The Poetics of Shadows: The Double in Literature and Philosophy

The essays in this collection attest to the richness of the double motif in literature and philosophy. Veering away from predominantly psychoanalytical readings of narratives which foreground the double (or doppelganger), which have formed the basis of much scholarly discussions of this motif, the contributions in this volume privilege divergent philosophical leanings - ranging from Rousseau to Kierkegaard, from Christian philosophy to Eastern mysticism - to elicit the layered nuances and signifiers of this elusive motif. Narratives interrogated in this collection include the works of Dickens, Blanchot, Edmund Jabs, Orhan Pamuk, Chuck Palahniuk and Don Delillo, among others.