The Almost Person: Myth, Narrative and The Doctor

Paul Ricœur describes selfhood as the product of a communal narrative. Communal narratives structured as symbolic myths provide a narrative identity and an ethic of selfhood. The psychologist Jerome Bruner, for instance, places the source of such a narrative identity in the family, where ‘canonical stories’ are formed. ‘Home’ becomes a mode of discourse, a way of recognizing ourselves in the narratives given to us by others. This paper will draw on these concepts of narrative identity in order to investigate the problems to selfhood which face the character of The Doctor in the BBC series Doctor Who. I will identify The Doctor as a character who acts within a self-constructed narrative vacuum, reading the character by contrasting two types of personal myth-making, one ‘real’, as in a lived narrative, and one ‘counterfeit’; a conjured myth to replace and obscure the lived self. The paper will pay particular attention to the twenty-first century reincarnations of Doctor Who. I will argue that the writing of Russell T. Davis and later Steven Moffat in particular directly address this tension of myth and selfhood, as The Doctor struggles between his self-imposed role as a modern Prometheus and the insistent haunting and return of his own story. In these incarnations, his companions become mirrors to The Doctor, bringing with them their own narrative and ethical identities. In turn, it is through his companions that The Doctor is able to build his own lived narrative of sorts, which challenges his self-created ‘mythology’. In contrast to the weeping angels, whose horrific agency manifests only when not apprehended, the Doctor’s story continues to become more real the more he is ‘perceived’, both by the human race and by the viewer.

Volkstheater: Der Zeitgeist und der stillschweigende Redner oder: Doctor Jocko's Leben, Thaten und Höllenfahrt (Localposse): (Scene: Eine grüne Weide ...)

Welsch (Projektbearbeiter): Karikatur auf den antirepublikanischen Zeitgeist

On the Edge of the Primeval Forest. Accounts and reflections of a medical Doctor in French Equatorial Africa

Reading for 4th-year students

Doctor Michael Sachs

L.

Nordaus "Doctor Kohn"

Theodor Herzl

Doctor Bloch : (Schluss)

S.

Doctor Blochs "Wochenschrift"

Leon Kellner

Die Schelmen Zunfft In welcher angezeiget wirdt, aller Welt mutwillen, büberey vnnd schalckheyten, so in disen zeiten sehr im schwanck gehen. Durch Doctor Thoman Murnern von Straßburg schimpflich beschrieben ... Jetzund widerumb von neüwem auß der Gesellenzunfft, vnter der Rosen zureden, gemehret vnd gebessert, [et]c.

Titelblatt in Rot- und Schwarzdruck

Römer-Maske : eine Festschrift phantastischer Satire und satirischer Phantasie ; [heiterer Begleiter der Gegenwart, der Zukunft ; angenehme Memoria farbiger Vergangenheit] ; aus Anlass und zur Erinnerung an den Maskenball der Farbe veranstaltet vom Bunde Tätiger Altstadtfreunde und unter dem löblichen Präsidium des Stadtkämmerers Doctor Heinrich Anastasius Langer in sämtlichen Räumen des ehrwürdigsten Tanzhauses Germaniae im Römer der Stadt Frankfurt am Main am 21. Februar 1925

hrsg. von Benno Elkan

Jonas Jeitteles, der Heilkunde Doctor, der Weltweisheit Baccalaureus, des gewesenen böhmisch-israelitisch-chirurgischen Gremiums immerwährender Präses ... : Eine biographische Skizze

von seinen Enkel Ig. Jeitteles, der Rechtsgelehrsamkeit Beflissenen. Mit dem Bildnisse des Verf.

Abconterfetung, deß Ehrwürdigen Hocherleuchten Theuren Mann Gottes vnd Teutschen Propheten, Herrn Doctor Martin Luther : Ein Christliches Gebet vor die Jugendt, auff das Evangelische JubelJahr, den 1. vnd 2. Novemb. 1617

Bibliograph. Nachweis: Paas P-308; Straus (1600/1700), Nr. 135