Differences between Metaphysical Detective Fictions - Essay Example

Poe depicts to us that any metaphysical detective must “search for the key to the ordered, ultra-rational world of the detective story”. As a result, our ratiocinative process should address the unfathomable epistemological question and ontological. Therefore, metaphysical is different from traditional detective fiction “, According to Italian surrealist painters: “is a work that uses fabulous elaborate ironies, incongruous juxtapositions, symbols, and self-reflexive pastiche to indicate that “reality” is ultimately unknowable or at least ineffable” (María, pg. 4). While traditional detective fictions as endorse irrational for it does inculcate the sense of reason which finds its highest expression in “The Purloined Letter.” That, we can depict that traditional detective fiction concentrates on setting a goal to solve the mystery and find the truth, and the detective attempts to view the case objectively.

About the above explanation, we can depict the concept of metaphysical as advocating that the mind, given enough time, can understand everything. As a consequence, Poe apprehends that “There are no mysteries, there is only incorrect reasoning” (Michael Pg 141) Subsequently, the metaphysical is different from traditional detective fiction as the metaphysical advocates for a detective approach that has no specific goal and one that questions only lead to more questions. Additionally, the Metaphysical encourages detectives to view cases subjectively, believing there is no objective solution. Hence, we can understand why Poe calls for the use of a metaphysical detective approach as it “nurtures a culture which most exercises the imagination of intellectuals” (Michael, 143).

Therefore, metaphysical detective story helps us become conscious of who a person is and their densest world, unlike traditional detective fiction which the most important relationships are between the detective and suspects. Moreover, traditional detective fiction has “dramatized the limits of reasoning by experimenting with such irrational modes as myth and the subconscious, that the lower reaches of literature were dramatizing the power of reason in such figures as Inspector Poirot and Ellery Queen”( Michael,147). This can be detected as detectives use traditional detective fiction to gain information from meaningful clues and assume another clue that may later turn out to be meaningful. What’s more, Robbe-Grillet points out that “The aesthetics of Post-Modernism is militantly antipsychological and radically anti-mythical. It is about things, not people” (Michael, 148).

Therefore, Post-Modernism utilizes detective stories by expanding and changing certain possibilities in them, just as Modernism had customized the potentialities of myth.
Thus, it is a responsibility of Metaphysical detective stories to build a literature which takes elaborate ironies, incongruous juxtapositions, symbols, and self-reflexives into account. However, after reading about Jennifer’s suicide we can appreciate why Wallace Stevens defines the traditional function of all art as "the violence from within which protects us from the violence without" (Michael, pg. 156). Read More