Doppio o quasi doppio: nome, storia, rappresentazione in Poe, Melville, Delillo

Abstract

The essay focuses on the affective component of personal names in three representative literary texts: E.A. Poe’s William Wilson, Herman Melville’s Moby-Dick, and Don DeLillo’s Underworld. It argues that the authors’ choice of names, and the way they play with artistic doubling, is functional to both their exploration of individual and national identity, and their representation of historical and cultural transformations in the United States.