The nature of detective novels in general and the uniqueness of the detective Poirot as a character are outlined, followed by the presentation of Propp's narratemes. In this research, Vladimir Propp's narratemes - understood as recurring, genre-specific structure elements of the plot - are evidenced in two successful detective novels by Agatha Christie. But the immense success of detective stories can also be explained otherwise, which is the purpose of this article.
The popularity of detective stories may result from the attraction of the hero, the entertaining thrill of the plot or the comforting power of the overall message which promises that evil will be defeated in the end: there is always someone able to fight it and determined to do so. Aware of the philosophical work of his contemporaries, Poe utilizes necessarily liminal places in both of these tales as a means to continue this work from a literary direction Poe's interstitial places work as heterotopic mirrors, therefore offering symbolic terrain for interrogating the limits of subjectivity, while yielding a nuanced critique of the discovery and designation of the self in psychological and literary landscapes. In exploring Poe's subjective project as a fundamentally spatial one, it suggests that Poe's doubles work in concert with the liminal places they occupy in order to orient the self in more profound ways. This article complicates the readings of two of Poe's overt doppelgänger tales, “Morella” and “William Wilson,” by factoring the influence of place into the equation of selfhood at the heart of each tale.
Poe's mastery of this delicate subjective interplay goes without question. Indeed, the double in Gothic literature helps to push the bounds of subjective tension so central to the genre, as subject and object are most urgently and forebodingly called into question when they appear seemingly identical and disturbingly interchangeable.
Of the many haunting figures that Gothic fiction invokes, none so perfectly encapsulates the mode itself, in all its fantastic incursions of opposing forces and clashing sensibilities, as the literary double.
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