“The Sandman” by E.T.A. Hoffmann: the uncanny as an aesthetic category

• Autor(a) principal: Muñoz, Mauricio Mancilla
• Data de Publicação: 2023
• Tipo de documento: Artigo
• Idioma: por
• Título da fonte: Travessias (Cascavel. Online)
• Texto Completo: https://e-revista.unioeste.br/index.php/travessias/article/view/30544
• topic: Uncanny; E.T.A. Hoffmann; German romanticism; Sigmund Freud; Inquietante; E.T.A. Hoffmann; Romantismo alemão; Sigmund Freud

This article has the aim of recognizing the motif of the uncanny as a fundamental esthetic category in the romantic movement, especially in “The Sandman” by E.T.A. Hoffmann (1776-1822). The central hypothesis of this work is that the phenomenon of the uncanny, as dealt with in readings of Hoffmann’s text, has been interpreted in a restrictive way by the psychoanalytical tradition. To this end, firstly a tentative characterization of the uncanny as an aesthetic category is proposed; then a general view of this motif in the story “The Sandman” will be presented; in the third part, the psychoanalytic interpretation of the uncanny by Sigmund Freud (1856-1939) in contrast with that proposed by Ernst Jentsch (1867-1919) will be presented; and lastly the task of a poetry of the uncanny will be tackled. The poetic world of the German romantics is characterized by the uncovering of an inner world with decided shades of chiaroscuro, where the literary work tries to reveal what is not always visible.