William Wilson
A short story by Edgar Allan Poe, first published in 1839, about a man pursued by a double who shares his name and can imitate his voice.
Doppelgänger: A double or counterpart who resembles a person, often appearing as an uncanny or threatening figure. The narrator’s pursuer embodies the story’s central double motif.
Edgar Allan Poe: An American writer and critic known for poetry, tales of mystery, and Gothic fiction. Poe wrote the story and shaped its themes of guilt and divided identity.
Identity: The traits, memories, and relations through which a person is understood as the same individual over time. The story asks whether the narrator can remain himself while denying his double’s claims.
The Tell-Tale Heart: An 1843 short story by Edgar Allan Poe in which a narrator insists on sanity while confessing murder. Like William Wilson, it makes a first-person confession reveal psychological instability.
Unreliable narrator: A narrator whose account cannot be fully trusted because of limited knowledge, bias, deception, or instability. The narrator’s self-justifying account leaves his claims open to doubt.
The Gift: A Christmas and New Year's Present for 1840: An annual literary gift book published in the United States for the 1840 season. The story first appeared in this Philadelphia gift annual in 1839.
Moral responsibility: The condition of being answerable for actions and their consequences. The double’s interventions make the narrator’s responsibility harder to evade.
The Black Cat: An 1843 short story by Edgar Allan Poe about a murderer whose crimes are exposed through uncanny events. It shares the story’s blend of guilt, unreliable confession, and Gothic dread.
Gothic fiction: A mode of fiction that uses dread, transgression, and uncanny settings or events to unsettle its audience. Poe frames the pursuit through the Gothic tradition’s atmosphere of dread.
The Corsair: A narrative poem by Lord Byron, published in 1814, about the outlaw Conrad. Poe’s story quotes Byron’s poem as an epigraph, invoking its themes of isolation and guilt.