The oeuvre of Edgar Poe and contemporary psychoanalysis
St Petersburg University and its Representative Office in Barcelona invite you to the online lecture "The oeuvre of Edgar Poe and contemporary psychoanalysis". During the lecture, we will talk about the history of the first literary detective and the similarities of some of his features with the author himself. The lecture will be delivered by Nina Shcherbak, Candidate of Philology.
Have you ever wondered who the most famous detective in the literary world is? If so, the names of Sherlock Holmes, Hercule Poirot and Miss Marple have probably come to your mind, haven’t they? And do you know who was the progenitor of all literary detectives? Edgar Allan Poe described in his short stories the prototype of all the legendary detectives, and at the same time he outlined the method of solving crimes. And the name of his legendary character is Auguste Dupin.
Edgar Allan Poe was an American writer of Romanticism, famous for his psychological and so-called "logical stories". Their protagonist is Detective Auguste Dupin, the forerunner of Arthur Conan Doyle’s Sherlock Holmes, who sees far more than the average man. The legendary detective’s bohemian image, his talent and diligence with which he solved the most intricate mysteries with ease, attracted famous psychoanalysts who began to analyse the texts of the classic detective and decode their true meaning.
The Purloined Letter, published in 1844, is the final of Edgar Poe’s three works about the fictional detective Auguste Dupin. It centres on the extraordinary investigation into the disappearance of a letter compromising a young lady. The stolen message, falling into the hands of the characters in the story, shows us the psychological peculiarities of one character or another.
Lecturer
Nina Shcherbak, Associate Professor in the Department of English Philology and Cultural Linguistics at St Petersburg University, Master of Arts (the United Kingdom), a writer and screenwriter. She is also a scriptwriter for science television shows, author of fifteen monographs, and books on linguistics, literature, language philosophy, and English literature.
The lecture will be held as part of the events to mark the 300th anniversary of St Petersburg University, the oldest university in Russia.
The meeting will be held online in Russian with simultaneous interpreting into Spanish.