Already bad enough when the name was but a name

ABSTRACT

The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde by Robert Louis Stevenson recounts the story of a man divided against himself, oscillating between two identities – one decent (named Jekyll) and one wicked (named Hyde). This short essay by Christian Bök examines the transitions that occur in the narrative, when the proper names shift from one moniker to the other in reference to the protagonist: each name vying for ‘citation’ in the story, thereby attempting to predominate, as a signifier, throughout the course of events. The narrative (perhaps coincidentally) maintains an almost equal usage of these two names, as if preserving an equilibrium of tensions between their contrarian identities, balancing them almost perfectly, giving each character 100 chances to be mentioned. The form of the story thus seems to perform the idea of eponymic division, indicated within the plot.

KEYWORDS:

• Poetics
• conceptualism
• infographics
• visual poetry

Disclosure statement

Christian Bök has no conflicts of interest to declare in response to the publication of this work.

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Christian Bök

Christian Bök (born 1966) is the author of Eunoia (2001), a globally renowned bestseller, which has won the Griffin Prize for Poetic Excellence. Bök is currently working on The Xenotext – a project that requires him to encipher a poem into the genome of a bacterium capable of thriving in unsurvivable environments, lethal to most life on Earth. Bök has exhibited his artworks at dozens of galleries around the world, including the Museum of Contemporary Art in Denver, The Power Plant in Toronto, and the Marianne Boesky Gallery in New York. Bök is a Fellow in the Royal Society of Canada, and he now works, full time, as an artist at his studio in Melbourne.