Edinburgh Studies in Culture and Society

Herdman, J.

Duality and the divided mind have been a source of perennial fascination for literary artists and especially for novelists, and this is particularly true of the Romantic generation and their later nineteenth-century heirs. This book deals with the double, or Doppelgnger, as a dominant theme in the fiction of the period, and with its relation to the problem of evil. It suggests that the literary double flourished best when psychological and religious understandings of human dividedness were in harmony, and declined when they began to grow apart. Writers analysed include E.T.A.Hoffmann, James Hogg, Poe, Dostoevsky and Stevenson; the final chapter relates the theme to the psychology of Jung.

Details

Published by: Palgrave Macmillan

Publication Date: 1990-06-29

Format: Hardcover

ISBN-13: 9780333490242

DOI: 10.1057/9780230371637

Dimensions: 216cm x140cm

Pages: 174