Georges Simenon and his understanding, compassionate, and merciful inspector-analyst.
Abstract
This paper is based on the hypothesis that the Belgian-French writer George Simenon argues, in his detective novels, with Inspector Maigret as the protagonist, on the one hand, with the classical model of the private detective as an intellectual superman (cf. Auguste Dupin, Sherlock Holmes & Hercule Poirot) presenting, on the other hand, a hybrid assimilation related to the Chestertonian detective, Father Brown, who solves police problems, mostly thanks to his experience as a Catholic priest-confessor; while Maigret, as a secularized hermeneutic-analyst-confessor, intuitively feels the secret existential-psychological conflict of a criminal and shows a Christian understanding, compassionate, and merciful attitude since he perceives him, above all, as a victim of an extreme existential situation.
Keywords
European Black Detective Novel, Polemic and Hybrid Assimilation, Inspector-Analyst of the Human Psyche, Georges Simenon
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