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- Title
Self-Impersonation in World Literature.
- Authors
Doniger, Wendy
- Abstract
Presents literary criticism which discusses the existence of self-impersonation in world literature. The recognition of sad, sometimes tragic, human truths is what fuels the constant recreation of the often happier fantasies of self-impersonation. The literature of self-imitation demonstrates that this is a basic human way of negotiating reality, illusion, identity and authenticity. People masquerade as themselves all the time. The mythology of self-imitation stretches from ancient India to Hollywood and prevails in real life as well as in fiction, which is sometimes contrary to public opinion. Through a kind of triple-cross or switchback, a person pretends to be someone else pretending to be precisely what he or she is. In Mark Twain's "The Prince and the Pauper," the prince's friends, thinking that he is a mad pauper, pretends that he is the king, to tease or humor him, but he really is the king. The Hindu god Krishna, pretending to be a human cow-herd, teases the naked cow-herd girls by making them pretend that he is a god and forcing them to worship him by raising their cupped heads in a gesture that reveres the god and lets the naughty boy see their nakedness. In Kleist's play, the god Jupiter impersonates Amphitryon wife Alemena in the course of his double talk.
- Subjects
IMPORTANCE of Being Earnest, The (Play : Wilde); PRINCE &; the Pauper, The (Book : Twain); IMPERSONATION; HUMANITIES; AMPHITRYON (Greek mythology)
- Publication
Kenyon Review, 2004, Vol 26, Issue 2, p101
- ISSN
0163-075X
- Publication type
Literary Criticism