De tre August Dupin-fortællinger

by Edgar Allan Poe, Jens Staubrand (Translator)

Da Edgar Allan Poe i 1840’erne offentliggjorde fortællingerne om den franske amatørdetektiv C. August Dupin, skabte han ikke blot en ny litterær figur, men lagde grundstenen til en helt ny genre: den moderne detektivfortælling. Hos Poe bliver forbrydelsen ikke kun en dramatisk begivenhed, men et intellektuelt problem, der kan undersøges gennem logisk ræsonnement, psykologisk indsigt og skarp iagttagelse.

De tre fortællinger – Mordene i Rue Morgue, Mysteriet om Marie Rogêt og Det stjålne brev – viser Dupins metode i tre forskellige former. Fra det brutale og tilsyneladende uforklarlige dobbeltmord i Paris over den analytiske gennemgang af en virkelig kriminalsag til den elegante, næsten filosofiske duel mellem to skarpe intellekter udfolder Poe en ny måde at tænke mysteriet på.

I disse tekster opstår den analytiske detektiv, hvis metode senere skulle inspirere figurer som Sherlock Holmes og utallige andre efterforskere i litteratur og populærkultur. Samtidig viser fortællingerne Poe som en forfatter, der forener spænding med refleksion og gør kriminalhistorien til et eksperiment i erkendelse.

Denne udgave bringer Poes tre klassiske Dupin-fortællinger i en ny, tekstnær dansk oversættelse ved mag. art. Jens Staubrand og ledsages af et kort introducerende essay om deres idéverden og betydning for krimigenrens historie.

Indhold:
Mordene i Rue Morgue
Mysteriet Marie Rogêt
Det stjålne brev

181 pages, Paperback

First published April 10, 2026

About the author

The name Poe brings to mind images of murderers and madmen, premature burials, and mysterious women who return from the dead. His works have been in print since 1827 and include such literary classics as The Tell-Tale Heart, The Raven, and The Fall of the House of Usher. This versatile writer’s oeuvre includes short stories, poetry, a novel, a textbook, a book of scientific theory, and hundreds of essays and book reviews. He is widely acknowledged as the inventor of the modern detective story and an innovator in the science fiction genre, but he made his living as America’s first great literary critic and theoretician. Poe’s reputation today rests primarily on his tales of terror as well as on his haunting lyric poetry.

Just as the bizarre characters in Poe’s stories have captured the public imagination so too has Poe himself. He is seen as a morbid, mysterious figure lurking in the shadows of moonlit cemeteries or crumbling castles. This is the Poe of legend. But much of what we know about Poe is wrong, the product of a biography written by one of his enemies in an attempt to defame the author’s name.

The real Poe was born to traveling actors in Boston on January 19, 1809. Edgar was the second of three children. His other brother William Henry Leonard Poe would also become a poet before his early death, and Poe’s sister Rosalie Poe would grow up to teach penmanship at a Richmond girls’ school. Within three years of Poe’s birth both of his parents had died, and he was taken in by the wealthy tobacco merchant John Allan and his wife Frances Valentine Allan in Richmond, Virginia while Poe’s siblings went to live with other families. Mr. Allan would rear Poe to be a businessman and a Virginia gentleman, but Poe had dreams of being a writer in emulation of his childhood hero the British poet Lord Byron. Early poetic verses found written in a young Poe’s handwriting on the backs of Allan’s ledger sheets reveal how little interest Poe had in the tobacco business.

For more information, please see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Edgar_al...