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The Purloined Letter
Edgar Alan Poe
( E-text remote;
Local: "The Cask of Amantillado" (vocabulary and E-Text); "Tale-Tale Heart" with
websites on Poe)
A structuralist
Lacan's
Derrida's
Foucaultian Reading Psychobiography
reading
interpretation interpretation
Paradoxes:
1. between simplicity of the case and its "oddity"
2. between revelation and concealment (and concealment+ revealation)
3. Minister D's being both a poet and a mathmatician
4. the stories Dupin tells: "take advice!" (tautological) and "the school boy's winning all
the marbles" (losing to win, identification with the opponent)
Greimas' semantic rectangle: (two pairs: one of opposition, the other of contradiction)

1. before the story begins:


The Queen (in Powerlessness) conceals her
affair from the King (power) so that the
King's authority is not threatened.
Queen

King

3. Interestingly, in the middle part, the Prefect


is the one with knowledge but without power;
the one who reveals without knowing what he
reveals (which he calls "odd"). And then as
Dupin starts his reasoning, he is the one to
hold the knowledge and hide it from the
Prefect.
Dupin

The prefect

2. This delicate balance is broken by


Minister D. at the beginning of the story:
Minister D's Concealment of the letter and
his Disclosure to the Queen of the fact of his
holding the letter.
The Queen is under Minister D's power
because she knows (as shown by the Minister)
that he holds and hides the letter.

4. At the end, after the letter is retrieved,


the Queen's double concealment (of the
letter and of her holding the letter) puts her
in the position of power.

--> Against traditional detective fiction,


where unconcealment and knowledge leads
5. The final revelation is that Dupin (with to power, the story does not focus on
knowledge and
disclosing "whodunit," but shows a
concealment/unconcealment) has Minister continuous interaction between and
D (ignorance and disclosure) as an object of reversal of power/powerlessness. (There are
revenge.
different kinds of knowing and ignorance,
mixture of concealment and
unconcealment.)
Foucaultian Reading (source: Hull, Richard. "'The Purloined Letter': Poe's detective story
vs. panoptic Foucauldian theory. Narration vs. Policing Power."
Style, Summer90, Vol. 24 Issue 2, p201, 14p.)
1. Penoptic critics: narration as a kind of penoticism. (writing as a way of "objectification and
subjection.") "For panoptic Foucauldians such as Miller and Mark Seltzer, narration is the
police."
2. However, "The Purloined Letter" presents a detective who is against surveillance and
protective of the Queen's secrecy.
3. "Like Poe's story, the Foucault of counter-discourse offers hope that the growth of panoptic
discipline is not "ineluctable."[3] This early Foucault would have been interested in the
counter-discursive tactics of "The Purloined Letter," which expose the weak sides of panoptic
surveillance, and suggest a need to narrow the range of panoptic Foucauldian theory. Poe
consciously writes counter-discourse, and escapes the Panopticon, even as he founds the
detective-story genre. "
Psychobiography: Marie Bonaparte ( 130 Muller, et al.)
1. It "express[es] . . . .regret for the missing maternal penis, with reproach for its loss."
2. the letter, "very symbol of the maternal penis, also 'hangs' over the fireplace, in the same
manner as the female penis, if it existed, would be hung over the cloaca which is here
represented ...by the general symbol of fireplace or chimney."
3. Minister --John Allan and Poe; the King --David Poe, Elizabeth's husband; Dupin--Poe.
Lacan's interpretation:
1. The letter as a pure signifier.
The content is irrelevant.
"[T]he "place" of the signifier is determined by the symbolic system within which it is

constantly dis-placed. It is only


in terms of a symbolic order, for example, that one may speak of the signifier as "symbol of
an absence" the way a slip of paper . . .may symbolize the absence of a book on a library
shelf." (58Muller, et al.)
2. The above terms is seen as "subject position." -->The interchangeability of subject
position.
Scene 1
Scene 2
Scene 3
1. [the blind]: sees nothing and thus is blind
The
The King
The Queen
to the situation;
Minister
2. [the complacent seer]: sees that the first
subject sees nothing . . . is unaware of being The Queen
The Minister
Dupin
seen;
3. [the robber]: sees that the first two leave
The Minister Dupin
Lacan
what should be hidden exposed. . .
* A correlation between the real and the first position, the imagniary and the second position
and the symbolic and the third position.
* "What correlated the third position with the symbolic is the fact that it discerns the role of
structure in the situation and acts accordingly. The paradox is that, . . . the "acting
accordingly" of the third position tends to catch the subject up in the dynamics of repetition
that drag him into the second position. . . (63 Muller, et al.)
1. The unknown content of Desire.
2. The role of the phallus as a signfier in the sexual differentiation of the subject; its
primacy and prevalence.
Derrida's interpretation
1. For Lacan (according to Derrida), "the subject is very divided, but the phallus is not to be
cut"(196);
The letter
-- should not be 'truth' or present: it never truly arrives; when it does arrive its capacity not to
arrive torments it with an internal drifting.
-- should be divided, but not unified
[According to Barbara Johnson]--> Summary of the article
1. What Lacan puts into the letter:
While asserting that the letter's meaning is lacking, Lacan, according to Derrida, makes this
lack into the meaning of the letter. . . .Derrida asserts that what Lacan means by that lack is
the truth of lack-as-castration-as-truth.
2. What Lacan leaves out of the text.
Lacan ignores the story's position in "Dupin Trilogy."
Reference:
The Purloined Poe. Eds. John P.Muller and William J. Richardson. Baltimore: The Johns
Hopkins UP, 1988.

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