Edgar Allan Poe as the Progenitor of the Modern Detective Tale

This thesis focuses on detective stories by Edgar Allan Poe featuring the detective Dupin. It first delineates the development of the genre from early epics to contemporary authors, then takes a closer look at the key features of a detective story as they appear in the short stories 'The Murders in the Rue Morgue', 'The Mystery of Marie Roget' and 'The Purloined Letter'. It also compares these short stories with the works of some later authors of detective fiction. Finally, it presents a novel by Friedrich Dürrenmatt as a critical response to certain features of the genre