THE AVATAR IN PANAMA - Theses - Flinders University

Introducing the Double:The Seductive ParadoxIntroducing the Double: The Seductive Paradox! Ay, terrible tortura la de nacer doble! ¡De no ser siempre uno y el mismo!Miguel de UnamunoThe dark side of nature, psychology, and multiple personalityhave remained ever fascinating. In the literary field elements of thesemay combine to contribute to the literary device known as derdoppelgänger now more commonly referred to as the double. From itsearliest historical origins as soul, reflection, and shadow, to the selfwhich adopts another identity when speaking a second language, thedouble is as much a product of today as it was centuries ago. Thedouble, nevertheless, is no longer what it used to be and “isembarrassingly vague, as used in literary criticism. It need not implyautoscopic hallucination, or even close physical resemblance”, saysAlbert J. Guerard, in a quote from 1967 often repeated whenpropounding the difficulties in defining the device. When the term‘double’ is mentioned it seems there is either a wide-ranging lack ofawareness of its significance or a nebulous notion of what it may beeven if it still seems to defy a clear-cut definition.The double is the embodiment of paradox; both two and one,same and different, independent yet symbiotic. It is enticing in that itprovokes a curiosity of both fear and welcoming, omen and presage,and has been seduced onto the pages of world literature, folklore,supernatural phenomena, and psychiatry. This ubiquitous doublesuggests a threat to the continuity of the self and an anxiety with theideal of personal identity and existence; if there are two of me whichone is really me? This has become the basic premise of literature in thisfield. Guerard states that “the experience of encountering a double isindeed uncanny: a response not merely to strangeness but tofamiliarity. For the double had once been within ourselves”. 1Originally the double’s purpose in literature was to function as acomic device or to create an atmosphere conducive to mistaken identityin order to explain away a loose end in the plot. The modern andexperimental movements exploited advances in the variouspsychologies of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries to exploit the‘stranger within’ as a double in the form of man’s dark and beastly side.As the zeitgeist changed, the double then came to embody unconsciousdesire in the form of a projected second self.As the Gothic tradition is hardly represented in Spain, Portugaland therefore Latin America, one must turn to Europe where the idea of1 Albert J. Guerard. ed. Stories of the Double (Philadelphia: J.B. Lippincott, 1967) 3-4.1