Modeling the Construction of a Literary Archetype: The Case of the Detective Figure in French Literature

This research explores the evolution of the detective archetype in French detective fiction through computational analysis. Using quantitative methods and character-level embeddings, we show that a supervised model is able to capture the unity of the detective archetype across 150 years of literature, from M. Lecoq (1866) to Commissaire Adamsberg (2017). Building on this finding, the study demonstrates how the detective figure evolves from a secondary narrative role to become the central character and the “reasoning machine” of the classical detective story. In the aftermath of the Second World War, with the importation of the hardboiled tradition into France, the archetype becomes more complex, navigating the genre’s turn toward social violence and moral ambiguity.