POE AND CORTÁZAR: THE MOTIF OF THE DOUBLE.

Abstract

This article presents a comparative study of the narrative works of Edgar Allan Poe and Julio Cortázar through an analysis of the motif of the double as a central axis of fantastic literature. Using a critical-literary and intertextual approach, the author examines how both writers articulate the splitting of personality as an expression of inner conflict, tensions between reason and intuition, and questions concerning modern subjectivity. The study situates Poe’s poetics within European Romanticism and the Gothic tradition, emphasizing his decisive influence on the development of the modern short story and his impact on Cortázar’s work, who assimilates and re-signifies these elements within the context of twentieth-century Latin American literature. Through the analysis of paradigmatic tales such as William Wilson and A Yellow Flower, the article demonstrates how the double operates as an unsettling figure that confronts the character with destiny, guilt, and the unconscious, generating experiences of estrangement and terror. While in Poe the double often embodies moral threat and tragic condemnation, in Cortázar it acquires playful, existential, and metaphysical nuances related to notions of eternal return and the disruption of linear temporality. The article concludes that the motif of the double constitutes a shared structural element that reveals both continuity and transformation within fantastic literature across these traditions.