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2 results

  • Chapter 3 - The Double as Other in the Novel

  • Femi Oyebode, University of Birmingham
  • Book:
    Doppelgänger
    Published online:
    13 March 2025
    Print publication:
    20 March 2025, pp 33-77

  • Summary

    James Hogg’s The Private Memoirs and Confessions of a Justified Sinner sets the scene for the modern expression of the notion of the double in fiction. E. T. A. Hoffman’s novel The Devil’s Elixir covers a similar territory. In this chapter, these two novels provide the backdrop for an exploration of Dostoyevsky’s The Double. This is perhaps the most popular novel that deals with the concept of the double. I argue that the accuracy of the subjective experience of the double suggests that the authors probably had personal experience in autoscopy. This is particularly true of Guy de Maupassant in his novella The Horla. In these novels, the double has a physical existence independent of the originating self. This is true too for the novels by José Saramago and Shusaku Endo that deal with this subject.

Doppelgänger
  • Analysing ‘Doubles' across Antiquity, Fiction, Psychopathology, and Neuroscience
  • Femi Oyebode
  • Published online:
    13 March 2025
    Print publication:
    20 March 2025
  • The concept of doppelgänger, or 'double' – a conceived exact but sometimes invisible replica of a living person – has fascinated and intrigued people for centuries. This notion has a long history and is a widespread belief among cultural groups around the world. Doppelgängers have influenced literature and cinema, with writers such as Fyodor Dostoyevsky and Robert Louis Stevenson, and directors like Alfred Hitchcock exploring the phenomenon to great effect. This book brings together the literary and cinematic with empirical scientific literature to raise fundamental questions about the nature of the self and the human mind. It aims to establish the experience of the self and unravel the brain processes that determine bodily representation and the errors that make possible the experience of the doppelgänger phenomenon. This book will appeal to psychiatrists, neurologists, and neuroscientists, as well as interested general readers.