The most crucial moment of Sanders’ definition, and paramount to Freud’s analysis, is as follows, “ ‘… like a buried spring or a dried-up pond.
The kinds of familiar environments referred to explicitly are those that spur from belonging to a household, enjoying the company of friends, or being in the presence of a companion, be that companion man or animal (Freud.826). In defining the word ‘heimlich,’ Freud refers to Daniel Sanders’s Worterbuch der Deutschen Sprache, in which Sanders does a very thorough job of explaining ‘heimlich.’ Sanders states that ‘heimlich’ refers to varying forms of familiarity via the comfort that arises from being in a familiar environment. Once the use of the German word ‘heimlich’ is established as the most credible of terms for the concept of the uncanny, Freud delves into his study of the word itself. Indeed, we get an impression that many languages are without a word for this particular shade of what is frightening… let us therefore return to the German language”(Freud. But the dictionaries that we consult tell us nothing new, perhaps only because we ourselves speak a language that is foreign. Freud discerns that the uncanny is the absence of a substance or an idea that exists within aesthetics.īefore going further in his examination, Freud assures his reader that the German word for uncanny is the most pertinent term to use in the examination of the concept no other language than German contains a word with quite as poignant a definition for uncanny. Freud observes the complexities inherent in a term that attempts to explain a concept beyond mere aesthetics as those aesthetics are presented. Freud notes that this definition of uncanny is lacking, as it does not address the term ‘unheimlich’ with any depth “it is not difficult to see that this definition is incomplete, and we will therefore try to proceed beyond the equation ‘uncanny’ = ‘unfamiliar’”(Freud.826). Freud’s findings further lend themselves to literature by the application of such as a theoretical lens under which works of literature, such as Franny Billingsley’s The Folk Keeper, which will be examined later, are better understood.įreud first establishes that the uncanny has previously been viewed as an aesthetic that “arouses dread and horror” (Freud.825). After a thorough investigation of ‘heimlich,’ Freud’s conclusion lends to revolutionary insights regarding the use of ‘unheimlich’ in literary contexts. Sigmund Freud’s article, “The ‘Uncanny’ ” attempts to interpret ‘unheimlich’(German for ‘unfamiliar’), by means of an aesthetic, linguistic, and contextual examination of the German word, ‘heimlich’(German for ‘familiar’).
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