A Man of Honor. Note sulle origini dell’eroe del romanzo poliziesco americano

Abstract

This paper aims to examine the origin of the hard-boiled hero. I suggest it is possible to find his first arrival in the frontier romance created by James Fenimore Cooper in 1823 with The Pioneer, in which Natty Bumppo makes his first appearance, the real archetype of the hard-boiled detective. Then there is a second important stage: Allan Pinkerton’s narratives drawn from his real experience as a private vigilante. Pinkerton’s detectives were strong men of honor with a clear moral view, so his fictional heroes had the same features. The last influence on the hard-boiled hero is to be found in the dime novels protagonists’ evolution. If at first they were only cowboys, scouts or outlaws, at the end of XIX century they became detectives and the setting of the stories changed: no longer the landscape of the US/Mexico border but the big cities.