Coriolanus: The Unheimliche Doppelgänger, The Uncanny and The Double Coriolanus: Tekinsiz

This paper attempts at a reading of Coriolanus , one of the four Roman plays by Shakespeare, within a theoretical framework drawn upon Freudian psychoanalysis, focused on the concept of unheimliche doppelganger. This reading mainly reflects on the protagonist Coriolanus, the relationship he has with the rest of the gentry, pleabians, his family and his opponent causing the tragic downfall of this great warrior, what triggered it and his personal reaction to it. This study discusses how Coriolanus’ self-perception as a noble, proud soldier within his world bears uncanny elements when he is presented ‘a new world’ –being a consul. The fact that he identifies himself with his rival Aufidius the Volscian soldier as his mirrored self-image creates a double uncanniness. By drawing on both classical and contemporary perspectives, the argument which is put forward is elaborated on with the insight into self-dividedness, projection and reflection of one’s self; the double self as both the source and the product of the unfamiliar in the familiar.


Introduction
In 'Hamlet and His Problems' T.S Eliot (1928) compares Coriolanus to Hamlet and states that "Coriolanus may not be as 'interesting' as Hamlet, but it is, along with Antony and Cleopatra, Shakespeare's most assured artistic success.In his unfinished poem 'Coriolan', Eliot depicts an emotionally 'broken Coriolanus' who is incomplete and fragmented (Day, 2006).The theme of fragmentation has been studied much on the play's body politics, its protagonist and the relationship he has with his mother-the magnificent Volumnia-from Garber's viewpoint (2005) 'a stage mother to end all stage mothers'.About the play Garber also adds that the play reads today as, among many other things, a brilliant primer on the grooming of a candidate for high public office-complete with handlers, coaches, strategists.… Like all Shakespearean plays, Coriolanus tells several different kinds of stories at once, depending upon which set of characters and issues is placed in the foreground.(p. 169) The play on the tragedy of this great warrior who loves his city and fights for it, declared an enemy to its people, a traitor, and banished from it has been of interest among many scholars and critics for years.Maurice Hunt (1991) compares Coriolanus to Othello; mainly the two great fallen soldiers and their alteregos in these two tragedies.For Hunt, Coriolanus and Aufidius share an aspect of 'complementarity' with Othello and Iago constituting 'a single psychological entity or decomposed parts of a single self'.Stanley Cavell (2003), however, suggests that the play lends itself on to not only psychoanalytical but also political readings both of which share the concept of hunger, starvation and food; who the food is produced by, how it is distributed and paid for.From a psychoanalytical perspective the play directs us to an interest in the development of Coriolanus' character (p. 196).
With its language of food, hunger, starvation throughout the play, in his article 'Who does the wolf love?' Cavell (1983) makes connections to Coriolanus' starvation and hunger for desire; identifying him as 'a Narcissus for whom what is longed for is someone longing, who figures beauty as longing'.Feeding his own starvation leads Coriolanus' consumption by his hunger for desiring and craving.In Cavell's view, Coriolanus does not acknowledge his situation with the plebeians, as though he was trapped by an uncontrollable disdain; however, he responds to his situation with himself, just as a Narcissus.He cannot express his desire, in fact, he cannot speak at all.Similarly, it is not that he will not ask for what he wants, but rather that he can want nothing that he asks, which is Coriolanus' paradox.
This dilemma he is in strengthens his position in being neither or both, there or here.He is trapped in between his public self and private self, what the plebians, the patricians and his mother desires and what he desires.Clearly, this in-betweenness, being split inside and as a matter of fact outside too can be traced back to the Platonic view on self-dividedness.Humans, once sphere-like-shaped creatures complete as a whole, were split into two looking for its other half for the rest of their lives.Human life is the quest for our other halves (Withy, 2015, p. 102).
A similar kind of idea that human life is a quest and it is this mission, this telos in Aristotelian terms, that gives its meaning, shapes it and whatever action we take.When this telos becomes impossible, we can no longer perform.Life is organized for the sake of this goal and if it is undermined, life breaks down (Withy, 2015, p. 63).Further, in the Heideggerian terms Dasein strives for being.If this goal is what holds together one's world, then the breakdown is world-collapse, as well as the very 'death' of those living in that world.On the one hand, it is a kind of breakdown, at a personal level; a breakdown in one's personality, one's personal identity caused by the withdrawal of the goal which makes up the whole identity.When this goal becomes practically impossible, then life becomes unlivable.The world stops to hang together intelligibly.That is, one dies as the kind of person (s)he is.On the other hand, the breakdown of life is not only describing things that have lost their intelligibility and become unfamiliar and strange, or describing how we feel in a situation.It is not simply our feeling of lacking a secure and stable home in the world.It is the uncanniness that we find within ourselves 'when we have a genuine insight into what we are' (Withy, 2015, p. 69).
When Coriolanus is seeking for 'a new world elsewhere ' (3.3.134) it is this uncanniness that drives him in his inner self.Nicholas Royle, being a double himself with another Nicholas Royle, sharing both his name and profession claims (2003) that '(t)he uncanny … has to do with a sense of ourselves as double, split, at odds with ourselves (p.6)', … it is 'being after oneself… it is the experience of something duplicitous, diplopic, being double (p.16)'.This double vision is what makes it a vicious interchange of the self as being both the pursued and pursuer.As Julia Kristeva (1991) states, when we confront the foreigner we reject and but at the same time we identify, we lose boundaries; we are left without a container, the memory of experiences when we have been abandoned overwhelm us and we lose composure.We feel 'lost', 'indistinct' and 'hazy'.Uncanny, foreignness is within us: we are our own foreigners, we are divided.(p.187) Kristeva (1991) in Stranger to Ourselves looks into the origins of the word 'uncanny' and uses the German equivalent.'Heimlich' and its antonym 'unheimlich' where the negative meaning is already tied to the positive term 'heimlich', "friendly, comfortable, concealed, kept from sight," "deceitful","behind someone's back."Thus, in the very word the familiar and intimate are reversed into their opposites, brought together with the contrary meaning of "uncanny strangeness" harboured in 'unheimlich'.The uncanny is what leads back to something that is known of old and long (p.182).This uncanny is nothing new or alien, on the contrary, it is something familiar and old-established in the mind but has become alienated from it (p.184).
Evidently, the concepts of doppelganger and unheimlich are inseparable and coexistent; being the source and the product of one another.In Coriolanus, the struggle stems primarily from the inability to present oneself as something other than what is believed, consequently what is once familiar becomes unfamiliar, hence the strangeness, foreignness within.Coriolanus is aware of himself as manly and virtuous.He belongs with the gentry, wisdom.He is the one with the title.From his perspective, he cannot be objected to 'the yeas and nos of the general ignorance ' (3.1.146-147);the plebians.He is 'the fundamental part of the state' (3.1.152)and the common people are a threat to the integrity of the state.From the pleabians' view, however, he is the one who is a threat, a traitor.Sufferring from the uncanniness within, Coriolanus identifies with Aufidius, a great soldier, who is the only man Coriolanus does not feel separated from.He considers Aufidius as his equal and he believes that Aufidius possesses the same type of manliness that he measures all men by.Coriolanus' struggle with his sense of self and his feeling that Aufidius is an equal makes their relationship that of a mirror.Aufidius is the only man in which Coriolanus can recognize himself (Runyan, 2015).They are two sides of a coin forming the totality of a single persona (Pizer, 1998).They are the unheimlich doppelgänger.
In order to further discuss this uncanniness and the doubleness projected through the relationship of the protoganist with the gentry, pleabians, his family and his rival leading to his tragic downfall as well as his shattered self-perception as a noble, proud soldier within his world and his self-recognition with his mirrored self-image, the study first explores what the concept of doppelgänger is, its characteristic elements that are explained within the scope of psycholanalysis and within ancient traditions such as Greek and Roman whose examples can be pursued in the play.After that, the study continues to look into what the concept of unheimlich is according to Freud and some other literary critics based on their readings of Freud's essay Das Unheimlich.Finally, the study links the two concepts with the play offering examples and quotes from it to actualize its aim.

The Concept of Doppelgänger
This is a German word meaning a look-alike, a double of a living person, an evil twin; doppel is double and ganger is walker /goer (Merriam-Webster, n.d.).Otto Rank (1971) -a psychoanalyst who is a close friend and a colleague of Freud's-argues that the double emerges as 'man's eternal conflict with himself and others, the struggle between his need for likeness and his desire for difference.This conflict is innate in every human to be apporoved, but also to be actualized and recognized as a one's own self, which leads to the creation of a spiritual double.The concept of the soul as a duality appears in modern man as the double.This is what assures his immortality, as well as his death."Double-soul" embodies both the mortal and the immortal self of the man.This uncanny double is an independent and visible rupture of the ego; a shadow, a reflection.Therefore, the life of the double is closely linked to that of the individual himself (pp.12-17).
Moreover, making a close link between the myth of the Narcissus to the concept of double, Rank (1971) suggests its meaning by its nature is not alien to the motif of the double.This observation is shown not simply from the cited mythological traditions of creation by self-reflection, but above all by the Narcissus theme itself.It appears in the problems of both physical alikeness depending on familial connections or a bond as well as with death, fear and love / hate of the double (p.70).
In the Narcissus legend there is a version which reports a handsome youth believing that he saw his beloved twin sister (his sweetheart) in the water.Besides the narcissistic fascination, and the association to death there is the sign of a deep relationship of both complexes.The twins representing the two different ends of the psychological spectrum, the binary oppositions to some length symbolize in a way the duality of the soul.It is precisely this extremity of contrasts that creates a mirrorlike relationship between the two (Pizer,1998, p. 53).
In another myth of divine /mortal twins in ancient Greek and Roman tradition, Castor and Pollux (or Polydeuces) also known as the Dioscuri (son of Zeus) or Tyraniads were the mere embodiment of the mortality and immortality duality.The doubling features of the brothers come from the story of their shared birth with one another, their twin sisters as well as their fathers.Castor and Pollux are the sons of Leda, the Queen of Sparta, and the brothers of the twin sisters Helen and Clytemnestra.Their fathers, however, differed, since Leda was impregnated in the same night by both her husband King Tyndareus and Zeus.The god had visited her in the disguise of a swan, and when Leda came to give birth, it was to two eggs.In one there were the children of Zeus, Pollux and Helen; and in the other there were Tyndareus' offspring, Castor and Clytemnestra.This varying parentage differentiated the brothers.Pollux was immortal, whilst Castor had the frailties of being mortal (Gartrell, 2021, pp. 4-5).
For Gartrell (2021) the fact that they had different fathers might as well bestowed them with different characteristics.It did not weaken their relationship, on the contrary, they were devoted to each other.Their splitedness and disparities were what made them total souls and complete.They grew up together, each specialising in horsetaming and boxing.These horsemen demigods differed in their fates.When Castor had a mortal blow during a fight, and Pollux discovered his dying brother, he begged his father Zeus to allow him to give up his own immortality.That meant having to surrender his place on Olympus for the slightest chance of his brother to live, preferring a mortal life with his twin than to be without him.Zeus agreed, sharing Pollux's immortality between the brothers, and allowed them to divide their afterlives between Olympus and Hades.In the myth of Castor and Pollux, the divinity of the pair lies within this very experience with death and Pollux's willingness to die in the place of his brother.
The twins had various names, corresponding to their various identities, identities so various that the two have often been understood as having separate origins.Edmunds (2016) argues on the dual paternity that the duality of the fathers of twins inevitably leads to the development of Dioscuric traditions in which the twins develop separate, and even opposite, characteristics.This contrast between the twins makes the twin brothers perfect example of an eidōlon, a Greek word for an image-double.The Notion of eidolan or eidola, a shade, a specter, a reflection in water or mirror, is generally attributed to the brothers' twin sister Helen and the controversy that it was her perfect image-double which goes to Troy, but the wife stays behind, in Egypt.In both cases, however, it is the division of the bride into person and image and the movement of the image independently of the person.
The destructive quality of the image-double, the clash of the opposites is often apparent in brothers as the rivals.In the love for the mother, the rivalry towards the hated competitor, the death-wish and the impulse to murder the double becomes understandable (Rank, p. 76).In any case, the distance between the ego-ideal and the reality is nourished by a powerful fear of death.The hero's consciousness of himself causes him to transfer the responsibility for certain deeds of the self to another self, the double; his enourmous fear of death leads to a transference to the double.In order to escape this fear of death, the person resorts to suicide which, however, he carries out on his double, because he loves and esteems his ego so very much.Slaying of the double, through which the hero seeks to protect himself is surely a suicidal act (Rank, 1971, pp. 5-12).
In her reading of Freud's The Uncanny, Cixous suggests 'infantile morbid anxiety' is something many of the human beings can never become free from, therefore, it never disappears, but re-represents itself in 'solitude, silence and darkness'.Unheimlich invents doubles; 'a doll, a hybrid body composed of language and silence' and death' (Freud, Strachey, Cixous & Dennomé, 1976, p. 544).According to Freud (2003), the idea of the 'double (the Doppelgänger), is that one becomes co-owner of the other's knowledge, emotions and experience.Moreover, a person may identify himself with another.Then, he eventually becomes unsure of his true self; or he may substitute the other's self for his own, which results in being duplicated, divided and interchanged (p.220).The double, once an insurance against the mortality becomes the uncanny harbinger of death.As the limitless self-love, narcissism, dominates the mental life of the man, the 'double' becomes something alien.The person failing to recognize this self as a creation of the primitive phase in mental development, a phase that is surmounted, feels unfamiliar to himself (p.222).
In the play Coriolanus, the protagonist's inner conflict, his desire to actualize himself, his selfidentification with his mirrored self, his rival Aufidius, is the embodiment of his double self.Coriolanus and Aufidius, these 'double walkers' follow one another in their footsteps and whereabouts.The two great soldiers share the strong feelings of mutual love and hatred so much that they wish to be the 'vanquisher' of the other (3.1.16).In addition, their twin like relationship can be viewed as not only the representation of mortality and immortality duality but also the destructive hatred towards a 'kindred'competitor, ensuring the tragic death of the protagonist at the end of the play.This will be further discussed along with the concept of 'unheimlich' and instances of direct relevance from the play.

The Concept of Unheimlich
The term unheimlich and its counterpart in English uncanny has been studied by many scholars.It has been defined and explained linguistically, semantically and figuratively as a literary concept.Harold Bloom approaches the concept as a quality of a literary work rather than solely a motive in it.In Bloomian terms it is a 'powerful, self-reflexive model of great writing'.It is the work's uncanniness that makes it canonical or great.Its strangeness is its mode of originality as it either cannot be assimilated or that so assimilates that it is not believed to be strange anymore.That is, when reading a canonical work for the first time, one finds oneself in 'a stranger, an uncanny startlement rather than a fulfilment of expectations'.It gives the feeling to us as if it has been written in 'a foreign yet strangely recognizable language'.In this sense, 'the uncanny is not so much as aspect of psychoanalysis as psychoanalysis is an aspect of uncanny' (as cited in Royle, 2003, p. 14).
In an attempt to understand and explain what unheimlich is many turn to Freud's essay 'Das Unheimlich' which they often have very different responses to, not only at first but also on later readings.The essay about 'the strange' has something strange about its own qualities.On this matter Royle (2003) states: (S)ometimes a passage of a single sentence can appear to open up entirely new worlds of thought.At other times it can seem strangely incoherent curiously repetitive and inconclusive.We may feel on occasion that we are familiar with Freud's text, but then something new and unexpected will shift into focus.There may be a sense of … alteration of a small detail in a well-known Picture that all of a sudden renders the whole Picture strange and uncanny.The uncanny itself seems uncanny in the sense that it keeps doing different things not only to the reader but also somehow to itself.Above all, perhaps, Freud's essay teaches us that the uncanny is 'something one does not know one's way about in.(p.8) Cixous shares the views on Freud's essay as an example of an uncanny writing on its own.The uncertainty, the ambivalence on what uncanny is and is not creates an uncanniness.Also, it gives a feeling the text is written by Freud's double, the essayist not the psychoanalyst.The lexical explanation, reference to different foreign languages constitute a polylinguistic dictionary style in the essay which adds to the work's uncanniness and the unclarity of the word's meaning.The use of the unheimliche is uncertain.The indefiniteness is part of the concept (Freud et al.,1976, pp. 525-530).
Katherine Withy (2015) in her book Heidegger on Being Uncanny starts explaining what uncanny is with a recent example from a relatively modern world of the 70s.Although first uncanny images evoking uncanny feelings used to be ghosts or hauntings, nowadays, we are more likely to talk about humanoid robots because of their resemblance to human in both physical and behavioural sense.Ghosts are considered uncanny because of the ambiguity they possess about the categories they span, belonging to both and neither.On the one hand, a ghost is neither living nor dead, neither past nor present, on the other, it is both living and dead, past and present.
Similarly, it is possible to talk about the uncanniness of a robot or a robotic hand, limb and so on as a technical concept in robotics today.Questioning our sense of affinity, the degree of human likeness, the object shows up as eerie or uncanny rather than familiar and comforting (Withy, 2015, p. 12).What looked real at first sight is actually artificial, then we experience the feeling of uncanniness.We both are and feel uncanny, it is when we feel uncanny that we are exposed to the fact that we are uncanny.This would produce a certain doubling of the uncanny, meaning even the uncanny itself is/has a double.Withy (2015) then continues with Freud' s uncanny and how he objects that not everything unfamiliar or uncertain is for that reason uncanny.It is the interplay of the familiar and unfamiliar, what is once familiar then becomes unfamiliar, both together (p.30).
Additionally, Freud (2003) himself in his book Das Unheimliche gives a long explanation of what uncanny is.He also draws mostly on the German version and shares the dictionary definitions as well as his own interpretation.Heimlich. adj. (sb. -keit, pl. -en): also Heimelich, heimelig, ['belonging to the house, not strange, familiar, tame, dear and intimate, homely, etc.'] ['belonging to the house, to the family, or: regarded as belonging to it, cf.Lat.familiaris, "familiar"], die Heimlichen, 'the members of the household' (Freud, 2003, p 201).'Das Heimliche' is the 'homely', das Unheimliche is then the 'unhomely' the 'uncanny'.What is unhomely bears within what is homely or once have been homely, hence the familiarity in the unfamiliar.'Uncanny is actually nothing new or strange, but something that was long familiar to the psyche and was estranged from it ' (p. 227).
So, what does this mean?What could be something that was once familiar, homely to a person?Freud exemplifies this referring to cases of neurotic men.For them there is something uncanny about the female genitals-a place once they have resided and left, wishing to go back to throughout their lives which is also symbolically a birth / re-birth.To further explain Freud states: What they find uncanny, 'unhomely' is actually the entrance to man's old 'home', the place where everyone once lived.A jocular saying has it that 'love is a longing for home', and if someone dreams of a certain place or a certain landscape and, while dreaming, thinks to himself, 'I know this place, I've been here before', this place can be interpreted as representing his mother's genitals or her womb.Here too, then, the uncanny, the 'unhomely' is what was once familiar, 'homely', 'homey'. (p. 231) Cixous questions what Freud is refering to in the saying Liebe ist Heimweh: Love is a yearning for a country.These questionings are as follows: What country is it?Is it the one that we all come from, where we all once dwelt at the very beginning, the one which we are returning to; where we were born and will die?She claims life itself is a detour, it is a return to home.As we live, we are in fact on the return road to the place we were born and once lived.We recognize its terrain, it is familiar.And yet, it is disquieting.Why?What affirms life asserts death.Living is dying.Where we were born is where we are going to die (Freud et al., 1976, p.544) .
Furthermore, Freud also noted that the archaic, narcissistic self, projects out of itself what it experiences as dangerous or unpleasant in itself.This is the creation of an alien double that is uncanny and demoniacal.In this instance the strange appears as a defence (p.183).It is the encounter with the other that we perceive, but does not match within our consciousness.This other makes us separate, incoherent (p.187).As well as that, the other involves the idea of the double (the Doppelgänger), especially when the appearance of persons is regarded as identical because they look alike.This relationship is intensified by sharing views and feelings so much that one becomes co-owner of the other's knowledge, emotions and experience.Inevitably, a person may identify himself with another and become unsure of his true self; or he may substitute the other's self for his own.The self may thus be duplicated, divided and interchanged (p.220).
As in Coriolanus and Aufidius' case, both of whom are soldiers acting, dressing, hence looking alike, the double may also 'hate alike ' (1.8.3).Their mutual hatred can be observed in the following lines: MARTIUS.I'll fight non but thee, for I do hate thee Worse than a promise-breaker.AUFIDIUS.We hate alike: Not Afric owns a serpent I abhor More than thy fame and envy (1.8.1-5) The strong feelings of envy, desire to fight and war the other 'half' fortifies the relationship of a persued and pursuer.That is, an endless 'hunt' where the death is inevitable.As Martius puts it, MARTIUS They have a leader, Tullus Aufidius, that will put you to't.I sin in envying his nobility.And were I any thing but what I am, I would wish me only he COMINIUS You have fought together!MARTIUS Were half to half the world by th' ears and he Upon my party, I'd revolt to make Only my wars with him.He is a lion That I am proud to hunt.(1.1. 225-33) Coriolanus' craving for the fight and war constitutes a fundamental part of him as a great warrior and soldier.Just as he perceives himself, others view Coriolanus as a soldier before anything too.Menenius states he is a soldier (3.3.54)not a politician.He wishes to be the man he is (3.2.17).However, his own mother reinforces his feeling of uncanniness when she 'does not approve him further' (3.2.9) and 'wishes him false to his nature' (3.2.16), 'wishes him milder ' (3.2.15).Coriolanus, however, refuses to go against his nature.His refusal to follow the custom (2.3.116) to wear the gown and ask for the people's voice as well as his swiftness in changing the garment to be able to 'know himself again ' (2.3.146) can be seen as some instances where he feels the uncanniness.
In his view, he is the true Roman, as opposed to the 'so called Romans' who live in Rome (3.1.239)but are less Roman than he is.He was born in Rome of a Roman mother.He is a soldier in the service of the Roman state.He defines himself as a Roman by birth and profession.On this matter, Burton Hatlen (1997) asks: 'But what is a Roman?Is "Roman-ness" equally present in each Roman, regardless of social position?Or are some Romans more Roman than others?Conversely, is it possible for some "Romans" to be "un-Roman?'.He suggests that at the beginning of the play both Coriolanus and others see him as a true Roman due to his courage and devotion to the state.These attributes and values define the ideal Roman.Yet, Coriolanus' conception of himself as a true Roman ends when placed in opposition to Rome.As long as he shares an identity with all the other Romans, he finds himself in an intolerable situation.At the end of the play, he neither recognises the Romans nor his own family (5.3.80).He feels familiar to the Volscian city, which once was enemy, unhomely, now becomes homely and he remarks: CORIOLANUS Wife, mother, child, I know not.My affairs Are servanted to others.Though I owe My revenge properly, my remission lies In Volscian breasts.That we have been familiar, (5.3.80-3)After his banishment, Coriolanus goes to Aufiduis' city.He seeks Aufidius' company, resorts to him as perhaps he finds him and his city more 'homely' than his own people and Rome.It is a world that is 'slippery ' (4.3.13).Friend becomes enemy and enemy becomes friend (4.3.13-23).
Coriolanus is not only banished from his city, his 'country' that he has protected and fought for against enemies but also from his own world, his deeds as a solider, which is also uncanny.He is brought down to a simple being.What he does next is to go find a place where he can continue his deeds as a soldier, where he can continue being a solider.Now 'he hates his birthplace and his love is upon the enemy town' (4.3.24-25).There, he seeks for and finds his other soldier half, his doppelganger, Aufidius, unites with him so that he can be who he is again, until he has been persuaded not to attack the city of Rome, by his family, mainly his mother, which brings his death.
He loses his city; he loses his family, and he loses his name.In Shakespeare's Names Laurie Maguire (2007) argues to name someone is the way to identity this person.In Rome, non-Roman citizens (and women) were legally nameless, denied the identifying 'tria nomina' of the Roman male citizen, which is also one of God's most justified punishments, the erasure of name.Namelessness is the ultimate lowness, ignominy, as the word indicates: in-(g)nomen, no name.Only an Odysseus can turn namelessness into an advantage as in his quest with the cyclops.Odysseus is 'wily', 'cunning'; 'metis' in Greek.He becomes his name and he is his name; me tis (no one) (p.11).
There is then a relationship between the name and behaviour.The name determines the identity; Caius Martius becomes Coriolanus; the conqueror of Corioles.On the relationship between the name and one's actions Janet Adelman (1992) suggests that the conquest of Corioli that gives Coriolanus his name is a masculine act of a bloody rebirth; a self-creation (p.130).Caius Martius forges a new name for himself in the fires that will burn Rome.She analyses the scene as such: Coriolanus enters the gates of the city, he is proclaimed dead; one of his comrades delivers a eulogy firmly in the past tense ("Thou wast a soldier / Even to Cato's wish" [1.4.56-57]); then Coriolanus miraculously reemerges, covered with blood (1.6.22), and is given a new name.For the assault on CorioIi is both a rape and a rebirth: the underlying fantasy is that intercourse is a literal return to the womb, from which one is reborn, one becomes one's own author.The fantasy of self-authorship is complete when Coriolanus is given his new name, earned by his own action.(p.152)At the end of the play he 'wouldn't answer to' (5.1.12)the name Coriolanus that he has forged for himself with fire and blood (5.1.14)when Cominius called him, an old friend who Coriolanus has fought on battles together.He is not Coriolanus anymore.He is a 'dull actor now' who has 'forgot his part' and wants to be 'out ' (5.3.41).He doesn't want to play this game, their game that is unknown to him, unfamiliar, uncanny.Now he is only Martius the 'traitor' (5.6.88) both for the Romans, Aufidius and inevitably for Coriolanus himself.For the word "traitor", Hunt (1991) suggests that it could also be spoken against Aufidius himself by Coriolanus and the theater audience as each soldier has betrayed himself and their other selves, the doubles.However, Coriolanus' 'treason' on the eyes of Aufidius shall be penalized by his death.With Corionlanus' fall, Aufidius will be granted a 'renewal', a prolonged life, even immortality with the slay of the doppleganger.As Aufidius states, AUFIDIUS There was is, For which my sinews shall be stretched upon him.At a few drops of women's rheum, which are As cheap as lies, he sold the blood and labour Of our great action.Therefore shall he die And I'll renew me in his fall.(5.6.52-57)The double self created as a guarantee of immortality from the need for self-conceptualization and identification, as well as innate foreignness, splitedness and a search for the ideal self is both the product and the source of uncanniness for Coriolanus.His uncanny double Aufidius, who he sees as a 'savior' and turns to when he feels 'lost' in his Roman world becomes his destroyer.

Conclusion
The motif of unheimlich doppelganger reflected in the relationship of the two great warriors Coriolanus and Aufidius triggered by a transgression of boundaries in the protagonist Coriolanus' self-view has been pursued in the play.Following his will to survive as the man he is, clinging onto his double brings the end of Coriolanus.When what has been familiar to him becomes unfamiliar, he turns to the unfamiliar, which is in its nature familiar anyway.The interchange between familiar and unfamiliar proves the coexistence not only literally on word level but also conceptually.The doubles Coriolanus and Aufidius together form the "totality" of a single persona.They become homely for one another until that becomes unhomely too.
The portrayal of a single but internally split persona, mirrored and opposed by another character is a juxtaposition and synthesizing of ego-alter ego which is closely related to Doppelganger motif.Within this theoretical framework, this study aimed to attempt to read the Shakespearean play Coriolanus through a psychoanalytical perspective, with the Freudian concepts of unheimlich doppelganger and the insight of self-dividedness, projection and reflection of oneself, one's acts and emotions, causing the unfamiliar in the familiar.Coriolanus, the great soldier, failing to recognize and realize his public self becomes separated in his private self, his inner self and falls alien to his city, to his 'country', to its people, whoever lives in it.Not being able to identify with anyone but the Volscian rival Aufidius, he seeks a new world 'elsewhere'.The uncanniness of his old world and self urges him to unite with his other half, however, that brings his death.