Andrew J. Webber
- Published in print:
- 1996
- Published Online:
- October 2011
- ISBN:
- 9780198159049
- eISBN:
- 9780191673467
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Oxford University Press
- DOI:
- 10.1093/acprof:oso/9780198159049.003.0001
- Subject:
- Literature, European Literature
This chapter gives an overview of the manifestations of the Doppelgäanger in literary practice and sets up a survey of theoretical positions on the double, which will both stand as objects of ...
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This chapter gives an overview of the manifestations of the Doppelgäanger in literary practice and sets up a survey of theoretical positions on the double, which will both stand as objects of analysis and provide a methodological framework for the arguments presented. The theoretical survey includes the philosophical split version of Kleist's ‘Kant crisis’; Fichte's conception of identity, as satirized in the first literary case — Jean Paul; the theories of magnetism and dreams developed by G. H. Schubert, and represented in the texts of E. T. A. Hoffman; and the psychoanalytic readings of subjective division which are represented in early 20th-century revivals of Doppelgäanger fiction and drama. Otto Rank's essay Der Doppelgäanger (1914) will warrant particular attention here as a sustained historical case-book of the Doppelgäanger fantasy, setting out a psychoanalytic theory of doubling with regard to literary and cinematic practices.Less
This chapter gives an overview of the manifestations of the Doppelgäanger in literary practice and sets up a survey of theoretical positions on the double, which will both stand as objects of analysis and provide a methodological framework for the arguments presented. The theoretical survey includes the philosophical split version of Kleist's ‘Kant crisis’; Fichte's conception of identity, as satirized in the first literary case — Jean Paul; the theories of magnetism and dreams developed by G. H. Schubert, and represented in the texts of E. T. A. Hoffman; and the psychoanalytic readings of subjective division which are represented in early 20th-century revivals of Doppelgäanger fiction and drama. Otto Rank's essay Der Doppelgäanger (1914) will warrant particular attention here as a sustained historical case-book of the Doppelgäanger fantasy, setting out a psychoanalytic theory of doubling with regard to literary and cinematic practices.
Caroline Ruddell
- Published in print:
- 2014
- Published Online:
- September 2014
- ISBN:
- 9780748692026
- eISBN:
- 9780748697052
- Item type:
- book
- Publisher:
- Edinburgh University Press
- DOI:
- 10.3366/edinburgh/9780748692026.001.0001
- Subject:
- Film, Television and Radio, Film
The Besieged Ego: Doppelgangers and Split Identity Onscreen critically appraises the representation, or mediation, of identity in film and television through a thorough analysis of doppelgangers and ...
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The Besieged Ego: Doppelgangers and Split Identity Onscreen critically appraises the representation, or mediation, of identity in film and television through a thorough analysis of doppelgangers and split or fragmentary characters. The prevalence of non-autonomous characters in a wide variety of onscreen examples calls into question the very concept of a unified, knowable identity. The form of the double, and cinematic modes and rhetorics used to denote fragmentary identity, is addressed in the book through a detailed analysis of texts drawn from a range of industrial, historical and cultural contexts. The doppelganger or double carries significant cultural meanings about what it means to be human and the experience of identity as a gendered individual. The double also expresses in fictional form our problematic experience of the world as a social, and supposedly whole and autonomous, subject. The Besieged Ego therefore raises important questions about the representation of identity onscreen and concomitant issues regarding autonomy and the nature of lack and desire in identity formation and experience. This book argues that split characters are a dramatic device that provides narrative structure as well as visual spectacle across a range of genres and industrial contexts. The range and variety of texts that deal with unstable identities through splitting is testimony to the fact that meanings are not fixed in terms of identity representation in media, particularly across genres.Less
The Besieged Ego: Doppelgangers and Split Identity Onscreen critically appraises the representation, or mediation, of identity in film and television through a thorough analysis of doppelgangers and split or fragmentary characters. The prevalence of non-autonomous characters in a wide variety of onscreen examples calls into question the very concept of a unified, knowable identity. The form of the double, and cinematic modes and rhetorics used to denote fragmentary identity, is addressed in the book through a detailed analysis of texts drawn from a range of industrial, historical and cultural contexts. The doppelganger or double carries significant cultural meanings about what it means to be human and the experience of identity as a gendered individual. The double also expresses in fictional form our problematic experience of the world as a social, and supposedly whole and autonomous, subject. The Besieged Ego therefore raises important questions about the representation of identity onscreen and concomitant issues regarding autonomy and the nature of lack and desire in identity formation and experience. This book argues that split characters are a dramatic device that provides narrative structure as well as visual spectacle across a range of genres and industrial contexts. The range and variety of texts that deal with unstable identities through splitting is testimony to the fact that meanings are not fixed in terms of identity representation in media, particularly across genres.
Andrew J. Webber
- Published in print:
- 1996
- Published Online:
- October 2011
- ISBN:
- 9780198159049
- eISBN:
- 9780191673467
- Item type:
- book
- Publisher:
- Oxford University Press
- DOI:
- 10.1093/acprof:oso/9780198159049.001.0001
- Subject:
- Literature, European Literature
Ever since its literary coinage in Jean Paul's novel, Siebenkäs (1796), the concept of Doppelgänger has had significant influence upon representations of the self in German literature. This study ...
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Ever since its literary coinage in Jean Paul's novel, Siebenkäs (1796), the concept of Doppelgänger has had significant influence upon representations of the self in German literature. This study charts the development of the double from its origins in the Romantic period, through its more marginal — but nonetheless significant — manifestations in the post-Romantic culture, to its revival at the fin-de-siècle and transfer to the silent screen. The book features an introduction to the practice and theory underlying the use of the Doppelgänger, with particular reference to psychoanalysis, followed by chapters on Jean Paul, Hoffmann, Kleist, poetic realism (Droste-Hülshoff, Keller, Storm), and modernism (Kafka, Rilke, Hoffmannsthal, Schnitzler, Meyrink, Werfal). This study shows that the often underestimated figure of the double may provide a key to the epistomological, aesthetic, and psychosexual structures of the texts it visits and revisits, with a particular focus on its effects in the fields of vision and language.Less
Ever since its literary coinage in Jean Paul's novel, Siebenkäs (1796), the concept of Doppelgänger has had significant influence upon representations of the self in German literature. This study charts the development of the double from its origins in the Romantic period, through its more marginal — but nonetheless significant — manifestations in the post-Romantic culture, to its revival at the fin-de-siècle and transfer to the silent screen. The book features an introduction to the practice and theory underlying the use of the Doppelgänger, with particular reference to psychoanalysis, followed by chapters on Jean Paul, Hoffmann, Kleist, poetic realism (Droste-Hülshoff, Keller, Storm), and modernism (Kafka, Rilke, Hoffmannsthal, Schnitzler, Meyrink, Werfal). This study shows that the often underestimated figure of the double may provide a key to the epistomological, aesthetic, and psychosexual structures of the texts it visits and revisits, with a particular focus on its effects in the fields of vision and language.
Andrew J. Webber
- Published in print:
- 1996
- Published Online:
- October 2011
- ISBN:
- 9780198159049
- eISBN:
- 9780191673467
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Oxford University Press
- DOI:
- 10.1093/acprof:oso/9780198159049.003.0002
- Subject:
- Literature, European Literature
This chapter analyses the presence of the Doppelgäanger in Jean Paul's texts. In his first novel, Die unsichtbare Loge (The Invisible Lodge), the double has no immediate bodily presence, but is ...
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This chapter analyses the presence of the Doppelgäanger in Jean Paul's texts. In his first novel, Die unsichtbare Loge (The Invisible Lodge), the double has no immediate bodily presence, but is represented by the visible token of a portrait. The portrait becomes an image of likeness between individuals, and thereby a figure of their substitution. Every Jean Paul text is a quest for identity and a ceaseless playing with identities and their counters. In Hesperus, he relates a story in which all the players are to some extent incognito, where identity is represented and misrepresented by every imaginable device. The characters don veils and masks; they are multiplied as twins and triplets; they are reproduced as portraits, waxworks, reflections, and silhouettes; and they are replicated in language through initials, signatures, and soubriquets which take on a life of their own.Less
This chapter analyses the presence of the Doppelgäanger in Jean Paul's texts. In his first novel, Die unsichtbare Loge (The Invisible Lodge), the double has no immediate bodily presence, but is represented by the visible token of a portrait. The portrait becomes an image of likeness between individuals, and thereby a figure of their substitution. Every Jean Paul text is a quest for identity and a ceaseless playing with identities and their counters. In Hesperus, he relates a story in which all the players are to some extent incognito, where identity is represented and misrepresented by every imaginable device. The characters don veils and masks; they are multiplied as twins and triplets; they are reproduced as portraits, waxworks, reflections, and silhouettes; and they are replicated in language through initials, signatures, and soubriquets which take on a life of their own.
Andrew J. Webber
- Published in print:
- 1996
- Published Online:
- October 2011
- ISBN:
- 9780198159049
- eISBN:
- 9780191673467
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Oxford University Press
- DOI:
- 10.1093/acprof:oso/9780198159049.003.0004
- Subject:
- Literature, European Literature
This chapter considers in detail two works of Heinrich von Kleist, where he goes beyond the sorts of dualistic patterns of characterization and plot which feature throughout his writing to more fully ...
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This chapter considers in detail two works of Heinrich von Kleist, where he goes beyond the sorts of dualistic patterns of characterization and plot which feature throughout his writing to more fully developed Doppelgäanger scenarios: Der Findling (The Foundling) and Amphitryon. Here the Doppelgäanger figure embodies the structural principle of internal reflections or double-takes which operates with a less challenging physical presence elsewhere. These two texts may thus stand as particularly acute cases for the problematics of subjectivity in Kleist's world.Less
This chapter considers in detail two works of Heinrich von Kleist, where he goes beyond the sorts of dualistic patterns of characterization and plot which feature throughout his writing to more fully developed Doppelgäanger scenarios: Der Findling (The Foundling) and Amphitryon. Here the Doppelgäanger figure embodies the structural principle of internal reflections or double-takes which operates with a less challenging physical presence elsewhere. These two texts may thus stand as particularly acute cases for the problematics of subjectivity in Kleist's world.
Andrew J. Webber
- Published in print:
- 1996
- Published Online:
- October 2011
- ISBN:
- 9780198159049
- eISBN:
- 9780191673467
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Oxford University Press
- DOI:
- 10.1093/acprof:oso/9780198159049.003.0005
- Subject:
- Literature, European Literature
This chapter discusses cases of doubling in the Novelle genre of 19th-century German literature. These are forms of narrative which treat the mysterious and the antisocial, giving account of those ...
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This chapter discusses cases of doubling in the Novelle genre of 19th-century German literature. These are forms of narrative which treat the mysterious and the antisocial, giving account of those stories which undermine or exceed the objective generality of a conventional history. Nineteenth-century Novellen provide a catalogue of such ‘strange cases’, supernatural, criminal, and pathological. The Doppelgäanger operates as both a paradigm and a test case, a phantasm which enters into and challenges the constructions of realism. As this chapter revisits texts which are broadly historicized as of the Age of Realism, so this apparently dis- and misplaced figure questions the sense of real and proper place and time which is so fundamental to the Realist project.Less
This chapter discusses cases of doubling in the Novelle genre of 19th-century German literature. These are forms of narrative which treat the mysterious and the antisocial, giving account of those stories which undermine or exceed the objective generality of a conventional history. Nineteenth-century Novellen provide a catalogue of such ‘strange cases’, supernatural, criminal, and pathological. The Doppelgäanger operates as both a paradigm and a test case, a phantasm which enters into and challenges the constructions of realism. As this chapter revisits texts which are broadly historicized as of the Age of Realism, so this apparently dis- and misplaced figure questions the sense of real and proper place and time which is so fundamental to the Realist project.
Andrew J. Webber
- Published in print:
- 1996
- Published Online:
- October 2011
- ISBN:
- 9780198159049
- eISBN:
- 9780191673467
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Oxford University Press
- DOI:
- 10.1093/acprof:oso/9780198159049.003.0006
- Subject:
- Literature, European Literature
The turn of the 19th century saw a widespread Gothic revival, a cult of Romantic fantasy, which rehearsed the attitudes and forms of Romanticism. This chapter gives a synoptic account of the ...
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The turn of the 19th century saw a widespread Gothic revival, a cult of Romantic fantasy, which rehearsed the attitudes and forms of Romanticism. This chapter gives a synoptic account of the resurgence in the cult and culture of chronic dualism, focusing on a series of writers who exhibit forms of Doppelgäanger rapport with Freud, the founder of psychoanalysis. Otto Weininger represents a case of chronic dualism which can be viewed as symptomatic of contemporary divisions in cultural identity and of the desire to salvage a categorical sense of self. In his thesis on sex, race, and identity — Geschlecht und Charakter (Sex and Character), the questions of otherness in race and gender emerge here as projections of alienation. The figure of the Doppelgäanger, which visits both Weininger's theoretical texts and his journal, embodies this alienation as ‘the ensemble of all evil characteristics in the self’.Less
The turn of the 19th century saw a widespread Gothic revival, a cult of Romantic fantasy, which rehearsed the attitudes and forms of Romanticism. This chapter gives a synoptic account of the resurgence in the cult and culture of chronic dualism, focusing on a series of writers who exhibit forms of Doppelgäanger rapport with Freud, the founder of psychoanalysis. Otto Weininger represents a case of chronic dualism which can be viewed as symptomatic of contemporary divisions in cultural identity and of the desire to salvage a categorical sense of self. In his thesis on sex, race, and identity — Geschlecht und Charakter (Sex and Character), the questions of otherness in race and gender emerge here as projections of alienation. The figure of the Doppelgäanger, which visits both Weininger's theoretical texts and his journal, embodies this alienation as ‘the ensemble of all evil characteristics in the self’.
Richard Cohn
- Published in print:
- 2012
- Published Online:
- May 2012
- ISBN:
- 9780199772698
- eISBN:
- 9780199932238
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Oxford University Press
- DOI:
- 10.1093/acprof:oso/9780199772698.003.0006
- Subject:
- Music, Theory, Analysis, Composition
Chapter 6 presents three analytic scripts for navigating the triadic universe, and shows how those scripts and their compositional instantiations are represented using the concepts and geometries ...
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Chapter 6 presents three analytic scripts for navigating the triadic universe, and shows how those scripts and their compositional instantiations are represented using the concepts and geometries introduced in chapter 5. The first script involves retention of a single tone, varying the harmonies that support it. Der Dopplenganger and the development of Brahms 2nd Symphony illustrate. The second script involves a downshift/upshift sequence, sometimes with an overshoot requiring recuperation, generalizing prototypical Riemann-functional scripts. Schubert’s Auf dem Flusse, Liedesend, and Bb piano sonata, and a short organ work of Liszt, illustrate. The third script involves a continuous upshift, illustrated by the long-range tonal structure of Schumann’s Dichterliebe and the local harmonic progression of the development section of Dvorak’s New World Symphony.Less
Chapter 6 presents three analytic scripts for navigating the triadic universe, and shows how those scripts and their compositional instantiations are represented using the concepts and geometries introduced in chapter 5. The first script involves retention of a single tone, varying the harmonies that support it. Der Dopplenganger and the development of Brahms 2nd Symphony illustrate. The second script involves a downshift/upshift sequence, sometimes with an overshoot requiring recuperation, generalizing prototypical Riemann-functional scripts. Schubert’s Auf dem Flusse, Liedesend, and Bb piano sonata, and a short organ work of Liszt, illustrate. The third script involves a continuous upshift, illustrated by the long-range tonal structure of Schumann’s Dichterliebe and the local harmonic progression of the development section of Dvorak’s New World Symphony.
Ilona Klein
- Published in print:
- 2011
- Published Online:
- January 2012
- ISBN:
- 9780823233588
- eISBN:
- 9780823241811
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Fordham University Press
- DOI:
- 10.5422/fordham/9780823233588.003.0009
- Subject:
- Literature, European Literature
Published in 1982, “Se non ora, quando?” (If Not Now, When?) is Primo Levi's first novel proper. Perhaps, Primo Levi regretted not fully living life as an Italian Jewish partisan that he re-created ...
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Published in 1982, “Se non ora, quando?” (If Not Now, When?) is Primo Levi's first novel proper. Perhaps, Primo Levi regretted not fully living life as an Italian Jewish partisan that he re-created his lost dream through its pages and had his partisan brigade not been captured. This novel might reflect Levi's need to explore that sought after life as a partisan, which he had been denied after only three months of activity. This chapter proposes that this novel might be read and understood as the “other” story, the narrative of that partisan experience that Levi did not live in full, the story of his destroyed dream as an aspiring freedom fighter against the Nazi and Fascist tragedy. It submits, then, that the narrative of this novel develops the theme of Levi's doppelganger through the discourse of a fictional, projected alter-ego protagonist.Less
Published in 1982, “Se non ora, quando?” (If Not Now, When?) is Primo Levi's first novel proper. Perhaps, Primo Levi regretted not fully living life as an Italian Jewish partisan that he re-created his lost dream through its pages and had his partisan brigade not been captured. This novel might reflect Levi's need to explore that sought after life as a partisan, which he had been denied after only three months of activity. This chapter proposes that this novel might be read and understood as the “other” story, the narrative of that partisan experience that Levi did not live in full, the story of his destroyed dream as an aspiring freedom fighter against the Nazi and Fascist tragedy. It submits, then, that the narrative of this novel develops the theme of Levi's doppelganger through the discourse of a fictional, projected alter-ego protagonist.
Dimitris Vardoulakis
- Published in print:
- 2010
- Published Online:
- March 2011
- ISBN:
- 9780823232987
- eISBN:
- 9780823235698
- Item type:
- book
- Publisher:
- Fordham University Press
- DOI:
- 10.5422/fso/9780823232987.001.0001
- Subject:
- Philosophy, Philosophy of Language
The Doppelgänger or Double presents literature as the “double” of philosophy. There are historical reasons for this. The genesis of the Doppelgänger is literature's response to the ...
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The Doppelgänger or Double presents literature as the “double” of philosophy. There are historical reasons for this. The genesis of the Doppelgänger is literature's response to the philosophical focus on subjectivity. The Doppelgänger was coined by the German author Jean Paul in 1796 as a critique of Idealism's assertion of subjective autonomy, individuality and human agency. This critique prefigures post-War extrapolations of the subject as decentred. From this perspective, the Doppelgänger has a “family resemblance” to current conceptualizations of subjectivity. It becomes the emblematic subject of modernity. This book studies the Doppelgänger's influence on philosophical thought. The Doppelgänger emerges as a hidden and unexplored element both in conceptions of subjectivity and in philosophy's relation to literature. The book demonstrates this by employing the Doppelgänger to read literature philosophically and to read philosophy as literature. The Doppelgänger then appears instrumental in the self-conception of both literature and philosophy.Less
The Doppelgänger or Double presents literature as the “double” of philosophy. There are historical reasons for this. The genesis of the Doppelgänger is literature's response to the philosophical focus on subjectivity. The Doppelgänger was coined by the German author Jean Paul in 1796 as a critique of Idealism's assertion of subjective autonomy, individuality and human agency. This critique prefigures post-War extrapolations of the subject as decentred. From this perspective, the Doppelgänger has a “family resemblance” to current conceptualizations of subjectivity. It becomes the emblematic subject of modernity. This book studies the Doppelgänger's influence on philosophical thought. The Doppelgänger emerges as a hidden and unexplored element both in conceptions of subjectivity and in philosophy's relation to literature. The book demonstrates this by employing the Doppelgänger to read literature philosophically and to read philosophy as literature. The Doppelgänger then appears instrumental in the self-conception of both literature and philosophy.
Dimitris Vardoulakis
- Published in print:
- 2010
- Published Online:
- March 2011
- ISBN:
- 9780823232987
- eISBN:
- 9780823235698
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Fordham University Press
- DOI:
- 10.5422/fso/9780823232987.003.0001
- Subject:
- Philosophy, Philosophy of Language
This chapter introduces the concept of the Doppelgänger. It argues that the Doppelgänger is an operative or effective presence to the extent that it affects the undoing of the ...
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This chapter introduces the concept of the Doppelgänger. It argues that the Doppelgänger is an operative or effective presence to the extent that it affects the undoing of the framing of the subject by the opposition between mere presence and absence. Such an operation indicates a function of relationality—the various relations that structure the subject's ontology. This relationality is what is called here the Doppelgänger. Debra Walker King summarizes the Doppelgänger as the collision between real bodies and an unfriendly informant: a fictional double whose aim is to mask individuality and mute the voice of personal agency. A first thesis of this book is that the resistance to presence indicates the Doppelgänger's ontology, bringing literature and philosophy into productive and mutually illuminating contact. While the second thesis of the book holds that the Doppelgänger is in a process of construction—its effective presence is transformative.Less
This chapter introduces the concept of the Doppelgänger. It argues that the Doppelgänger is an operative or effective presence to the extent that it affects the undoing of the framing of the subject by the opposition between mere presence and absence. Such an operation indicates a function of relationality—the various relations that structure the subject's ontology. This relationality is what is called here the Doppelgänger. Debra Walker King summarizes the Doppelgänger as the collision between real bodies and an unfriendly informant: a fictional double whose aim is to mask individuality and mute the voice of personal agency. A first thesis of this book is that the resistance to presence indicates the Doppelgänger's ontology, bringing literature and philosophy into productive and mutually illuminating contact. While the second thesis of the book holds that the Doppelgänger is in a process of construction—its effective presence is transformative.
Caroline Ruddell
- Published in print:
- 2014
- Published Online:
- September 2014
- ISBN:
- 9780748692026
- eISBN:
- 9780748697052
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Edinburgh University Press
- DOI:
- 10.3366/edinburgh/9780748692026.003.0006
- Subject:
- Film, Television and Radio, Film
The introduction outlines how split identity frequents the silver screen continually across a range of genres and introduces the multifaceted ways the double or fragmented identity function onscreen. ...
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The introduction outlines how split identity frequents the silver screen continually across a range of genres and introduces the multifaceted ways the double or fragmented identity function onscreen. Doubles provide narrative cause and effect, character motivation and above all, spectacle. What is often so effective about films and TV examples that feature that doppelganger is that an unconscious subjective split nature erupts from the unknown into the ‘real’ and knowable. This provides an extremely spectacular way of providing drama and tension in order to attract an audience, but it also taps into contemporary concerns that surround identity, and this also helps to explain the popularity of onscreen examples that feature doubling and why they might engage audience interest.Less
The introduction outlines how split identity frequents the silver screen continually across a range of genres and introduces the multifaceted ways the double or fragmented identity function onscreen. Doubles provide narrative cause and effect, character motivation and above all, spectacle. What is often so effective about films and TV examples that feature that doppelganger is that an unconscious subjective split nature erupts from the unknown into the ‘real’ and knowable. This provides an extremely spectacular way of providing drama and tension in order to attract an audience, but it also taps into contemporary concerns that surround identity, and this also helps to explain the popularity of onscreen examples that feature doubling and why they might engage audience interest.
Michael G. Levine
- Published in print:
- 2013
- Published Online:
- May 2014
- ISBN:
- 9780823255108
- eISBN:
- 9780823260850
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Fordham University Press
- DOI:
- 10.5422/fordham/9780823255108.003.0003
- Subject:
- Literature, Criticism/Theory
The chapter focuses on the title Celan gave to his 1960 speech delivered on the occasion of his reception of the Büchner Prize for Literature. While critics tend to understand the title word ...
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The chapter focuses on the title Celan gave to his 1960 speech delivered on the occasion of his reception of the Büchner Prize for Literature. While critics tend to understand the title word “meridian” exclusively in spatial terms, the chapter argues that it should be understood temporally as the moment when the sun stands directly overhead at noon, dividing the day into a.m. and p.m. This moment recurs at critical points in Büchner’s plays and prose works and it is Celan’s achievement to have recognized its pivotal— and highly contradictory— significance. What is gathered together at this privileged point in time are three competing ways of viewing the meridian: as a moment of absolute sovereignty, as a point of stasis and traumatic fixation, and as the site of a possible opening toward what is yet to come. It is through his encounter with this critical moment in Büchner that Celan articulates his own poetic practice, his way not just of incorporating readings of other writers into his own work but of leaving his poems open in their turn to the solicitations of others. His notion of poetry as “desperate conversation” should thus be understood in terms of this intertextual relationship.Less
The chapter focuses on the title Celan gave to his 1960 speech delivered on the occasion of his reception of the Büchner Prize for Literature. While critics tend to understand the title word “meridian” exclusively in spatial terms, the chapter argues that it should be understood temporally as the moment when the sun stands directly overhead at noon, dividing the day into a.m. and p.m. This moment recurs at critical points in Büchner’s plays and prose works and it is Celan’s achievement to have recognized its pivotal— and highly contradictory— significance. What is gathered together at this privileged point in time are three competing ways of viewing the meridian: as a moment of absolute sovereignty, as a point of stasis and traumatic fixation, and as the site of a possible opening toward what is yet to come. It is through his encounter with this critical moment in Büchner that Celan articulates his own poetic practice, his way not just of incorporating readings of other writers into his own work but of leaving his poems open in their turn to the solicitations of others. His notion of poetry as “desperate conversation” should thus be understood in terms of this intertextual relationship.
Sarah Annes Brown
- Published in print:
- 2012
- Published Online:
- May 2013
- ISBN:
- 9780719085154
- eISBN:
- 9781781704684
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Manchester University Press
- DOI:
- 10.7228/manchester/9780719085154.003.0002
- Subject:
- Literature, Criticism/Theory
This chapter, which emphasises the importance of the interplay between an uncanny phenomenon in the text and an uncanny affect in the reader, holds that the uncanny is both a ‘foreign body’ and ...
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This chapter, which emphasises the importance of the interplay between an uncanny phenomenon in the text and an uncanny affect in the reader, holds that the uncanny is both a ‘foreign body’ and something on the page in front of the reader. It describes nineteenth-century doubles who remind people of their textual predecessors as well as of their own doubled selves. The chapter looks at uncannily Gothic doubles of the earlier decades (James Hogg and Edgar Allan Poe), through the novels of the mid-Victorian period, in which doubles are more usually deployed to drive a sensational plot (Wilkie Collins and Mary Elizabeth Braddon), and at a second, more self-conscious Gothic flowering in the novels of thefin de siècle (Robert Louis Stevenson and Oscar Wilde). It concludes that the tendency to invoke earlier examples of the Doppelgänger tradition becomes increasingly pronounced.Less
This chapter, which emphasises the importance of the interplay between an uncanny phenomenon in the text and an uncanny affect in the reader, holds that the uncanny is both a ‘foreign body’ and something on the page in front of the reader. It describes nineteenth-century doubles who remind people of their textual predecessors as well as of their own doubled selves. The chapter looks at uncannily Gothic doubles of the earlier decades (James Hogg and Edgar Allan Poe), through the novels of the mid-Victorian period, in which doubles are more usually deployed to drive a sensational plot (Wilkie Collins and Mary Elizabeth Braddon), and at a second, more self-conscious Gothic flowering in the novels of thefin de siècle (Robert Louis Stevenson and Oscar Wilde). It concludes that the tendency to invoke earlier examples of the Doppelgänger tradition becomes increasingly pronounced.
Sarah Annes Brown
- Published in print:
- 2012
- Published Online:
- May 2013
- ISBN:
- 9780719085154
- eISBN:
- 9781781704684
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Manchester University Press
- DOI:
- 10.7228/manchester/9780719085154.003.0003
- Subject:
- Literature, Criticism/Theory
This chapter charts the progress of the Doppelgänger in later twentieth- and twenty-first-century fiction. As the genre established itself more securely, the possibilities for complex allusive ...
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This chapter charts the progress of the Doppelgänger in later twentieth- and twenty-first-century fiction. As the genre established itself more securely, the possibilities for complex allusive doubling and redoubling became greater. Some recent writers, such as Sarah Waters and Will Self, find Doppelgängers in their Victorian predecessors. Others, such as Bret Easton Ellis, respond to the doubles created by their near contemporaries, while Christopher Priest's characters, like those of Daphne du Maurier, seem to be the uncanny doubles of his own earlier creations. The chapter furthermore argues that the clone may also come into play as a science-fictional subtype of the double as uncanny allusion marker when many earlier texts are being referenced.Less
This chapter charts the progress of the Doppelgänger in later twentieth- and twenty-first-century fiction. As the genre established itself more securely, the possibilities for complex allusive doubling and redoubling became greater. Some recent writers, such as Sarah Waters and Will Self, find Doppelgängers in their Victorian predecessors. Others, such as Bret Easton Ellis, respond to the doubles created by their near contemporaries, while Christopher Priest's characters, like those of Daphne du Maurier, seem to be the uncanny doubles of his own earlier creations. The chapter furthermore argues that the clone may also come into play as a science-fictional subtype of the double as uncanny allusion marker when many earlier texts are being referenced.
Christina Petraglia
- Published in print:
- 2017
- Published Online:
- September 2017
- ISBN:
- 9781784992699
- eISBN:
- 9781526124050
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Manchester University Press
- DOI:
- 10.7228/manchester/9781784992699.003.0011
- Subject:
- Literature, Film, Media, and Cultural Studies
This chapter posits a psychoanalytic reading of Iginio Ugo Tarchetti’s short story ‘I
fatali’ (‘The Fated Ones’) published posthumously in the collection Racconti fantastici (Fantastic Tales) ...
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This chapter posits a psychoanalytic reading of Iginio Ugo Tarchetti’s short story ‘I
fatali’ (‘The Fated Ones’) published posthumously in the collection Racconti fantastici (Fantastic Tales) (1869). It focuses on the mortal rivalry between the father and son figures, Count Sagrezwitch and Baron Saternez, who become known in late nineteenth-century Milanese society of the short story as true embodiments of fatal beings belonging to popular superstition, known as jinxes – bringers of bad fortune, illness, harm, and even death to others. Drawing from Otto Rank and Sigmund Freud’s conceptions of the Doppelgänger, it is argued that these protagonists emerge as complementary doubles for one another, as opposing incarnations of Death in the form of mysterious foreigners. This chapter also highlights the post-Unification, socio-cultural undertones of Tarchetti’s fantastic tale, affirms the existence of an Italian Gothic, and reveals the author’s portrayal of death’s spectacular nature.Less
This chapter posits a psychoanalytic reading of Iginio Ugo Tarchetti’s short story ‘I
fatali’ (‘The Fated Ones’) published posthumously in the collection Racconti fantastici (Fantastic Tales) (1869). It focuses on the mortal rivalry between the father and son figures, Count Sagrezwitch and Baron Saternez, who become known in late nineteenth-century Milanese society of the short story as true embodiments of fatal beings belonging to popular superstition, known as jinxes – bringers of bad fortune, illness, harm, and even death to others. Drawing from Otto Rank and Sigmund Freud’s conceptions of the Doppelgänger, it is argued that these protagonists emerge as complementary doubles for one another, as opposing incarnations of Death in the form of mysterious foreigners. This chapter also highlights the post-Unification, socio-cultural undertones of Tarchetti’s fantastic tale, affirms the existence of an Italian Gothic, and reveals the author’s portrayal of death’s spectacular nature.
Michael Hancock
- Published in print:
- 2016
- Published Online:
- September 2018
- ISBN:
- 9781474401616
- eISBN:
- 9781474418553
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Edinburgh University Press
- DOI:
- 10.3366/edinburgh/9781474401616.003.0010
- Subject:
- Literature, Criticism/Theory
This chapter explores gothic elements encoded into the narrative and the very act of choice that govern video games. These elements both reinforce and expose the lie of rational choice that ...
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This chapter explores gothic elements encoded into the narrative and the very act of choice that govern video games. These elements both reinforce and expose the lie of rational choice that undergirds the neoliberal economy that saw games rise to media dominance. Videogames may be simulacra, but not just virtual realities: they are the uncanny symptom of how the neoliberal subject recognizes its own lack of identity. Games are thus the gothic double of the Enlightenment self, the prime image of the hollow American neoliberal consumer mass-marketed as self-fashioning individual.Less
This chapter explores gothic elements encoded into the narrative and the very act of choice that govern video games. These elements both reinforce and expose the lie of rational choice that undergirds the neoliberal economy that saw games rise to media dominance. Videogames may be simulacra, but not just virtual realities: they are the uncanny symptom of how the neoliberal subject recognizes its own lack of identity. Games are thus the gothic double of the Enlightenment self, the prime image of the hollow American neoliberal consumer mass-marketed as self-fashioning individual.
Julia C. Bullock
- Published in print:
- 2010
- Published Online:
- November 2016
- ISBN:
- 9780824833879
- eISBN:
- 9780824870836
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- University of Hawai'i Press
- DOI:
- 10.21313/hawaii/9780824833879.003.0006
- Subject:
- Society and Culture, Asian Studies
This chapter examines the function of the body of the Other Woman as a trope for expressing the highly ambivalent attitude toward intimacy among women by focusing on three works of fiction: “On the ...
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This chapter examines the function of the body of the Other Woman as a trope for expressing the highly ambivalent attitude toward intimacy among women by focusing on three works of fiction: “On the Road” (Roj?, 1964) by Kōno Taeko; “Intercourse” (Majiwari, 1966) by Takahashi Takako; and “Bad Summer” (Warui natsu, 1966) by Kurahashi Yumiko. All three texts attempt to problematize the coherence of the category of “woman” itself by highlighting the differences among women, even as they acknowledge the potential for similarity or connection. They variously figure the body of the Other Woman as an object of desire, fear, and identification in ways that incorporate other women textually as privileged sites of self-knowledge. The doppelganger, or second-self, motif frequently appears in these texts as a means of depicting an Other that is simultaneously not other yet always somehow out of reach of the protagonist.Less
This chapter examines the function of the body of the Other Woman as a trope for expressing the highly ambivalent attitude toward intimacy among women by focusing on three works of fiction: “On the Road” (Roj?, 1964) by Kōno Taeko; “Intercourse” (Majiwari, 1966) by Takahashi Takako; and “Bad Summer” (Warui natsu, 1966) by Kurahashi Yumiko. All three texts attempt to problematize the coherence of the category of “woman” itself by highlighting the differences among women, even as they acknowledge the potential for similarity or connection. They variously figure the body of the Other Woman as an object of desire, fear, and identification in ways that incorporate other women textually as privileged sites of self-knowledge. The doppelganger, or second-self, motif frequently appears in these texts as a means of depicting an Other that is simultaneously not other yet always somehow out of reach of the protagonist.
David Ferris
- Published in print:
- 2016
- Published Online:
- September 2016
- ISBN:
- 9780190200107
- eISBN:
- 9780190200138
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Oxford University Press
- DOI:
- 10.1093/acprof:oso/9780190200107.003.0019
- Subject:
- Music, History, Western, Theory, Analysis, Composition
The texts of ‘Der Atlas’ and ‘Der Doppelgänger’, like many of the poems in Heine’s Buch der Lieder, are concerned with the themes of memory and loss. One unusual feature that these two poems share is ...
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The texts of ‘Der Atlas’ and ‘Der Doppelgänger’, like many of the poems in Heine’s Buch der Lieder, are concerned with the themes of memory and loss. One unusual feature that these two poems share is an unexpected shift in narrative perspective in the final stanza. In ‘Der Atlas’ the protagonist suddenly begins speaking to his heart, and in ‘Der Doppelgänger’ he addresses a ghostly figure who turns out to be himself. In this essay I consider some of the ways in which Schubert responded to the narrative peculiarity of these poems when he set them as the first and last of his Heine songs. By combining recent techniques to analyse rhythmic declamation with the analysis of other aspects of the songs, such as tonality, voice leading, texture and hypermetre, I show how Schubert exploits and manipulates the declamatory patterns in the poems in order to express musically the narrative and semantic levels of meaning.Less
The texts of ‘Der Atlas’ and ‘Der Doppelgänger’, like many of the poems in Heine’s Buch der Lieder, are concerned with the themes of memory and loss. One unusual feature that these two poems share is an unexpected shift in narrative perspective in the final stanza. In ‘Der Atlas’ the protagonist suddenly begins speaking to his heart, and in ‘Der Doppelgänger’ he addresses a ghostly figure who turns out to be himself. In this essay I consider some of the ways in which Schubert responded to the narrative peculiarity of these poems when he set them as the first and last of his Heine songs. By combining recent techniques to analyse rhythmic declamation with the analysis of other aspects of the songs, such as tonality, voice leading, texture and hypermetre, I show how Schubert exploits and manipulates the declamatory patterns in the poems in order to express musically the narrative and semantic levels of meaning.
Benjamin Binder
- Published in print:
- 2016
- Published Online:
- September 2016
- ISBN:
- 9780190200107
- eISBN:
- 9780190200138
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Oxford University Press
- DOI:
- 10.1093/acprof:oso/9780190200107.003.0021
- Subject:
- Music, History, Western, Theory, Analysis, Composition
One commonly acknowledged indicator of ‘late style’ in music is self-critique. At the end of a long career, a composer subjects his or her musical language to a rigorous deconstructive analysis, ...
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One commonly acknowledged indicator of ‘late style’ in music is self-critique. At the end of a long career, a composer subjects his or her musical language to a rigorous deconstructive analysis, exposing its fundamental premises in order to reassess its expressive validity. In 2008, however, Joseph Straus suggested that ‘late-style’ musical features are often more fruitfully interpreted as inscriptions of a composer's physical or mental disability. Speaking of a retrospective, self-critical ‘late style’ in Schubert’s case is potentially problematic, since he was only thirty-one when he died. But there is general consensus that Schubert’s experience of his fatal illness (and the limitations it placed upon him) left traces in his music. This chapter offers a reading of Schubert’s ‘Der Doppelgänger’ as a ‘late’ work in both respects. Schubert’s artistic response to disability in this song takes the form of a reflective self-critique.Less
One commonly acknowledged indicator of ‘late style’ in music is self-critique. At the end of a long career, a composer subjects his or her musical language to a rigorous deconstructive analysis, exposing its fundamental premises in order to reassess its expressive validity. In 2008, however, Joseph Straus suggested that ‘late-style’ musical features are often more fruitfully interpreted as inscriptions of a composer's physical or mental disability. Speaking of a retrospective, self-critical ‘late style’ in Schubert’s case is potentially problematic, since he was only thirty-one when he died. But there is general consensus that Schubert’s experience of his fatal illness (and the limitations it placed upon him) left traces in his music. This chapter offers a reading of Schubert’s ‘Der Doppelgänger’ as a ‘late’ work in both respects. Schubert’s artistic response to disability in this song takes the form of a reflective self-critique.
