The Doppelgï¿1/2nger: Double Visions in German Literature [Hardcover]

Andrew J. Webber (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: July 18, 1996 | ISBN-10: 0198159048 | ISBN-13: 978-0198159049

Ever since its literary coinage in Jean Paul's novel, Siebenk� (1796), the concept of Doppelg�nger has had significant influence upon representations of the self in German literature. This study charts the development of the double from its origins in the Romantic period, through its more marginal, but nonetheless significant, manifestations in the post-Romantic culture, to its revival at the fin-de-si�cle and transfer to the silent screen.

Editorial Reviews

Review

"...the book is a significant contribution to the Doppelganger scholarship and an invaluable source of bibliographical information on the topic"--Heide Witthoft, Virginia Polytechnic Institute and State University

About the Author

Andrew J. Webber is at Churchill College, Cambridge.

Product Details

• Hardcover: 392 pages
• Publisher: Oxford University Press, USA (July 18, 1996)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0198159048
• ISBN-13: 978-0198159049
• Product Dimensions: 8.5 x 5.5 x 1.3 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.2 pounds (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 2.0 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (1 customer review)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #3,994,137 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

4 of 7 people found the following review helpful:

2.0 out of 5 stars Disappointing doubles, May 16, 2001

By 

Pat Lamken (San Francisco, CA United States) - See all my reviews

This review is from: The Doppelgï¿1/2nger: Double Visions in German Literature (Hardcover)

The idea here is intriguing, but runs into difficulties immediately. To start with, English-speaking readers need to be warned that this book is incomphrensible without access to the original texts, some of which are unavailable in translation. (He does get a bonus point here for his attention to G.H. Schubert.) In an academic book, however, this can't really be held against him. But there are more serious problems. The book is not really a unit in itself, but chapters which were apparently originally published as separate articles - an introduction, Jean-Paul, E.T.A. Hoffmann, Kleist then a jump forward to the end of the century and chapters on the novelle (short story) and on post-war modernism in the 1920s. To do so, he stretches the concept of the "doppelganger" out of its literal meaning as a double of a living human (now more usually referred to as astral projection or bilocation) through "split" personalities, schizoid or multiple, into ghosts and nightmares, and then into all types of "realistic" doubles - characters with parallel lives, role models, stream of consciousness, and thereby diluting his point. He is, alas, an academic addicted to jargon, worse yet, a Freudian, and worst of all, a Lacanian. The combination ends up as a book chasing its own tail - or a more Freudian part of the anatomy.