The Double in Mary Shelley‘s "Frankenstein, or the Modern Prometheus" and Robert Louis Stevenson‘s "The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde"

Studienarbeit aus dem Jahr 2003 im Fachbereich Anglistik - Literatur, Note: 2,3, Universität Trier (Fachbereich II Anglistik), Veranstaltung: The Gothic Novel, Sprache: Deutsch, Abstract: "The voices only speak to me - that‘s why you are jealous". This joke mocks someone hearing voices. In the modern world this circumstance is considered an illness which can be cured. However in former times, in the middle ages or even in the 19th century the people feared doubles or doppelgänger. In literature the motif of the double can be traced back to authors like Sophocles in the ancient Greece, who wrote Oedipus Rex in which he "raises the question of the extent to which Man can be entirely accountable for his actions since because of his human aspect he is here, while, at the same time, because of his superhuman aspect he is elsewhere". During the ages the double changed and evolved. Finally in the 19th century two great novels entered the world of literature with the effect of changing that world forever: Mary Shelley wrote her novel Frankenstein, or the Modern Prometheus which "has retained an undying international fame which places it in a class apart from its bloodcurdling contemporaries" . Later in that century Robert Louis Stevenson published his novel The Strange Case of Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde which deals with a similar problem - the problem of the double. Those novels brought up many followers and imitators and eventually the genre of science-fiction . At first this paper tries to give some information on the authors and their works. However its core is to describe the motif of the doppelgänger in both - Frankenstein and Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde - by discussing them separately and later by comparing them. The main sources which helped writing this assignment were Intimations of ambiguity by Juliane Forssmann and the two essays on the double in the Companion to literary Myths, Heroes and Archetypes, edited by Pierre Brunel and in Elisabeth Frenzel‘s Motive der Weltliteratur.