While Edgar Allan Poe had the tendency to gravitate towards the macabre, he also served as a pioneer for the western detective genre with his set of three detective stories. In contrast to his more well-known short stories of imagination and emotion (a darker counterpart to romanticism), “[The detective stories] have logical explanation. The fantastic aspect is not presented. In all these stories, we know at the end who is guilty, and who causes the crimes” (Castillo). Unlike one of Poe’s trademark works, “The Raven,” the main character’s decisions are not driven by a tickling lunacy, but stone-cold intellect and reasoning; this variance in his own works reflect the slow shift of literature from the romantic era (which peaked in the 1840’s) towards the era of realism (which fittingly became popular in the second half of the 19th century).
The inconsistency of the nature “The Purloined Letter,” when compared to the other works of the time, is strengthened by the publishing date – 1844, a year following the peak of romanticism and preceding the beginning of realism. Frankly, during this year, while romanticism still lived prominently, the genre was beginning to grow stale in the eyes of the public. According to George Lippard, an accomplished writer of Poe’s time, with regards to Poe’s “Lady Annabel”, “…thus, your style, although generally nervous, is at times somewhat exuberant — but the work, as a whole, will be admitted, by all but your personal enemies, to be richly inventive and imaginative — indicative of genius in its author” (Lippard). Lippard’s description summarizes romanticism as a whole, an undoubtedly common opinion on the genre that might have spurred Poe’s interest in the world of super sleuthing.
One final thing to note is that, while Poe was an accomplished dark romantic, “The Purloined Letter” seems to even mock romantic thoughts, and promote those of realists, rewarding those who look with their intellects, and not their hearts. With regards to the ability of solving the story’s mystery, Jacques Lacan, who gave a seminar on this story, said, “This would no doubt be too much to ask them, not because of their lack of insight but rather because of ours. For their imbecility is neither of the individual nor the corporative variety; its source is subjective” (Lacan). The aforementioned subjectivity refers to the collective opinion of the then common romantic masses of minds, and the inability to cope with the mysteries of the future without first looking at the world in a more realistic way.
Castillo, Marisol R. “Edgar Allan Poe, The Murders In The Rue Morgue And The Detective Story.” Web log post. Academia. Web. 14 Aug. 2013.
Lacan, Jacques. “Seminar on ‘The Purloined Letter.’” Purloined Poe: Lacan, Derrida, and psychoanalytic reading. Eds. John P. Muller and Willian J. Richardson. Baltimore: John Hopkins University Press, 1988. 39.
Thomas, Dwight. Poe in Philadelphia, 1838-1844. Diss. University of Pennsylvania, 1978. Print.
103A: American Literature from 1789 to 1900 