The Manifestation of the Double in the 19th-century Literature

Abstract

The split of the self and the many inexplicable habits of the personality urged several authors to depict them in literature. Edgar Allan Poe’s William Wilson, Fyodor Michailovich Dostoyevsky’s The Double or E.T.A. Hoffmann’s The Devil’s Elixirs present different manifestations of the characters’ double self. These works also examine how the repressed desires come to the surface due to the double’s appearance. This paper will explore the main causes of a split self in these three texts, the way in which the characters’ personality develops according to the existence of the double and the influence that it has upon the individual.