Ex Uno Plures: Global French in, on and of the Rue Morgue and the Orient Express

Alistair Rolls

doi:10.1515/arcadia-2018-0004

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Ex Uno Plures: Global French in, on and of the Rue Morgue and the Orient Express

Alistair Rolls

Published/Copyright: June 5, 2018

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From the journal arcadia Volume 53 Issue 1

Abstract

In the following paper, Edgar Allan Poe’s “The Murders in the Rue Morgue” and Agatha Christie’s Murder on the Orient Express are considered, and compared, as exemplars of what Andrea Goulet has labelled “Global French,” which is to say that both texts convey non-English, and especially French, language use through their own original English. Both texts will be shown to be born in, stage, and depart from primal linguistic scenes: the Babelian confusion of Poe’s multiple foreign witnesses will be embodied in the impediments that keep them from the scene of the crime; in Christie’s case, the multilingual investigation on board the Orient Express will stand in place of stilted and curtailed conversation held, in the Global French of Christie’s English, on the platform of another train. As sites of original translation and communicative excess and failure, these classic texts are about language first and crime second; indeed, the murder on Christie’s Murder on the Orient Express embodies taking place but, ultimately, does not take place at all.

Keywords: Agatha Christie; Edgar Allan Poe; Global French; primal scene; end-orientation; fiction; crime fiction mobility; différance

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Published Online: 2018-06-05

Published in Print: 2018-06-04

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Articles in the same Issue

https://doi.org/10.1515/arcadia-2018-0004

Keywords for this article

Agatha Christie; Edgar Allan Poe; Global French; primal scene; end-orientation; fiction; crime fiction mobility; différance