The Double in Nineteenth-Century Fiction [Hardcover]

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.Preface - The Psychological and Theological Background - The Emergence and Development of the Double Theme - Terror, Pursuit and Shadows - E.T.A. Hoffmann - James Hogg - Edgar Allan Poe - The Russian Double - The Double in Decline - Into Psychology - Notes - Selected Bibliography - IndexJOHN HERDMAN