"La Tente du verdict" by Patrick Pommier: Inferential Logic and Literary Impossibility

Abstract

The seed sown by Poe in The Murders in the Rue Morgue, published in 1841, was harvested by Patrick Pommier more than a century and a half later. His short story, La Tente du verdict (The Tent of Verdict), corroborates the hypothesis that the craze for this literary genre did not die with the novelists and short story writers of the golden age of enigma fiction. In order to demonstrate its relevance today, my approach to this short story calls upon discourse analysis and rhetoric. We will focus on narrative Logic and logical Discourse that emerges from the text.