New Approaches to the Doppelganger in Literature and Culture

New Approaches to the Doppelganger in Literature and Culture addresses the pressing questions of our cultural moment about the very nature of reality. How can we grapple with rapid developments in the power of artificial intelligence (AI) to impersonate, simulate, and replicate personal identities and virtual images? How do new technologies both reflect and distort our sense of our own unique identities? In what ways do we see ourselves represented in literature, film, and other media? These questions are at the heart of this collection of essays about the doppelganger—as a figure and a concept that prompts us to reconsider what makes us human.

This collection locates the historical and aesthetic foundations of the doppelganger in the Narcissus myth and traces the figure's uncanny power to represent both identity schisms and duplications. It provides a series of essays on the following: foundational doppelgangers in Medieval poetry and early film, concepts of doubling in celebrity and author representations, cinematic erasure and reclamation of identity, and the doppelganger in popular culture. How would you approach an encounter with your doppelganger: with dread, anticipation, or something else? How about your data doppelgangers, those digital versions of yourself created by you or by an algorithm?

This volume presents chapters from a variety of scholars analyzing the doppelganger in literature and film in order to examine the figure's contributions to our understandings of contemporary authorship, culture, media, political discourse, and technology.