Department of English

What is the "Fantastic"? And how can we describe the "Uncanny"? This course will examine these questions, and investigate the historical background of our understanding of "phantasy" as well as our concepts of the "fantastic" and "uncanny" in literature. Our discussions will be based on a reading of Sigmund Freud's essay on the uncanny, a choice of Friedrich Schlegel's and Novalis' aphorisms , and Romantic narratives by Ludwig Tieck, E.T.A. Hoffmann, Edgar Allan Poe, Nathaniel Hawthorne, and others. All of the texts will be available in English and no knowledge of a foreign language is required.