Abstract
In the comedies of errors, and more precisely in the comedies of double, in which two identities become confused, the characters get into paradoxical situations reigned by the principle of contradiction. The classemic relationships that are based on the criterion of subjectivity are broken due to the intervention of the character appearing as the double, for the doubled and the double can appear as one subject or as two. In fact, in the added double one + one equals one (1 + 1 = 1; Sosia + Mercury = Sosia) and in the split double one equals one + one (1 = 1 + 1; Philocomasium = Philocomasium + Dicea). In the modal oppositions of the alternative class (present ∣ absent, to be ∣ not to be) and in the aspectual oppositions of the sequential class (to arrive – to be in) the intrasubjective nature is cancelled; in the diathetic or complementary oppositions (to give .– to receive) the intersubjective relationship gets broken. Thus, it turns out that, due to the action of the double, a character can be present and absent at the same time, be and not be the same, be in a place before arriving there or have received what another has not yet given him.
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García-Hernández, B. Paradoxes in the Argumentation of the Comic Double and Classemic Contradiction. Argumentation 17, 99–111 (2003). https://doi.org/10.1023/A:1022904025811
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1023/A:1022904025811