Foretelling darwinism, revising race: Poe's scientific discourse in "The murders in the rue Morgue"

Having recently celebrated the bicentenary of Edgar Allan Poe���s birth, his tales still remain an invaluable source of ongoing interpretation. The first tale that conforms his detective trilogy, ���The Murders in the Rue Morgue���, has been analysed from multiple perpectives, especially taking into consideration the discourse of race as a main focus of attention. Nonetheless, detective Auguste Dupin���s references to Georges Cuvier, an important preDarwinian French naturalist and zoologist, have often been unnoticed. This article aims at identifying pre-Darwinian concepts about selection and evolution in Poe���s tale so as to facilitate readings of the tale in relation to Darwinism and evolutionary theories