Der Doppelgänger und sein Name

Abstract

The motif of the doppelgänger has been present in literature and the visual arts, but also, more or less concealed, in music, from classical antiquity until today and may manifest itself in the most various forms, dependent on genre, epoch, and culture. This has led criticism to consider the motif of the doppelgänger as a genre in its own right and to propose, especially during the last years, numerous classifications of the ways in which this psychological and anthropological phenomenon is treated in the arts. In the present study I have concentrated my attention on creations in which the doppelgänger represents the disturbing aspects of the hero’s ego. This motif was especially prominent in German late romanticism and has considerably spread during the last decades in cinematography and in fantastic literature. Though there exists a large amount of criticism on the motif of the doppelgänger, what has hardly been analyzed up to now is the role of the characters’ and their doppelgängers’ names. Therefore the aim of my study was to exemplify by means of numerous examples from antiquity until present times the role the proper name has played in literature and other arts dedicated to the theme of the doppelgänger.