The Return of Negation: The Doppelgänger in Freud’s “The ‘Uncanny’”

Critical Horizons 12.3, 2011

Routledge, 2020

The double, doppelgänger, is mostly understood as a peculiar figure that emerged in nineteenth-century Romantic and gothic literature. Far from being a merely esoteric entity, however, this book argues that the double, although it mostly goes unnoticed, is a widespread phenomenon that has significant influence on our lives. It is an inherent key element of human subjectivity whose functions, forms, and effects have not yet gained the serious consideration they merit. Drawing on literature, philosophy, and psychoanalysis, and combining a personal story with theoretical interventions, Double Trouble develops a novel understanding of the double and human subjectivity in the last two centuries. It begins with the singular and narcissistic double of Romanticism and gradually moves to the multiple doubles implicated by Postmodernism. The double is what defies unicity and opens up the subject to multiplicity. Consequently, it gradually emerges as a bridge between the I and the Other, identity and difference, philosophy and literature, theory and praxis. https://www.routledge.com/Double-Trouble-The-Doppelganger-from-Romanticism-to-Postmodernism/Dorfman/p/book/9780367441449

Master's Thesis, 2015

In the first chapter of this study, the origin of the concept of Gothic, how it took part in literature, how and why the first Gothic novel emerged and the main characteristics of the first Gothic works are explained. In the second chapter, the political, economic, and social issues of the Victorian period are covered to explain the reason behind the contextual change in Gothic fiction during this era. Addressing the psychological traumas caused by the repressive attitude of the Victorian period, the “doppelganger” motif which has been applied frequently especially by Gothic writers is explained. In the last two chapters of the study, the “doppelganger” motif in The Strange Case of Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde (1886) by Robert Louis Stevenson and The Picture of Dorian Gray (1891) by Oscar Wilde, the most popular authors and the novels of the era, are analysed according to Lacanian psychoanalytic theory. The split personalities of the main characters in these novels are analysed putting particular emphasis on Lacanian concepts of “desire” and “alienation”. The aim of this study is to discuss the purpose behind the application of the “doppelganger” motif in these novels by exploring how and why the protagonists experience self-alienation.

The paper focuses on the literary theme of the double (doppelgänger) as an artistic attempt at endowing the suffering protagonists with a chance for redemption. Literary works focusing on this theme present a protagonist who encounters his or her double, or disintegrates into several self-parts. Both of these possibilities are often perceived by the protagonists as providing an opportunity for possessing a better life. Some make deliberate use of this opportunity, for instance, by switching their life with that of their double, or taking actions as one personification which they would not take as their other personification. The discovery or formation of the double seems to hold a promise for these protagonists for realizing fantasies otherwise impossible and meet the selfobject need for twinship put forward by Heinz Kohut (1984). However, as is rather clear from most works dealing with the theme, the actual fulfillment of these fantasies holds quite extreme consequences: the majority of these literary works end with the annihilation of at least one of the doubles. The paper analyzes stances of doublehood, either by split or by multiplication, which occur in literary works focusing on theme of the double — as exemplified, for example, in

A study in J.R.R. Tolkien's " The Lord of the Rings " Panagiotis V. Argyris Fantasy is a literary genre that has fascinated countless readers since the ancient world of Mesopotamia, with its first indication of existence being, probably, the Epic of Gilgamesh. By now, passionate followers have experienced several changes in stories and style; yet, the " secret ingredients " for the success have not altered in substance: the reader confronts not only fantastic and supernatural elements inspired by folklore in settings, but also an application of these to the protagonists, transcending traits of their personality to the level of Fantasy, with one of the most characteristically refined masterpieces being The Lord of the Rings, written by John Ronald Reuel Tolkien. Most importantly though, the literature of the Fantastic provokes to the reader the uncomfortable feeling of hesitation, which defines it as sort of interactive, in the sense that the reader has to play an active role in making a decision on whether the supernatural met in such stories could be explained or accepted. What makes the utmost contribution to the shaping of hesitation in readers' hearts is the indubitable notion of the Doppelgänger. The Doppelgänger, the German equivalent for " Double-Goer " , a too complex concept to define in short, was coined " by the novelist Jean Paul (Richter), who in 1796 defined [it as the] people who see themselves " (Zivkovic 122). The Doppelgänger, placed simply, is someone who looks exactly like someone else, or an imaginary spirit that looks exactly like a living person. Zivkovic explains more thoroughly that [i]ts variations in prose fiction most often include the phantasmal duplication of the individual , through likeness or affinity; and the division of a personality, by fantastic or rationally inexplicable means, or through the opposition or the complementarity of separate characters who can be looked upon as different aspects of a sundered whole (Zivkovic 122). For this duplication and its polarisation into two sides to become more comprehensible, the light Gry Faurholt shed is essential: firstly, the alter ego is an identical double; the 'duplication' of a protagonist who seems to be either the victim of an identity theft perpetrated by mimicking paranormal presence or subject to a paranoid hallucination [,] [s]econdly, the 'divided' or split personality features a monster double; the dark half of the protagonist, an unleashed vengeful fiend that acts as a physical manifestation of a dissociated part of the primary self (Gry Faurholt, Self as Other: The Doppelgänger).

The sculptural works of Mexican artist Abraham Cruzvillegas can be said to articulate an experience of objects in our present era of neoliberal globalization that is distinct from current models on offer in Europe and the United States...

This dissertation will examine the doppelgänger motif in Edgar Allan Poe's story "William Wilson" from the consideration of its being the source of horror and distress for the narrator and from its interpretation with respect to the uncanny and the Jungian shadow while simultaneously offering a contrastive examination of this motif along with the instances found in R. L. Stevenson's The Strange Case of Doctor Jekyll and Mr. Hyde (1886) and Oscar Wilde's The Picture of Dorian Gray (1890). An introduction to the Gothic genre from its origin up to the XIX century in the UK and the USA will be also included to contextualize the genre and offer an account of its main stages, authors, and works.

2017

Vardoulakis's book is a tour de force. Growing out of a PhD thesis that he completed at Monash University's Centre for Comparative Literature and Cultural Studies, his study of the figure of the doppelgänger is ambitiously conceived, and involves an interrogation of material that cuts across literature,criticism and philosophy. These generate discussions that are frequently original, sometimes startlingly so.