O detetive e o método

Abstract

In this dissertation,we tried to analyze the process of discovery of three characters in the detective ficcion: Dupin, Sherlock Holmes and father Brown, characters of Edgar Allan Poe, Arthur Conan Doyle and Gibert Keith Chesterton, respectively. We selected three narratives to interpret it more accurately: "The Murders in the Rue Morgue", from Edgar Allan Poe, "The Invisible Man", from Chesterton and "The Boscombe Valley Mystery", from Conan Doyle. The theoretic basis adopted was the vast theory of Charles Sanders Peirce (1839- 1914) about abduction, deduction, and induction, understood by the author as three types of inferences or reasoning, and after 1900, also comprehended by Peirce as interconnected stages of all investigation whether scientific or not. We worked with the fundamental hypothesis of an analogous architecture between the process of discovery of the three detectives mentioned and the inquiry model proposed by Peirce. According to this model, investigation begins with abduction, when occurs the configuration of hypothesis appropriated to deal with a surprising fact, it continues through deduction, level in which the experimental consequences of each selected hypothesis are derived, following trough the inductive stage, in which we find the confrontation between consequences extracted before and the experience itself. Generally speaking, such basic structure can be found in the narratives of Dupin, Holmes or father Brown