Are there other Narcissus-like characters recorded in any mythology? To be more precise, I need a metaphor for an egoistic person who is in love with themself.
I need a proper noun, the name of this person, like Narcissus but somebody else. I am not looking for common nouns like egoist, egomaniac, and such — only for proper nouns or personifications.
If you are looking for a proper noun, Dorian Gray (not a mythological character) is the narcissistic protagonist of The Picture of Dorian Gray by Oscar Wilde.
Your metaphor could be “a Dorian Gray Personality” or “someone suffering from the Dorian Gray Syndrome”.
Ovid’ famous tale of Narcissus has for good reason long stood as unrivaled archetype for this. Guillaume de Lorris’ unnamed first-person narrator in his section of The Romance of the Rose, usually termed “the Dreamer,” is explicitly linked to Ovid’s archetype, initially espying his lady-love, the perfect rose, reflected in Narcissus’ watery mirror (so much does erotic infatuation often prove to be a kind of projection of self-love). I have found no parallel in Norse myth, though the tale of Óðinn’s sacrificing an eye in Mímir’s well (for wisdom, or in Wagner for Fricka) distinctly presages Guillaume’s image of round crystal stones, representing eyes, sunk within the limpid water. I have found no parallel in Ojibwe myth either. It is worth noting, however, that intellectual vanity has sometimes been read as Eve’s motive for partaking of the fruit of the tree of knowledge in the Hebrew myth of the Fall. The villainous matriarch in the tale of Snow White, with her peculiar relation to a mirror and her obsession with being “fairest,” also merits mention here.
Willoughby Patterne, from Meredith’s The Egoist, was created as an archetype for vanity and is sometimes used as such.
