Uncanny Tales: Narratives of Repetition and Interruption

What makes stories creepy? Close readings of short narratives with special attention to how formal and thematic elements interact to produce the effects of uncertainty, anxiety and incoherence peculiar to "the uncanny." Topics include: the representation of the self in images of the arts; the representation of speech; instabilities of identity and spatial and temporal boundaries; doubles, monsters, automata and hybrids. Texts selected from: Walpole, Shelley, Hoffmann, Kleist, Poe, Dostoyevsky, Freud, Wilde, Cortazar, Kafka, Lovecraft.