Citation

Filippaki I, Krishnan L. Lit. Med. 2023; 41(1): 249-272.

Copyright

(Copyright © 2023, Johns Hopkins University Press)

DOI

10.1353/lm.2023.a911453

PMID

38662042

Abstract

In "The Murders in the Rue Morgue" (1841), Poe invents the detective story in English, introducing his gentleman sleuth Auguste Dupin as he solves the locked-room mystery of two women found brutally murdered in a Paris apartment. In L'Amante Anglaise (1967), Duras revisits the detective form, fictionalizing the true 1949 crime of a woman murdering and dismembering her cousin in Viorne, France. These literary detective stories highlight the powerful but unspoken role of affective experience in driving what appears, on the surface, to be a forensic medical or psychological investigation. In both tales, peculiarity is an affective and cognitive force that, contrary to what the majority of affect literature argues, inherently moves toward resolution and closure. Using peculiarity as an analytical concept, we argue that the concealment / discovery binary must acknowledge its affective origins, breaking a barrier between narrative scholarship and medical practice.

Language: en

Keywords

*Literature, Modern; *Medicine in Literature; Famous Persons; Female; France; History, 19th Century; History, 20th Century; Homicide/history; Humans