The Double in Literature
Plato (B.C. 427-347)
The Republic, Book VII* (by b.c. 387)
E.T.A. Hoffmann (1776-1822)
“The Golden Flower Pot ” (1814)
“A New Year’s Eve Adventure ” (1814)
Hans Christian Andersen (1805-1875)
“The Shadow “*
“The Little Mermaid”*
Mary Shelley (1797-1851), Frankenstein (1817)
Nikolai Gogol (1809-1852)
“Nevsky Prospect ” (1835)
“The Nose ” (1836)*
Edgar Allen Poe (1809-1849)
“William Wilson ” (1839)*
Fyodor Dostoevsky (1821-1881), The Double (1845)
R.L.Stevenson (1850-1894), Dr. Jekyl and Mr. Hyde (1886)
Oscar Wilde (1854-1900), The Picture of Dorian Gray (1891)
Vladimir Nabokov (1899-1977)
Despair (1936)
The Real Life of Sebastian Knight (1938)
Lolita (1955)
Curtis Bernhardt (dir.)
A Stolen Life (film) (1946)
Background Reading
F.W.J. von Schelling, The System of Transcendental Idealism (1800)* (1775-1854), Part six
Geoffrey Hartman, “Romanticism and Anti-self-consciousness “* (1970)
Alfred Bem, “The Nose and The Double “
Priscilla Meyer, “Black and Violet Words: Despair and The Real Life of Sebastian Knight ” (e-mail)
There will be three 4-page papers and a final project, as well as regular class work (presentations, close readings, short jottings)