Wilson 1. Wilson 2: Observation on a Poe Scholars’ Obsession
- Issue:
- УДК / UDK: 82-1
- DOI:
- EDN:
- Funding Sources:
The research was supported by St. Petersburg State University, grant 123042000103-6 [M1_2020_5].
- Abstract:
The paper offers a new interpretation of one of the most famous ambiguous doppelganger pieces in world literature, E.A. Poe’s “William Wilson” (1839) the inconsistencies of which are notorious. Those are generally attributed to Poe’s “unreliable narrator.” Poe’s tale is set aside in the article with another, equally well-known doppelganger text, to “The Jolly Corner” (1901) by Henry James. The comparative study aims at highlighting the difference in the two writers’ approaches to building up ambiguity and, consequently, the difference in the reader’s reception of these texts. The numerous explanations of “William Wilson,” previously suggested in Poe’s scholarship, — as a moralizing parable, a study in psychopathology, a story of twins, a dream narrative, etc. — tend to ignore the inconsistences. Paradoxically, the tale presents a special challenge to Poe scholars rather than to the ‘naïve’ readership. Knowing his aesthetic theory of the “unity of effect,” one cannot help but suspect that all the paradoxes of “William Wilson,” its carefully placed logical traps were predetermined. The paper employs the instruments of Gestalt-psychology and methods of cognitive literary criticism to provide a new reading of Poe's novella as a case-study of cognitive dissonance. In such an interpretation, the inconsistencies of “William Wilson” turn out to be paradoxically effective.
- Keywords: doppelganger, American short story, E.A. Poe, fascination, dream narrative, Gestalt-Psychology, cognitive dissonance, cognitive literary science.
- For citation:
Golovacheva, Irina. “Wilson 1. Wilson 2: Observation on a Poe Scholars’ Obsession.” Literature of the Americas, no. 17 (2024): 51–66. https://doi.org/10.22455/2541-7894-2024-17-51-66
- References:
Bate 1998 — Bate, Nancy Berkowitz. “I Think, but Am Not: The Nightmare of William Wilson.” Poe Studies 31, no. 1–2 (1998): 1–53.
Baumbach 2015 — Baumbach, Sibylle. Literature and Fascination. New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2015.
Brooks 2010 — Brooks, David. “Ambiguity, the Literary, and Close Reading.” Comparative Literature and Culture 12.4 (2010Wilson.”17). Thematic Issue, Ambiguity in Culture and Literature, edited by Paolo Bartoloni, and Anthony Stephens. Article 9. https://docs.lib.purdue.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1677&context=clcweb
Cave 2016 — Cave, Terence. Thinking with Literature: Towards a Cognitive Criticism. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2016.
Dennett 1981 — Dennett, Daniel. “Are Dreams Experiences?” In: Brainstorms: Philosophical Essays on Mind and Psychology, edited by Daniel C. Dennett, 129–148. Harvester Press, 1981.
Festinger 1957 — Festinger, Leon. A Theory of Cognitive Dissonance. Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 1957.
Golovacheva 2024 — Golovacheva, Irina V. “Amerikanskii dvoinik / amerikanskii psikhopat v tvorcheskom tupike” [“American Double / American Psycho and the Writer’s Block”]. Literatura dvukh Amerik, no. 16 (2024): 147–168. (In Russ.)
Golovacheva 2021 — Golovacheva, Irina. “From Poe to James via Dostoevsky: Doppelgangers in American and Russian Short Story.” In: Connection and Influence in the Russian and American Short Story, edited by Jeff Birkenstein and Robert Hauthart, 35–46. Lanham, (Maryland): Lexington Books, 2021.
Golovacheva 2018 — Golovacheva, Irina. “In Search of the Doppelganger: Homecoming from Exile.” In: European Writers in Exile, edited by Robert C. Hauhart and Jeff Birkenstein, 169–185. Lanham, (Maryland): Lexington Books, 2018.
Golovacheva, Udalova 2020 — Golovacheva, Irina V., Udalova, Svetlana. Iu. “O retransliatsii dvoistvennosti: k novym pere-perevodam dvukh novell Edgara Po” [“Retranslating Ambiguity: on the New Translations of Two Tales by E.A. Poe”]. Literatura dvukh Amerik, no. 8 (2020): 435–462. (In Russ.)
Hoffman 1972 — Hoffman, Daniel. Poe Poe Poe Poe Poe Poe Poe. Garden City (N.Y.): Doubleday, 1972.
Kukkonen 2017 — Kukkonen, Karin. “Fantastic Cognition.” In: Cognitive Literary Science: Dialogues between Literature and Cognition, edited by Michael
Burke and Emily T. Troscianko, 151–168. New York: Oxford University Press, 2017.
Langmade 2012 — Langmade, Lynn. “The Wilson Duplex: Corporatism and the Problem of Singleton Reading in Poe’s ‘William Wilson,’ (or Why Can’t You See Twins?)” Poe Studies: History, Theory, Interpretation, no. 45, (October 2012): 5–39.
Moores 2006 — Moores, D.J. “‘Oh Gigantic Paradox’: Poe's ‘William Wilson’ and the Jungian Self.” The Edgar Allan Poe Review 7, no. 1 (2006): 31–48.
Osipova 2004 — Osipova, Elvira F. Zagadki Edgara Po. Issledovaniia i kommentarii [The Puzzles of Edgar Allan Poe: Studies and Commentaries]. St. Petersburg: Filologicheskii fakul'tet SpbGU Publ., 2004. (In Russ.)
Penrose, Penrose 1958 — Penrose, Lionel, and Roger Penrose. “Impossible Objects: A Special Type of Visual Illusion.” British Journal of Psychology, no. 49 (1958): 31–33.
Petrovsky 2010 — Petrovsky, Vadim A. “Sushchestvuet li Ia — sub'ekt poznaniia?” [“Does ‘I’ Exist as Subject of Cognition, Will and Feelings?”]. Metodologiia i istoriia psikhologii, no. 1 (2010): 136–148. (In Russ.)
Petrovsky 2023 — Petrovsky, Vadim A. “O statuse ‘Ia’ v kul'turnodeiatel'nostnom diskurse” [“The ‘I’ Status in the Cultural and Activity Discourse”]. Kul'turno-istoricheskaia psikhologiia 19, no. 1 (2023): 35–40. (In Russ.)
Prorokova 2019 — Prorokova, Tatiana. “The Doppelganger, Psychology, and Poe.” In: Psychology in Edgar Allan Poe, edited by Gerardo Del Guercio, 10–120. Berlin: Logos Verlag, 2019.
Rimmon-Kenan 1977 — Rimmon-Kenan, Shlomith. The Concept of Ambiguity: The Example of James. Chicago and London: University of Chicago Press, 1977.
Savoy 2013 — Savoy, Eric. “The Narrative Poetics of La Reprise.” In Henry James and the Poetics of Duplicity, edited by Dennis Tredy, Annick Duperray and Adrian Harding, 103–110. Cambridge Scholars Publishing, Newcastle upon Tyne, 2013.
Sullivan 1976 — Sullivan, Ruth. “Wilson's Double.” Studies in Romanticism 15, no. 2 (1976): 253–263.
Unreliable Narration and Trustworthiness 2015 — Unreliable Narration and Trustworthiness: Intermedial and Interdisciplinary Perspectives. Edited by Vera Nünning. Berlin, München, Boston: De Gruyter, 2015.
Urakova 2009 —Urakova, Alexandra. Poetika tela v rasskazakh Edgara Po [The Poetics of the Body in Edgar Allan Poe's Short Stories]. Moscow: IWL RAS Publ., 2009. (In Russ.)
Van Krieken 2018 — Van Krieken, Kobie. “Ambiguous Perspective in Narrative Discourse: Effects of Viewpoint Markers and Verb Tense on Readers’ Interpretation of Represented Perceptions.” Discourse Processes 55, no. 8 (2018): 771–786.
Walsh 2010 — Walsh, Richard. “Dreaming and Narrative Theory.” In: Toward a Cognitive Theory of Narrative Acts: Cognitive Approaches to Literature and Culture, edited by Frederick Luis Aldama, 141–158. Austin: University of Texas Press, 2010.
Wanlin 2018 —Wanlin, Li. “Ambiguity as Aesthetic Strategy: Edgar Allan Poe's Ambitions for the American Short Story.” Journal of Narrative Theory 48, no. 2 (2018): 164–193.