Ever since its literary coinage in Jean Paul's novel, Siebenkas (1796), the concept of the Doppelganger has had a significant influence upon representations of the self in German literature. This study charts the development of the double from its hey-day in the Romantic period, through its more marginalbut nonetheless significant - manifestations in post-Romantic culture, to its revival at the fin-de-siecle and transfer to the silent screen.

The book features an introduction to the various practices and theories of the Doppelganger, with particular reference to psychoanalysis, followed by chapters on Jean Paul, Hoffmann, Kleist, Poetic Realism (Droste-Hulshoff, Keller, Storm) and Modernism (Kafka, Rilke, Hofmannsthal, Schnitzler, Meyrink, Werfel).

Focusing in particular on the effects of the double in the fields of vision and language, this study shows that this often underestimated figure may provide a model for the epistemological, aesthetic and psychosexual structures of the texts it visits and revisits.