FREN 4930

The Uncanny and the Fantastic

Course Description

Course information provided by the Courses of Study 2015-2016.

The purpose of this seminar is to explore the realm of "Fantastic" in its multiple dimensions.  Which are its borders?  Which narrative devices does it display in order to create an atmosphere of anxiety, fear or terror?  Influenced by Freud, many authors define the fantastic and the "uncanny" as interwoven notions.  Perhaps, far from being an external, alien, and unknown threat, the "uncanny" is a fear that emerges from within, from our own experience, as something strangely familiar we are unable to remove or throw out.  The "fantastic" and the "uncanny" put into question our visions of norms and borders, "self" and "other," life and dead, reality and unreality, humanity and animality, humanity and post-humanity.  Besides movies and theoretical essays, this seminar will scrutinize novels of Maupassant (Le Horla, 1887), Maurice Renard (Les Mains d'Orlac, 1920), Marie Darrieusseq (Truismes, 1996) and other French writers.  

When Offered Spring.

Comments Conducted in French.

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