The Double and the Other: Identity As Ideology in Post-Romantic Fiction

164 Pages·1988·16.324 MB·English

by  Paul Coates (auth.)

THE DOUBLE AND THE OTHER
Also by Paul Coates
*THE REALIST FANTASY: Fiction and Reality since Clarissa
THE STORY OF THE LOST REFLECTION: The Alienation of the
Image in Western and Polish Cinema
*WORDS AFTER SPEECH: A Comparative Study of Romanticism
and Symbolism
IDENTYCZNOSC I NIEIDENTYCZNOSC W TWORCZOSCI
BOLES£AWA LESMIANA
*Published by Palgrave Macmillan
The Double and the
Other
Identity as Ideology in Post-Romantic
Fiction
PAUL COATES
Assistant Professor of English
McGill University, Montreal
M
MACMILLAN
PRESS
© Paul Coates 1988
Softcover reprint of the hardcover 1st edition 1988978-0-333-44591-4
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First published 1988
Published by
THE MACMILLAN PRESS LTD
Houndmills, Basingstoke, Hampshire RG21 2XS
and London
Companies and representatives
throughout the world
British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data
Coates, Paul
The double and the other: identity as
ideology in post-romantic fiction.
1. Fiction-History and criticism
I. Title
809.3'034 PN3499
ISBN 978-1-349-19455-1 ISBN 978-1-349-19453-7 (eBook)
DOI 10.1007/978-1-349-19453-7
For Anna
What is unique about the 'I' hides itself exactly in
what is unimaginable about a person.
Milan Kundera
Without exception, men have yet to become
themselves.
T. W. Adorno
Contents
Preface xi
Introduction 1
Theses on the Double and the Other 1
Writing and Ideology: the Imagination of the
Divided Self 5
1 Notes on Imagination and the Novel 7
On Imagination and Negation 7
Visions of the Mind's Eye: Imagination and
Visualisation 15
Conjugations of the Present Tense: on Lyric and
Narrative Time 24
The Double Beginning 30
2 The Double and the Other 32
The Rise and Fall of the Double 32
E. T. A. Hoffmann: the Double and the Disowned
Life 35
De Quincey: Self-definition by Negation 36
The Double and the World of Light (Frankenstein) 38
Twin and Twain: the Dual Textuality of
Pudd'nhead Wilson 45
The A voidance of the Double 50
The Double and the Doll 58
Appendix I The Double as the Second Person:
Tadeusz Konwicki 65
vii
viii Contents
Appendix II A World of Doubles: Invasion of the
Body Snatchers 66
3 Joseph Conrad and the Imagination of the Fin de
Siecle 69
Introduction 69
The Adjectival Style in the Fin de Siecle 70
The Fetish of the (Newspaper) Leader 72
The Malaise of Male Authority 77
The World Elsewhere 79
Discontinuous Identity 80
The Fetish Form of Narration 83
Reading Russian Characters 84
The Detached Retina 87
The Ideology of the Image: Conrad and Cinema 89
Writing and the Blackened Page 92
Concentric Circles 97
4 In the Realm of Transformation 102
Introduction 102
Hysterical Transformation: the Work of E. T. A.
Hoffman 103
Resentment and the Fear of Transformation:
Notes from Underground 107
The Masquerade of Herman Melville 111
La Bete Humaine: some Reflections on Lawrence's
'The Fox' 116
Night and Jubilee in Villette and 'A Nocturnal
Reverie' 122
Transformation and Oblivion: Bruno Schulz and
Franz Kafka 127
Contents ix
5 The Fiction of Central Europe 131
Introduction 131
The· Pathos of the Ephemeral: Milan Kundera 131
Hofmannsthal and Kusniewicz: the Soldier-
Aesthetes of the Austro-Hungarian Army 136
Bibliography 147
Index 150