The "uncanny" is a loaded term. Despite its seemingly straightforward front, it has extended itself to a variety of disciplines over time, gradually evolving into a multifaceted concept through the work of Ernst Jentsch and Sigmund Freud. Thus, regardless of the academic context at hand, the uncanny requires its handler to pay mind to the word's implicit psychological and psychoanalytic history when attempting to use it as a key element in one's argument. It is in the third chapter of J. Hillis Miller's
Anti-Patriarchal Theory defines the rejection of Freud’s presumption of a primarily male-based view of women within the context of psychoanalytical theory. For instance, in Freud’s essay “The Uncanny”, he tends to refute the idea of the doll—named Olympia—as a major focus of Hoffman story The Sandman. Of course, the premise of Freud’s s idea of the repression of female figures, such as the doll Olympia—tend to re-focus back onto the Nathaniel as the main focus of the “uncanny” aspects of the Id in human psychology:
1.1. Das Unheimlich: Introduction In the very first few sentences of The Uncanny (1919), Freud demarcates the uncanny as that which is usually pushed to the periphery of aesthetic investigations. Traditional aesthetic inquiries prefer to concern themselves with “what is beautiful, attractive and sublime-that is, with feelings of a positive nature-and with the circumstances and the objects that call them forth, rather than with the opposite feelings of repulsion and distress”. But Freud turns his
The notion of the uncanny is the key term for psychoanalysis and the psychoanalytical approach for interpretation of the art. The uncanny effect is ingrained not by something unfamiliar or something frightening but because it conveys something that has been lived through and exuded to the sphere of an unconscious. Freud’s 1919 essay of the same name - The Uncanny - has been written for literary, psychoanalytic, critical, however not art purpose at all. It has erupted into aesthetics discourse (Walsh
The concept of the uncanny can be a difficult one to comprehend; this is why Freud begins his essay with an analysis of the different definitions of the uncanny in various languages. Ultimately Freud rests that the German terms “heimlich” and “unheimlich” best match the definition of the uncanny because it is translated as familiar and unfamiliar. The uncanny can be defined as something that creates a feeling of familiarity but also unfamiliarity, and this unfamiliarity is what is fearful to the
Assessment 1: Critical Commentary Freud’s The Uncanny and Emily Bronté’s Wuthering Heights The principal idea in Sigmund Freud’s interpretation of The Uncanny theory centres around the Heimlich, translating to ‘homely’ and thus, what is familiar, and the Unheimlich, which is often translated to what is ‘Uncanny’ defined as ‘what is […] frightening precisely because it is not known and familiar’ (Freud, 1919) or later described as something that is ‘secretly familiar which has undergone repression’
E.T.A. Hoffmann's "The Sandman" illuminates Freud's theory of the Uncanny. Freud’s understanding of Nathaniel in E.T.A. Hoffmann’s “The Sandman” is that the Nathaniel’s “madman” like actions are the result of the return of his suppressed juvenile material. Nathaniel is the protagonist and is convinced that a frightful destiny awaits him. His fear focuses on a threatening old man whom he has understood since infantile to be the “Sandman”, a monster who takes away the eyes of children who are awake
The eruptions of the Uncanny in Egon Schiele’s art legacy Introduction: The notion of the uncanny is the key term for psychoanalysis and psychoanalytical approach for interpretation of the art. The uncanny effect is ingrained not by unfamiliar or something frightening but because it conveys something that has been lived through and exuded to the sphere of an unconscious. Text that was written about literary, psychoanalytical, critical but not art purpose at all was erupted into art discourse (Walsh
modes of interpretation when dealing with children’s literature. Buckley engages with Neil Gaiman’s Coraline, challenging some of the critical responses to the book, as well as drawing in some foundational literary criticism authors and thinkers such as Sigmund Freud, Roland Barthes and Lewis Carroll. Buckley’s intention with this paper is to oppose restrictive interpretations of Coraline, as she posits the book to be far more complex than most examples of children’s literature. Freud’s “Uncanny”, gothicism
In Freud’s essay on the nature of the uncanny, published in the 1919, He states that the most basic definition of the uncanny is the quality of feeling within the realm of the frightening as “ That species of the frightening that goes back to what was once well known and had long been familiar.” The uncanny does not send us screaming in horror, but instead, evokes a sense of oddness in an unsettling manner. Freud sums up the uncanny in simple terms, unwinding from the semantics of the German words