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.

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JOHN HERDMAN

Bibliographic Information

Book Title: The Double in Nineteenth-Century Fiction
Authors: John Herdman
Series Title: Edinburgh Studies in Culture and Society
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1057/9780230371637
Publisher: Palgrave Macmillan London
eBook Packages: Palgrave Literature & Performing Arts Collection, Literature, Cultural and Media Studies (R0)
Copyright Information: Palgrave Macmillan, a division of Macmillan Publishers Limited 1990
Hardcover ISBN: 978-0-333-49024-2Published: 29 June 1990
eBook ISBN: 978-0-230-37163-7Published: 29 June 1990
Series ISSN: 2947-0757
Series E-ISSN: 2947-0765
Edition Number: 1
Number of Pages: XI, 174
Topics: Nineteenth-Century Literature, Literary Theory, Fiction

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Table of contents (9 chapters)

Front Matter

Back Matter

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