The New Uncanny

"In his famous essay of 1919...Freud listed eight officially uncanny tropes, that is to say eight irrational causes of fear deployed in literature:

( i ) inanimate objects mistaken as animate (dolls, waxworks, automata, several limbs etc.)

( ii ) animate beings behaving as if inanimate or mechanical (trances, epileptic fits etc.) 

( iii ) being blinded

( iv ) the double (twins, doppelganger etc.) 

( v ) coincidences or repetitions

( vi ) being buried alive

( vii ) some all controlling evil genius

( viii ) confusions between reality and imagination (waking dreams etc.)"

Eyre and Page tested Freud's theory of the uncanny by asking people to respond to the essay with new, short stories. They found an "overwhelming emphasis here on two phenomena in particular: the double and the doll." An example of this is Seeing Double by Sara Maitland, a story of a young boy whom discovers his Father and Nanny have sheltered him from the fact he has a second face on the back of his head. Once he finds out, the second face becomes another personality and controlling factor in his life. This short story is uncanny as the imagery it evokes feels so real and plausible; the reader can imagine each detail and become engrossed in the twisted story, somewhere between reality and the surreal. 


Eyre, Sarah and Page, Ra (eds.) (2008) The New Uncanny: Tales of Unease, Great Britain, Comma Press