BA Proseminar: Fictions of the doppelgänger [SS 21]

Nineteenth-century English literature contains a number of remarkable, if not legendary doppelgänger figures. Robert Louis Stevenson’s story of Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde would be such an example of a dark, uncanny doubling. From a psychological perspective, it seems easy to read such doublings as expressions of the unconscious or verbalizations of the repressed in a (Victorian) society notorious for its moral double standards and primness. But there is greater complexity to the theme of the doppelgänger, which in this seminar we will start to trace from the early 19^th century onwards. By reading Mary Shelley’s novel Frankenstein (1818) and Oscar Wilde’s novel The Picture of Dorian Gray (1890) in addition to Stevenson’s novel Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde (1886) as well as selected short story by writers such as Elizabeth Gaskell, Henry James and Joseph Conrad, we will explore encounters with doubles that allow for different interpretations and will grant insights into diverse aspects of Romantic and Victorian literature and culture.