HISTORY, LITERATURE AND CRIME: NOTES ON 19TH-CENTURY EUROPEAN CULTURE

Abstract

This article aims to establish relationships between history, literature and crime,
pointing to constitutive elements of the 19th-Century European culture. It starts with the hypothesis
that the great European metropolises, particularly Paris and London, developed a police and
investigative atmosphere in the middle of the 19th century, and that these elements can be found in the
literature produced at that time. We will look for, in the intersection between history, science and
fiction, some elements to corroborate this hypothesis. For the purpose of this work, both panoramic
literature and detective novel will be considered, as they represent literary styles typical of that period.
The theoretical and methodological framework is the Critical Theory of Society.