The Uncanny

Royle's book is the first full-length study devoted to the uncanny, a idea that now runs through literature, cinema, architecture, cultural theory, philosophy, psychoanalysis and queer theory. Its significance is usually traced to Freud's 1919 essay "The uncanny," which described the feeling not merely of the odd or the mysterious but of what is oddly familiar. The concept, however, has a longer past, reaching back at least to the Enlightenment.

The author combines a detailed historical account of how the uncanny took shape with close readings of its many dimensions. After a substantial opening survey of the history and criticism, individual chapters take up the death drive, déjà vu, the appeal of silence, solitude and darkness, the dread of being buried alive, doubles, ghosts, cannibalism, telepathy and madness. Later sections apply these ideas to teaching, politics, film and religion.

Written as a major critical work, the book is aimed at students and scholars, though its wide-ranging subject should also appeal to general readers curious about the uncanny.