RULES AND RATIOCINATION AT PLAY IN EDGAR ALLAN POE?S THREE DUPIN STORIES: The Murders in the Rue Morgue, The Mystery of Marie Roget, The Purloined Letter

Abstract Edgar Allan Poe is a well-known nineteenth century American writer, famous world-wide. Poetry and criticism are two most prominent areas on which research pertaining to Poe is carried out. He was also a short-story writer on detective genre, a fact which is known but not much acknowledged. The following paper attempts at analyzing ?The Murders in the Rue Morgue?, ?The Mystery of Marie Roget? and ?The Purloined Letter? from the point of view of the ?twenty rules of writing detective fiction? propounded by S.S. Van Dine, also an American fiction writer. These rules also contain the elements of ratiocination that is logic and reasoning, explained in the paper. The three stories are analyzed to the best and its analysis is presented below