Autore contro lettore, riddler contro riddlee, criminale contro detective. La contesa enigmistica come strumento di gestione del sapere

This work intends to investigate different ways of managing knowledge in the modern, ancient and postmodern era through the analysis of three riddle contests. In the first case, we will reflect on the relationship between author and reader starting from a review by Edgar Allan Poe on Dickens’ Barnaby Rudge; in the second, the outcome of a riddle contest narrated by Tolkien in The Hobbit will be commented; in the third, the gnoseological logics that preside over the connotations of Paul Auster’s detective fiction will be explored.