C. Auguste Dupin implies "duping" or deception, a skill Dupin shows off in "The Purloined Letter." Detective fiction, however, had no real precedent and the word "detective" had not yet been coined when Poe first introduced Dupin. The closest example in fiction is Voltaire's "Zadig" (1748), in which the main character performs similar feats of analysis, themselves borrowed from "The Three Princes of Serendip", an Italian rendition of Amir Khusrau's Hasht Bihisht. In writing the series of Dupin tales, Poe capitalized on contemporary popular interest. His use of an orangutan in "The Murders in the Rue Morgue" was inspired by the popular reaction
Louis Ellies Dupin both in his invectives against the "haughty critics" who inclined to rabbinism and the errors of Socinus. Although Dupin spoke favourably of Arnauld and signed the "Cas de conscience", he was not a Jansenist. Rather, on these matters he shared the opinions of Launoy, who "had found a way to be at once both demi-Pelagian and Jansenist". Dupin was pre-eminently a Gallican. It was probably on this account that Louis XIV had him exiled to Châtellerault, on the occasion of the "Cas de conscience". Dupin retracted and returned, but his chair in the College of France was irretrievably lost. Later