Be Said: From Whydunit to No Truth……..…...130 8.

(10) IV. The Truth Issue: The Defense Line of the Detective Genre……...…...134. Chapter VII. Conclusion…………………………………… ...…..142 10B. Works Cited…………………………………………………...…………149. 立. 政治大. ‧. ‧ 國. 學. n. er. io. sit. y. Nat. al. Ch. engchi. 9. i n U. v.

(11) Chapter One: Introduction: Macherey, Poe, and the Detective Fiction Genre. Though his [Poe’s] streams of influence flowed largely underground for several decades, they fed not only Doyle’s work but that of countless later writers. Charles J. Rzepka, Introduction, A Companion to Crime Fiction, 5. I’ll never tell…any of you! Don’t Say A Word (2001). I.. About Poe and the Detective Fiction Genre Edgar Allan Poe has long been reputed to be “the father of detection” in consequence of his. three short detective stories featuring a detective figure, Auguste Dupin, : “The Murders in the Rue. 政治大 (Symons, Dashiell, Hammett, 35). Dupin, clearly modeled after the well-known French police 立 Morgue” (1841), “The Mystery of Marie Rogêt” (1842), and “The Purloined Letter” (1845). detective, Eugène François Vidocq (1775-1857), demonstrates “how rational analysis combined. ‧ 國. 學. with imagination can solve mysteries” (Worthington, “From The Newgate Calendar to Sherlock. ‧. Holmes,” 22). If we want to view the three detective stories as the origin of the detective fiction. sit. y. Nat. genre (, which I shall prove in Chapter II), we must note that this genre is akin to some other genres,. io. er. such as crime fiction. (The two terms will be carefully differentiated in Chapter II.) Above all, all of these genres were created in a complex context, where there are a lot of interrelated factors, such as. al. n. v i n Cnovel, the Romantic movement, and the Gothic may be viewed “as a direct source for crime h e nwhich gchi U. fiction” (Knight, Crime Fiction since 1800, 19). 1 Another factor that can be specifically singled out F. F. and seen as a major forerunner of Poe’s detective stories is The Newgate Calendar, collections of criminal biographies of London’s Newgate Prison during the 18th and 19th centuries (Worthington, 130). From The Newgate Calendar derived the so-called “Newgate Fiction,” a derogatory term for criminal novels published in the 1830’s and 1840’s (Hollingsworth, The Newgate Novel 1830-47, 14). 2 Both The Newgate Calendar and Newgate fiction are highly moralistic, “shaped by the need F. 1. F. In addition, Larry Landrum Jr. notes that 70 Gothic novels created between 1794 and 1854 use the word ‘mystery’ in their titles, which is a code-word that will later belong to crime fiction (3). And in Chapter II, the connections between ‘the mystery’ and ‘detective fiction’ will be investigated. See Larry Landrum Jr., American Mystery and Detective Novels: A Reference Guide (Westport, CT: Greenwood, 1999), 3. 2 Worthington points out, “Newgate novels were accused of glorifying criminality and making it attractive. The best-known authors at the center of the controversy caused by glamorizing criminality were Edward Bulwer-Lytton, 10.

(12) to avoid accusations of degeneracy and of posing a threat to its readers and (by extension) society” (Pittard, “From Sensation to the Strand,” 115). 3 Above all, they introduced crimes and criminal F. F. investigations into the middle and upper classes. It was against such background that Poe created his three detective stories. Following the model set up by Poe, plenty of top-notch writers on both sides of the Atlantic Ocean made their attempts to create detective fiction, ushering this inchoate genre into its golden or classical period. Then in the 1920’s, while classical detective fiction remained predominant in Britain, the so-called “hard-boiled” detective fiction emerged in the U.S. In a way, it is “an acknowledgement of big business corruption” and its “unpatronizing portrayal of working class experience.” It is “a vehicle for radical criticism” (Worpole, Dockers and Detectives,. 政治大. 31, 41). At this phase, detective fiction began to turn towards realism and thus serve the function of. 立. social criticism. Later in 1940’s emerged the so-called “postmodern” or “metaphysical” detective. ‧ 國. 學. fiction. Patricia Merivale regards postmodern detective fiction as “a crooked derivative” of detective fiction genre because it aims “to question, subvert, and parody” the conventions of. ‧. detective stories (“Postmodern and Metaphysical Detection,” 308). Basically, it has “the intention,. Nat. sit. y. or at least the effect of….transcend(ing) the mere machinations of the mystery plot” (Merivale and. n. al. er. io. Sweeney, “The Game’s Afoot,” 2, italics mine).. i n U. v. To sum up, all of these subsequent subgenres of detective fiction developed directly under the. Ch. engchi. influence of Poe (Just as Rzepka has stated, it is fair to say that every detective story writer in the world is influenced by Poe.).And with these subgenres, there is no denying that the detective fiction genre has already been a fully-fledged literary genre. First of all, it has captured the attention of many modern writers. For instance, William Faulkner must have learned the technique of “the double plot” from detective fiction and employed it in some of his most important works, such as The Sound and Fury, Absalom, Absalom!, and Light in August (Cawelti, “Canonization, Modern William Harrison Ainsworth and Charles Dickens.” Lyn Pykett notes that Dickens’ Oliver Twist was often criticized as a piece of Newgate fiction because there is indeed certain narrative resemblance between them both. See Worthington, 19. Lyn Pykett, “The Newgate Novel and Sensation Fiction, 1830-1868,” The Cambridge Companion to Crime Fiction. Ed. by Martin Priestman (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2003), 27. 3 In 1907, Florence Bell conducted an investigation of popular culture in industrial society. She then stated that Newgate fiction was “the counterpart, in a cruder form, of the detective stories reveled in by readers of more education and a wider field of choice…” See Florence Eveleen Eleanor Bell, At the Works: A Study of a Manufacturing Town {1907} (New York: Augustus M. Kelly, 1969), 146. 11.

(13) Literature, and Detective Story,” 11). In addition, it has transcended the generic boundaries; that is, besides fiction it may take many other forms, such as cinema, the TV show (eg, Murder, She Wrote or Columbo), or a stage performance (eg, Agatha Christie’s The Mousetrap), the comic book or the cartoon (eg. the recent animated film, Zootopia (2016), or the Japanese franchise of Detective Conan, which comes in both the cartoon and the comic books, has created such a huge sensation in both Japan and Taiwan.), etc. Or it may overlap many other genres, such as sci-fi fiction (eg. Nora Roberts’ well-known In Death series, where Detective Eve Dallas looks into a series of cases in the mid-21st century New York City.), history novels (Dan Brown’s best-seller, The Da Vinci Code is a fine example. Another perfect instance would be Josephine Tey’s 1951 detective/history novel, The. 政治大. Daughter of Time, where a hospitalized Scotland Yard inspector Alan Grant attempts to find out. 立. whether Richard III (1452-1485) really murdered his two nephews. In 1990, this novel was voted. ‧ 國. 學. No. 1 on The Top 100 Crime Novels of All Time list by the U.K. Crime Writers’ Association. ), pastiche, (The 2000 movie Scary Movies is a perfect example), even Chinese martial arts cinema. ‧. (Here are two prominent examples: Peter Chan’s (Ke Xin, Chen) 2011 movie, Wu Xia, where a. Nat. sit. y. county constable investigates two robbers’ deaths. Hark Tsui’s (Ke, Xu) 2010 movie Detective Dee. n. al. er. io. and the Mystery of the Phantom Flame, where Detective Dee of the Tang Dynasty takes the. i n U. v. empress’ order to investigate several mysterious fires), and so on. Therefore, in this dissertation, I. Ch. engchi. will try to ‘cast my net wide;’ that is, the instances I give will range from orthodox detective novels to detective stories taking non-novelistic forms or merging into other genres. As a matter of fact, the detective fiction genre doesn’t merely have its own developmental history or formal complexities; most of all, it “has become a genre in which writers explore new social values and definitions,” such as sexism or racism. That is, the “creation of representative detective heroes has become an important social ritual for minority groups who would claim a meaningful place in the larger social context” (Cawelti, 8). Here, Cawelti highlights the sociality of detective fiction. As mentioned previously, hard-boiled detective fiction serves the purpose of social criticism. Above all, Cawelti also reminds us that detective novels composed in different cultures will mirror different social values and have different detective heroes. That is, as the recent 12.

(14) development of detective fiction “indicates its global promise” (Rzepka, 9), the genre is manifestly characterized by “its regional diversity,” as Cawelti observes (8). In other words, detective fiction today isn’t merely “internationalized;” 4 it has gone “glocalized,” a term Roland Robertson uses to F. F. refer to “a global outlook adapted to local conditions” (“Glocalization,” 28). 5 Therefore, in this F.. F. dissertation, I will try to treat the detective fiction genre both globally and locally. II.. About Macherey and the Intention of this Dissertation Pierre Macherey (1938-) is a major French deconstructionist/Marxist. First, following a. deconstructive line of thinking, Macherey throws extreme discredit on structure and focuses on the unsaid of a literary text. For Macherey, an author is sure to leave a lot of things unsaid, and the. 政治大. unsaid is precisely the reason why a literary text exists. (It is as if an author keeps saying the quote. 立. from the 2001 movie, Don’t Say A Word, “I’ll never tell…any of you (readers)!”) In addition, the. ‧ 國. 學. unsaid is tantamount to narrative ruptures, or the fractures beneath the surface of a seemly coherent structure in the literary text. Above all, the unsaid is closely associated with the historical context as. ‧. well as the ideology. It is at this point where the Machereyan theorizations intersect with Marxism,. Nat. sit. y. or the Althusserian Marxism, to be more exact. As an apprentice of Louis Althusser, Macherey and. n. al. er. io. Althusser see eye to eye with each other on the conceptions of ideology. Therefore, the Althusserian. i n U. v. concepts of ideology figure prominently in Macherey’s literary theories. On the other hand,. Ch. engchi. Althusser also draws on Macherey’s theorizations when explicating the relationship between literature and ideology. For instance, in his “Letter on Art in Reply to André Daspre,” Althusser first asserts that art “does have a quite particular and specific relationship with ideology” (201). Then in characterizing the nature of this “particular and specific relationship,” Althusser further argues, 4. Cawelti elaborates on the internationalization of the detective fiction genre, “Actually, in the 1930s and 1940s two important developments began to undercut the detective story’s Anglo-American ethnocentricity. Writers in other countries, such Georges Simenon in Belgium and France, Edogawa Rampo in Japan, and Arthur W. Upfield in Australia…Also in the 1930s and 1940s the quest for new kinds of detectives led to the development of a rich galaxy non-English detectives created in large part by English and American writers,” such as Earl Derr Biggers’ Charlie Chan. See Cawelti, 9-10. 5 According to The Oxford Dictionary of New Words, the term “glocal” originally refers to an agricultural technique of adapting one’s farming strategies to local conditions. Then during the 1980’s, it gradually became a marketing buzzword, the tailoring and advertising goods and services on a global basis to increasingly differentiated local and particular markets. See “glocal,” The Oxford Dictionary of New Words, 1991 ed. 13.

(15) What art makes us see, and therefore gives us in the form of ‘seeing,’ ‘perceiving’ and ‘feeling’…is the ideology from which it is born, in which it bathes, from which it detaches itself as art, and to which it alludes. Macherey has shown this very clearly in the case of Tolstoy, by extending Lenin’s analyses…[Art gives us] a view which presupposes a retreat, an internal distantiation from the very ideology from which their novels emerged. They make us perceive…in some sense from the inside, by an internal distance, the very ideology in which they are held. (Lenin and Philosophy, and Other Essays, 222-3). Inspired by Macherey’s reading of Tolstoy (, which I shall delve into in Chapter Three), Althusser states that there is an “internal distance” between art and ideology. That is, while art originates from ideology, the former doesn’t truthfully mirror the latter. Instead, the former, from a distance, enables. 政治大. us to perceive the latter. In addition, as for the latter, Althusser asserts that it “slides into all human. 立. activity” and is “identical with the ‘lived’ experience of human existence itself…This ‘lived. ‧ 國. 學. experience is not a given, given by pure ‘reality,’ but the spontaneous ‘lived experience’ of ideology in its peculiar relationship to the real” (223). By “pure reality,” Althusser, roughly speaking, refers. ‧. to a big word, “history.” That is, Althusser informs us that ideology or the human lived experience. y. Nat. sit. is not given by history but has a peculiar relationship with it.. n. al. er. io. By and large, Macherey’s literary theories combine both deconstruction and Marxism. Plenty. i n U. v. of theorists navigating along the two lines of thought reference Marcherey more or less, whether. Ch. engchi. they approve of him or not. For instance, in Radical Tragedy Jonathan Dollimore explicitly references Macherey when invoking “new criteria for exploring the relationship of literature to its historical context” (5, 272). Secondly, Tony Bennett, in Formalism and Tragedy, gives credit to Macherey and reminds us “to take account of the historical determinations which bear on both the text’s production and its consumption” (98), though his skepticism of Macherey’s literary theories does manifest itself. On the other hand, Macherey seems to take a rather negative attitude towards detective fiction. For example, in A Theory of Literary Production, he states,. All the literature of the mysterious illustrates a similar doctrine. From the heroines of 14.

(16) Mrs. Radcliffe to Sherlock Holmes, one finds, in a degenerate form, though with unsurpassed clarity, this novelistic meditation upon the treachery of appearances, the very theme of the moral-critical judgment. Once the enigma has been resolved the real meaning leaps out from behind the screen of all the intermediate episodes. The artifices of narration are merely the vehicle for a procrastinated anecdote. (19). Here, Macherey’s scorn for detective fiction is most obvious; he thinks of detective fiction as a “degenerate form” because it is no more than a procrastination of the revelation of the truth. Beneath its treacherous appearance is a mere moral-critical judgment at its very best. However, Macherey’s reference to Mrs. Radcliffe or Sherlock Holmes clearly indicates that he exclusively targets the so-called “classical detective fiction” in impugning the detective fiction. 政治大 extremely complex and multifaceted genre. It is at this point where I think ample dialogical space 立 genre. But as I’ve stated previously, classical detective fiction is merely the prototype of this. may be opened up between Macherey and the detective fiction genre: as Macherey has gained. ‧ 國. 學. insights into the defects of classical detective fiction, the genre, more or less, evolved into. ‧. hard-boiled or postmodern detective fiction because certain fundamental faults of classical detective. sit. y. Nat. fiction had to be redressed. In this respect, Macherey and the evolution of this genre seem to be on. io. er. the same tract, which, in other words, seems like a promising point of departure or a solid rationale. With such an observation in mind, I hereby set the course of this dissertation: with a. al. n. v i n C hin Poe’s detectiveUstories will be located. Then I will Machereyan reading, the narrative ruptures engchi. follow the developmental trajectory of the detective fiction genre to examine how these unsaid(s) or fractures have been said or repaired.. 15.

(17) Chapter Two: Poe and the Detective Fiction Genre. Through his investigations the detective retrieves the hidden story of the crime so that he is finally able to mediate it in his detailed narrative discourse. Peter Hühn, “The Politics of Secrecy and Publicity,” 40. Trinity: Neo! No one has ever done anything like this! Neo: That’s why it’s going to work! The Matrix (1998). I.. The Definition of Detective Fiction Before I launch my research enterprise, I feel the need to clarify the definition of detective. fiction in order to adjust my dialectical focus. In Talking About Detective Fiction, P. D. James thinks. 政治大 suspects…a detective, either amateur or professional…and, by the end of the book, a solution which 立 a detective novel should have “a central mysterious crime, usually murder; a closed circle of. the reader should be able to arrive at by logical deduction from clues inserted in the novel with. ‧ 國. 學. deceptive cunning but essential fairness” (9). Clearly, James’ definition targets classical detective. ‧. fiction more than hard-boiled or postmodern detective fiction, as James herself states that such a. sit. y. Nat. definition “now seems unduly restrictive and more appropriate to” classical detective stories (9).. io. er. Likewise, R. Austin Freeman, apparently under the influence of detective fiction as well, points out the defining attribute of detective fiction, “an intellectual satisfaction” it offers to readers, or an. al. n. v i n C h of mental gymnastics entertainment which is actually “an exhibition in which he [a reader] is engchi U. invited to take part.” Of course, such a satisfaction or an entertainment must come from an. argument which “is conditional on the complete establishment of the data” or free from “fallacies of reasoning” (“The Art of the Detective Story,” 11-3, italics mine). Freeman’s focus is on the detective’s logical investigation, namely, how the detective logically deduces the truth from a heap of clues and solves the mystery. In their attempts to define detective fiction, both James and Freeman emphasize the logical inference, considering it a sure way to the solution of a case. Condensing their definitions, we can tentatively define detective fiction this way: a novel in which a detective solves a crime by employing logical reasoning. Elaborate as this definition may seem, it is confined in the tradition of 16.

(18) classical detective fiction. Howard Haycraft, on the other hand, offers a somewhat looser definition, “For the essential theme of the detective story is professional detection of crime. This is…the distinguishing element that makes it a detective story and sets it apart from its “cousins” in the puzzle family” (“Murder for Pleasure,” 160-1). Clearly, Haycraft substitutes “professional detection of crime” for James’ so-called “logical deductions from clues” or Freeman’s so-called “logical methods.” This somewhat flexible term can cover both classical detectives’ logical inferences and hard-boiled or postmodern detectives’ investigative techniques. That is, Haycraft has come up with a definition with a coverage of the whole genre. As if following Haycraft’s definition, George N. Dove lists “the four identifiable qualities” of. 政治大. detective fiction: first, “a detective” or “an identifiable detection role;” second, “the account of. 立. investigation and resolution;” third, “a complex mystery that appears impossible of solution;”. ‧ 國. 學. finally, the solution “known to the reader” (The Reader and the Detective Story, 10). Besides, Ernst Kaemmel points out, “In the course of its development, the detective novel became concentrated. ‧. very quickly upon portraying a (fictional) detective’s solution of a murder or another capital crime. Nat. sit. y. in a fictional plot.” Thus, detective fiction can be differentiated from criminal reportage, or any. n. al. crucial qualification for detective fiction: fictionality.. Ch. engchi. er. io. other novelistic subgenre (“Literature under the Table,” 57). That is, Kaemmel adds one more. i n U. v. Here I shall combine these critics’ viewpoints into one single, functional definition: a detective novel refers to a fictional story that deals thematically with a crime as well as how it is solved by a detective or someone like a detective. Now, let’s put the workability of this definition to a test. First, it seems that this definition can enable us to clarify the niceties among these terms: a mystery is a story in which strange things happen that are not explained until the end (“mystery.” Def. 1092. Collins Cobuild English Dictionary,1997, 2nd ed.). On the other hand, a thriller is a book, film, or play that tells an exciting fictional story about something such as criminal activities or spying (“thriller.” Def. 1742 Collins Cobuild English Dictionary, 1997, 2nd ed.). Clearly, both the terms are a lot broader and may overstep the boundary of detective fiction. What’s more, the distinction between the crime novel 17.

(19) and the detective novel should be more noteworthy: “the crime novel tells the story of a crime, [while] the detective novel [tells] the solution of a crime…In the crime novel, the criminal is presented to the reader before the crime is…In the detective novel, on the other hand, the sequence is reversed” (Alewyn, “The Origin of the Detective Novel,” 64, italics mine). In a way, the crime novel is quite the opposite to the detective novel. It “lives up to its name by violating a basic convention of mystery and detective fiction; it tells the story from the point of view of the perpetrator－the pursued criminal becomes the main protagonist” (Malmgren, “The Pursuit of Crime,” 160). It’s time that we went over several instances. Let’s start with Poe. Poe’s “The Gold-Bug” (1843). 政治大. is often grouped with his three detective stories because it is also a story characterized by a process. 立. of analytical reasoning. “The Gold-Bug” describes how William Legrand uses his reasoning skills. ‧ 國. 學. to decode a cryptogram and finds a hidden treasure. However, Haycraft doesn’t think of it as a detective story because “every shred of the evidence on which Legrand’s brilliant deductions are. ‧. based is withheld from the reader until after the solution is disclosed” (164). Well, I think Haycraft. Nat. sit. y. is right about refusing to qualify “The Gold-Bug” as a detective story. But I find the grounds on. n. al. er. io. which he does so rather unconvincing. After all, in some detective stories, especially hard-boiled. i n U. v. ones, it is possible that some clues may remain withheld until the very end. According to the. Ch. engchi. definition of detective fiction given above, “The Gold-Bug” is not a detective story simply because a hidden treasure does not constitute any crime! As for another story of Poe’s, “Thou Art the Man” (1844), Dorothy Sayers thinks that in this story Poe “achieved the fusion of the two distinct genres and created what we may call the story mystery, as distinct from pure detection on the one hand and pure horror on the other” (“The Omnibus of Crime,” 73). Sayers seems to imply that “Thou Art the Man” is a mystery rather than a detective story. Haycraft, on the other hand, thinks this story “comes much closer structurally to qualifying than “The Gold Bug.” But here again it is the concealment of essential evidence…that rules the story out of court” (164). At this point, I think Haycraft is right, for “Thou Art the Man” doesn’t offer readers any clues to the solution of the crime, which means that the investigation of the crime, or how the crime is solved, is not thematicized at 18.

(20) all! In conclusion, neither “The Gold-Bug” nor “Thou Art the Man” is a detective story. They fall into the category of the mystery or the thriller. Therefore, at best, they can only be used to instantiate Poe’s portrayal of ratiocination or his presentation of a crime (, which is also what I intend to do in the later chapters). Then, let’s move on to Wilkie Collins, a detective story writer who was clearly influenced by Poe. Some critics, such as Haycraft, think of his The Woman in White (1860) as a mystery rather than a detective novel. However, Julian Symons, in Mortal Consequences, insists that it be treated as a detective novel on the grounds that it is a crime story (44). Well, it is true that the protagonist in “The Woman in White” employs some detective skills every now and then. However, this novel. 政治大. doesn’t have a case that occupies a thematically central place, based on which I shall concur with. 立. Haycraft and disagree with Symons. As for Collins’ The Moonstone (1868), it has both a case (the. ‧ 國. 學. theft of the moonstone) and a detective (Franklin Blake), who conducts an investigation and solves the case. So it certainly qualifies a detective novel. (In fact, a lot of detective fiction fans have voted. ‧. The Moonstone as one of the top 100 detective novels in the world! In addition, T. S. Eliot regards. Nat. sit. y. The Moonstone as “the first and the greatest of English detective novels” (“Wilkie Collins and. n. al. er. io. Dickens,” Selected Essays, 464).) It’s the same case with another novel of Collins’, The Law and. i n U. v. the Lady (1875). This epistolary novel describes how Valeria (the detective) conducts an. Ch. engchi. investigation to exonerate her husband from the accusation of poisoning his ex-wife. Charles Dickens is also worthy of our attention. Willard Huntington Wright (S. S. Van Dine) thinks of his 1853 Bleak House as “England’s first authentic contribution to detective fiction,” though it “contains many elements which to-day would not be tolerated in a strict detective story…” In addition, for Wright Dickens’ unfinished novel The Mystery of Edwin Drood is “a straight-away detective story which might almost be used as a model for this type of fiction” (“The Great Detective Stories,” 44). While taking notice of the detective elements in both the novels, Wright also seems to have certain reservation about regarding them as detective novels. Indeed, Bleak House lacks a central case in its convoluted plot, though it does have a detective, Inspector Bucket, who Wright thinks “deserves to rank with Dupin and the famous fictional sleuths who came after” 19.

(21) (44). As for The Mystery of Edwin Drood, we do not know if it centers on the murder of Edwin Drood because it is unfinished. In addition, the murder case in this novel remains unsolved, so we are uncertain whether it has a detective (, or to be more exact, whether one of its characters can play the part as a detective). Let’s go over several more recent examples. Some critics, such as Justine Tally, notices that in Toni Morrison’s 1992 novel, Jazz, “a voice of the narrator is an imitation of hard-boiled fiction” (The Story of Jazz, 32). Such an observation may lead them to believe that it is a detective novel, now that it also revolves around a murder. Jazz does thematicize a murder, and as the story unfolds, readers come to perceive the perpetrator’s motive. However, it neither has the role of a detective nor. 政治大. a proper investigation. Hence, it shouldn’t be classified as a detective novel.. 立. Woody Allen’s recent film, Magic in the Moonlight (2014), tells a story about how a magician. ‧ 國. 學. is called upon to investigate an alleged fraud of a female spiritualist, in the course of which he gradually falls for her. In this film, the magician plays the part as a detective, launching a proper. ‧. investigation. Above all, the case is cracked in the end. Therefore, Magic in the Moonlight fits the. Nat. sit. y. definition of a detective story, while movie critics tend to view it as a romantic comedy. Another. n. al. er. io. cinematic example is Alfred Hitchcock’s Psycho (1960). As we know, there have been a number of. i n U. v. psychoanalytical interpretations of this horror film. On the other hand, if we take a close look at its. Ch. engchi. story, we’ll see that it does centralize a case (a missing secretary, Marion, who embezzles 40000$ from her office). And two of the characters, Lila (Marion’s sister) and Sam (Marion’s boyfriend), look into this case together and learn the truth (, though their so-called “investigation” only involves questioning the local sheriff and sneaking into the Bates Motel). Therefore, it is fair to say that Psycho fits the loosest definition of detective fiction. II.. Poe’s Place in the History of the Detective Genre A clarified, functional definition of detective fiction can also help us do more historical. tracings, and above all, ascertain Poe’s place in the history of the detective fiction genre. First, Macherey points out in “For A Theory of Literary Reproduction:”. 20.

(22) The notion of an original work succumbs to this splitting:…Except in a dream, one never writes on a completely blank page: the execution of a text necessarily relies on the reproduction of prior texts, to which it implicitly or explicitly refers…One writes on the written, that is, on top of it the palimpsest…defines the very essence of the literary…(In A Materialist Way, 48-9). Macherey thinks that every literary text must be created under the influence of certain prior texts; therefore, it must be a reproduction. In Chapter I, we have gone through some of the literary works created prior to Poe. Here, I intend to go through more of them; above all, with this definition, I intend to find out if they are examples or counterexamples of detective fiction. By so doing, we’ll know where Poe fits in with the history of the detective fiction genre. First, as mentioned in Chapter. 政治大 Worthington uses in her The Rise of the Detective in Early Nineteenth-Century Popular Fiction (6). 立 I, Poe’s detective stories were created against the background of “criminal narratives,” a term. As the name suggests, this term refers to any criminal-related writings, such as The Newgate. ‧ 國. 學. Calendar, Newgate fiction, or fiction like Samuel Danforth’s Cry of Sodom (1674), which was. ‧. published on the occasion of Benjamin Goad’s execution for bestiality and “grew out of an. y. Nat. unusually scandalous crime that could not help but captivate the public” (Moudrov, “Early F. io. er. F. sit. American Crime Fiction,” 130). 6 Most of all, Worthington also uses Thomas De Quincey’s satirical essay “On Murder Considered as One of the Fine Arts” (1827) as a major example. According to. al. n. v i n Cused Worthington, in this essay “De Quincey and notorious murder case, the U h ea ncontemporary i h gc Ratcliffe Highway Murders of 1811” (24), as an example. Indeed, not only does De Quincey. thematicize this murder but also he “furthers his claim to intellectualism by structuring his article after the style of an academic paper, borrowing the discursive technique and linguistic register of academia” (26), “producing an intellectual legitimization of the sensational appeal of murder”. 6. In “Early American Crime Fiction: Origins to Urban Gothic,” Alexander Moudrov lists a number of instances of early American crime literature or criminal narratives, such as Cotton Marther’s Pillars of Salt: An History of Some Criminals Executed in this Land for Capital Crimes (1699). In the end, Moudrov draws this conclusion, “The question whether crime literature should be monopolized by social concerns was, of course, never settled. While many writers insisted that books about crime could be justified only by their social purpose, others made efforts to transform crime literature into a source of reading pleasure.” See Alexander Moudrov, “Early American Crime Fiction: Origins to Urban Gothic,” A Companion to Crime Fiction, ed by Charles J. Rzepka and Lee Horsley (Chichester: Wiley-Balckwell, 2010) p128-39. 21.

(23) (27). 7 We must note that Danforth’s Cry of Sodom, De Quincey’s essay, Newgate fiction, or any F. F. other criminal narratives of this kind, give account of factual rather than fictional cases. It is on this basis that they do not qualify as detective fiction; at best they can be deemed as precursors of this genre. Haycraft traces the origin of modern detective fiction back to “deductive and analytical tales in some of the ancient literatures” (161). Now the question is: by our definition of detective fiction, can we find both examples and counterexamples in these ancient literatures? The answer seems to be “Of course!” For instance, E. M. Wrong, in his 1926 article “Crime and Detection,” first gives us the example in the Apocrypha: Daniel’s cross-examination which saves Susanna from the elders’. 政治大. false accusation. In this story, there are a case, a detective (Daniel), and an investigation; in other. 立. words, it is a detective story, though the so-called “investigation” is nothing but a cross-examination,. ‧ 國. 學. “the simplest of methods.” No wonder Wrong concludes: “we are probably justified in regarding him[Daniel] as the remote ancestor of Sherlock Holmes and Dr. Thorndyke” (19, italics mine).. ‧. Wrong also gives us another story found in Herodotus:. sit. y. Nat. n. al. er. io. An enterprising Egyptian with his brother robbed the royal treasury by a secret entrance; the brother was laid by the heel in a trap, whereon the hero cut off his head to prevent identification. A few days later he fuddled the guardian of the body with drinks, stole and buried the corpse. He ended by escaping from the king’s daughter turned prostitute to extort a confession; he was pardoned and married the princess, having proved himself a bolder and more successful, though possibly a cruder, Raffles than any of recent times. (19). Ch. engchi. i n U. v. Regarding this story, Wrong merely states, “Here are the twin themes of detection and crime sketched in their essentials” (19). On the other hand, by taking a closer look at this story, we’ll discover that it has neither an obvious role of a detective nor an investigation, though its plot is built upon a crime. Therefore, it is a counterexample; it is a mystery rather than a detective story. Wrong’s effort to dig out the two stories may inspire us to turn to another ancient civilization, 7. The influence of de Quincey’s essay on crime literature is also plain to see. Maurizio Ascari states that the “disruptive and provocative character” of this “subversive essay” brings “a new appreciation of crime literature.” See Maurizio Ascari, A Counter-History of Crime Fiction: Supernatural, Gothic, Sensational (London: Palgrave Macmillan, 2007) p40. 22.

(24) China. In the Song Dynasty of China (960-1276) emerged a literary subgenre, the court case fiction, which gives account of how a judge/magistrate cracks various cases. (In ancient China, a magistrate had to play the roles of both a judge and a detective in solving criminal cases.)Though not officially published, it mainly took the form of written scripts circulating among professional storytellers. Not until the 19th century did these scripts get complied into novels and officially published. (In fact, it is roughly the same time as Poe composed “The Murders in Morgue Rue.”) Judge Dee’s Cases, Judge Shi’s Cases, Judge Bao’s Cases, and Judge Peng’s Cases are its most notable examples. The court case fiction may seem like an example of early Chinese detective literature, but it is in fact a counterexample. The main reason is that the so-called “judges” in these stories often go above the. 政治大. law and recourse to supernatural elements, such as ghosts (Huo, “A Study of the Plots of “Shi. 立. Gong-An” and “Peng Gong-An,” 163”). That is, very often there is no logical investigation in F. ‧ 國. F. 學. them. 8. Alewyn gives us a much more recent example, E. T. A. Hoffmann’s Das Fräulein von Scuderi. ‧. (1818):. sit. y. Nat. n. al. er. io. It takes place in Paris at the time of Louis XIV. The city has been alarmed for some time by a series of murders, all performed according to the same pattern. The victims are always isolated pedestrians who are supplied with expensive gifts and are on their way late at night to an amorous tryst. They are found in the morning, stabbed to death with the same weapon and robbed of their jewels. (71). Ch. engchi. i n U. v. This is the central crime of the story. Then there is a twist of the plot:. It is only when the respected goldsmith Cardillac is discovered murdered that the criminal is thought to have been found: Olivier Bresson, Cardillac’s apprentice and lodger and the fiancé of his daughter….[who] claims that his master left the house at midnight and ordered him to follow him at a distance of fifteen steps. From this 8. Dr. Robert H. van Gulik (1910-1967), a Dutch sinologist and diplomat, discovered the stories of Judge Dee while he was stationed in China from 1942 to 1945. At that time, he was so fascinated with them that he called Judge Dee “the Sherlock Holmes in the Orient.” Initially intending to translate the stories of Judge Dee into English, Gulik ended up rewriting them and had them published in Tokyo in 1949. Interestingly, in the course of his rewriting Gulik did a lot more than just embellish the stories. Not only did he rid them of their supernatural elements but also he re-characterized Judge Dee as a detective like Holmes or Hercules Poirot. Therefore, Gulik’s 16 volumes of Celebrated Cases of Judge Dee may fall into the category of English classical detective literature. See Cai Jun, Xie, Introduction, The Haunted Monastery. By Gulik (Taipei: Cité Publishing, 2001) p7-11. 23.

(25) distance he had seen Cardillac attacked by an unknown man. The murderer vanished in the darkness…(71, italics mine). Of course, Bresson’s statements are immediately discredited because “on the third floor, two witnesses had spent the whole night without sleep. They clearly heard Cardillac bolt the door from inside at nine o’clock in the evening…and then nothing more until after midnight…”(72). At last, “Mille de Scuderi, a little old lady who is as clever as she is plucky and who is a poet…solves the crime…by actively taking the investigation in hand…”(73):. Oliver is not the murderer…The real murderer is none other than Cardillac…A neurotic compulsion…drove him to use murderous methods to take possession again of the jewels he had manufactured. A secret passage permitted him to leave the house without being noticed. During the last of these sorties he had been stabbed with his own dagger in self-defense by an officer he had attacked, and had been brought back into the house by Olivier, who had secretly followed him. (72). 立. 政治大. ‧ 國. 學. And of course Bresson is reluctant to tell the truth because he wishes to protect the reputation of his. ‧. late master. Alewyn retells the story in great detail for one purpose only:. sit. y. Nat. n. al. er. io. Next to some subordinate motifs, we find all together in this story the three elements that constitute the detective novel: first, the murder…at the beginning and its solution at the end; second, the innocent suspect and the unsuspected criminal; and third, the detection, not by the police, but by an outsider, an old maid and a poet…[who plays the part as the detective in the story] (73, italics mine). Ch. engchi. i n U. v. Indeed, it goes without saying that Das Fräulein von Scuderi typifies both a modern serial-killer detective story and a classical locked-room mystery, which enables us to notice how perfectly it fits our definition of detective fiction. Above all, this story was written “in 1818, a quarter-century before E. A. Poe’s “Murders in the Rue Morgue,” with which, according to previous opinion, the history of the detective novel begins” (73). 9 In other words, Das Fräulein von Scuderi, plus the story F. 9. F. As a matter of fact, Hoffmann’s Das Fräulein von Scuderi has recently caught a great deal of critical attention. For instance, in “The Labyrinth of Crime,” Hermann F. Weiss proposes a reinterpretation of this story “by fully investigating the richly detailed social, political, and cultural context in which Hoffmann places them.” At the end of his paper, Weiss concludes, “In spite of Mlle de Scudery’s eventual success and the assurance that Madelon and Olivier will have a secure existence, the reader is left with an uneasy awareness of the frailty of the individual as well as of man’s social institutions.” See Hermann F. Weiss, “The Labyrinth of Crime: A Reinterpretation of E. T. A. Hoffmann’s Das 24.

(26) from the Apocrypha given above, has established a crucial fact: by no means did Poe create the first detective story; prior to him there were already stories that could perfectly fit the definition of detective fiction. On the other hand, Alewyn also acknowledges the possibility that Das Fräulein von Scuderi could be “a matter of a lucky bull’s eye” because “this is the only time that all the essential characteristics of the detective novel are found together in a single story by E. T. A. Hoffmann…” (73). Besides, right after Wrong offers us the story in the Apocrypha, he reminds us that “the art of detective fiction lay for centuries untouched, and its effective history is crowded into the last eighty years” (19). That is to say, though these authors did create detective stories before Poe, they simply. 政治大. happened to put together their stories with the essential elements of detective fiction. It is purely. 立. coincidental, which can be evidenced by the fact that none of these writers continued to compose. ‧ 國. 學. more stories in the same pattern. Poe, on the other hand, wrote “The Murders in the Rue Morgue” in 1841, which is followed by “The Mystery of Marie Rogêt” in 1842 and “The Purloined Letter” in. ‧. 1845. As all three of them incorporated the same elements, Poe didn’t merely create a formula but a. Nat. sit. y. brand-new genre with a clear definition. Therefore, we can conclude that Poe was not the first. al. n. history of the detective genre.. er. io. detective story writer but definitely the progenitor of the detective genre. This is Poe’s place in the. Ch. engchi. i n U. v. Our conclusion above is the truth behind Poe’s title of “the authentic father of the detective novel as we know it to-day” (Wright, 43). In “Edgar Allan Poe (1809-1849),” Maurice S. Lee explains what it really means by addressing Poe as “the inventor of detective fiction:”. With various roots in classical literature, Gothic novels, and popular crime narratives, detective fiction in even its earliest forms cannot be limited to one lineage or set of conventions. That said, if anyone can be taken to be the inventor of detective fiction, it is Poe, whose crime-solving protagonist, C. Auguste Dupin, appears in three short stories…Written before the word “detective” was coined in 1847, what Poe called his “tales of ratiocination” established a new form of crime fiction. (“Edgar Allan Poe,” 369-70). Fräulein von Scuderi,” Germanic Review Vol. 15 Issue 3 (May 1976): 181, 189. (181-9) 25.

(27) Then Lee goes on to elaborate on Poe’s influence on the later writers:. The Dupin stories have been broadly influential since their first appearance in American popular magazines in the early 1840s…Poe’s tales helped shape the detective fiction of Wilkie Collins…G. K.Chesterton and Arthur Conan Doyle. Emile Gaboriau in France and Edogawa Rampo in Japan also drew from the Dupin stories when pioneering detective writing in their native tongues…One reason for such influence is that the Dupin stories introduce but do not exhaust the possibilities of detective fiction, offering later writers a generative model open to improvisation. (370). Basically, Lee has buttressed up the conclusion we have drawn. According to him, Poe’s greatness may be viewed in two ways. First, he invented the genre of detective fiction by creating. 政治大. the character of Dupin that runs through a series of stories. Secondly, the new genre Poe created is. 立. actually a system full of possibilities and open to improvisation. (Such an observation also echoes. ‧ 國. 學. our quote from The Matrix in the beginning of the chapter: no writer prior to Poe ever thought about establishing a literary genre revolving around detection. And over the 170 years, it has remained. ‧. proven fact that his idea did work! ). y. Nat. sit. What’s more, Lee lists three potential factors behind Poe’s achievement of fathering the. n. al. er. io. detective fiction genre: (1) “Poe’s fascination with crime is apparent in almost all of his fictional. i n U. v. work.” (2) “Poe also had a longstanding interest in puzzles…” (3) “In addition to his insights into. Ch. engchi. puzzles and crime, Poe also had an educational background that helped him think about detection from various perspectives” (378-9). In conclusion, with his own obsession with crime and puzzles as well as his own knowledge, Poe wrote one detective story after another and ended up as the father of a literary genre, which has so far spawned countless brilliant writers worldwide.. 26.

(28) Chapter Three: The Theoretical Framework. The novelist, whoever he is and whenever he is writing, is giving form to a story, giving form to his moral and metaphysical views, and giving form to his particular experience of sensations, people, places and society. Barbara Hardy, The Appropriate Form: an Essay on the Novel, 1. Not without Marx, no future without Marx, without the memory and the inheritance of Marx: in any case of a certain Marx, of his genius, of at least one of his spirits. Jacques Derrida, Specters of Marx, 13. We need(ed) a pure source! Underworld (2003).. I.. About Macherey’s “Unsaid:” The “unsaid” is a core concept in terms of a Machereyan reading. In A Theory of Literary. Production, Macherey first states:. 立. 政治大. ‧. ‧ 國. 學. The speech of the book comes from a certain silence, a matter which it endows with form, a ground on which it traces a figure. Thus, the book is not self-sufficient; it is necessarily accompanied by a certain absence, without which it would not exist. A knowledge of the book must include a consideration of this absence This is why it seems useful and legitimate to ask of every [literary] production what it tacitly implies, what it does not say…This moment of absence founds the speech of the work. Silences shape all speech. (85, italics mine). er. io. sit. y. Nat. al. v i n Ch the purpose of a fruitful reading, it is essential e n gto clook h i intoU the unsaid, “Speech eventually has n. For Macherey, the unsaid is the absence or silence that shapes the speech of the book. Above all, for. nothing more to tell us: we investigate the silence, for it is this silence that is doing the speaking…it is this silence which tells us…which informs us of the precise conditions for the appearance of an utterance” (86). On the other hand, in emphasizing the importance of the unsaid, Macherey makes it clear that it “is not the same as the careless notation ‘what it refuses to say’” but “what the work cannot say” (87). All in all, Macherey believes that the unsaid/silence/absence is the true essence of a literary work, and that any in-depth reading must originate from an investigation of it because it informs us of the prior condition in which the text is created. To expand on the meaning of “prior condition,” Macherey quotes these “insidious questions” from Nietzsche’s The Dawn of Day: 27.

(29) Insidious Questions: When we are confronted with any manifestation which someone has permitted us to see, we may ask: what is it meant to conceal? What is it meant to draw our attention from? What prejudice does it seek to raise? And again, how far does the subtlety of this dissimulation go? And in what respect is the man mistaken? (87). As far as Macherey is concerned, these questions are “insidious” because they reveal an inconvenient truth: when producing a text, the writer puts in the contents only what (s)he allows us to see, which, at least in a way, may be seen as his or her prejudice. In the meantime, (s)he is also sure to conceal something; (s)he occasionally feels the need to divert our attention away from. 政治大. something. This is the general case scenario of a literary production. And Macherey concludes:. 立. ‧. ‧ 國. 學. Therefore, everything happens as though the accent had been shifted: the work is revealed to itself and to others on two different levels: it makes visible, and it makes invisible…because attention is diverted from the very thing which is shown. This is the superposition of utterance and statement…: if the author does not always say what he states, he does not necessarily state what he says. (88). y. Nat. sit. Here Macherey draws a distinction between the visible and the invisible in the text. The “visible”. n. al. er. io. naturally refers to what the author has said or stated, namely, what is present in the contents of a. i n U. v. text, while the “invisible,” also known as “the unsaid,” “the silence,” “the absence” “the margin” or. Ch. engchi. the “discontinuity” of a text (90), indicates “the incompleteness” or the “actual decentered-ness” of a text (79), the “diversity and multiplicity” or the “plurality of (its) voices of the text” (26). In addition to differentiating the “invisible” from the “invisible,” Macherey draws another distinction between “the conscious” and the “unconscious” of the work. Doubtless, the former is “the said,” or to be more exact, “what the work is compelled to say in order to say what it wants to say” (94). The latter refers to a “latent knowledge” (92), “the splitting,” the “division,” or “the reverse side of what is written” (94), namely, the unsaid. Or roughly speaking, the former is what the author has consciously said in the text, while the latter is what the author has left off in the text, which could be an unconscious act or a necessitated decision. 28.

(30) Based on the distinctions, Macherey posits his well-known “The Two Questions:” “First question: the work originates in a secret to be explained. Second question: the work is realized in the revelation of its secret” (95). Needless to say, the first question aims at the theme the writer wishes to present, and the second question deals with the course of the writer’s presentation of the theme. Macherey reminds us of the difference between them, “The simultaneity of the two questions defines a minute rupture, minutely distinct from a continuity. It is this rupture which must be studied” (95). To put it simply, the theme the writer wants to present is always different from how the theme is actually presented; on the level of language, the true nature of the writer’s linguistic utterance is always more complicated than it seems like on the surface. This is what. 政治大. Macherey calls “the narrative rupture” or the (narrative) “caesura” (79). To illustrate the narrative. 立. }. question 2. ‧. utterance question 1. 學. ‧ 國. rupture, Macherey gives us this schema (87):. y. Nat. io. sit. For Macherey, a literary utterance is equivalent to Question 1. As stated above, an utterance is. n. al. er. potentially the writer’s dissimulation. And an error could be committed if we stay exclusively focused on it:. Ch. engchi. i n U. v. We can then ask to what extent the first question was based on an error: because this dissimulation applies to everything it must not be thought that it is total and unlimited…So the real trap of language is its tacit positiveness which makes it into a truly active insistence: the error belongs as much with the one who reveals it as it does with the one who asks the first questions, the critic. (89). This error is what Macherey calls “the real trap of language:” on the surface language is a vehicle for revelation and expression, but in reality it could be dissimulative. In Macherey’s opinion, both the writer and the critic ordinarily fall for it. To avoid erring as they do, we must ask Question 2 or explore the unsaid in the text. By so doing a critic will go for explanation rather than interpretation because the former perceives “the spontaneously deceptive character of the work” (76): 29.

(31) The necessity of the work is founded on the multiplicity of its meanings: to explain the work is to recognize and differentiate the principle of this diversity…the work would be full of meaning, and it is this plenitude which must be examined…it measures the distance which separates the various meanings…we must stress that determinate insufficiency, that incompleteness which actually shapes the work. The work must be incomplete in itself…(78-9). As for the latter:. Interpretation is repetition, but a strange repetition that says more by saying less: a purifying repetition, at the end of which a hidden meaning appears in all its naked truth. The work is only the expression of this meaning…The interpreter accomplishes this liberating violence: he dismantles the work in order to be able to reconstruct it in the image of its meaning, to make it denote directly what it had expressed obliquely…it presupposes the active presence of a single meaning around which the work is diversely articulated. (76). 立. 政治大. ‧ 國. 學. To put it simply, interpretation repulses Macherey because it merely concentrates on Question 1. If. ‧. Question 2 has to be addressed, we must go for explanation. In addition, by exploring the unsaid, a. sit. y. Nat. critic will be aware of the necessity of examining “the work in its real complexity rather than its. io. er. mythical depth” (99). By “complexity,” Macherey means that “the work, in order to say one thing,. al. n. has at the same time to say another thing which is not necessarily of the same nature; it unites in a single text several different lines. v i n C hcannot be apportioned…”(99). which engchi U. Last but not least, an. investigation of the unsaid will enable the critic to learn that:. the work has no interior, no exterior; or rather, its interior is like an exterior, shattered and on display. Thus, it is open to the searching gaze, peeled, disemboweled. It shows what it does not say by a sign which cannot be heard but must be seen…In particular, it must be realized that the work is not like an interior which is wholly congruent with an exterior: such an assumption is responsible for all the errors of casual explanation. (96-7). For Macherey, the unsaid of the text basically consists in the discrepancy between its exterior and interior. The following analysis is definitely fallacious: “the work encloses the warm intimacy of its secrets, composes its elements into a totality which is sufficient, completed and centered…” (96). 30.