LE3 .A278 2018

2018

La Rocque, Lance

Acadia University

Bachelor of Arts

Honours

English

English & Theatre Studies

This thesis begins with an introduction to the history of Horror fiction, an introduction to Stephen King, a discussion about important terms that relate to King’s work such as the uncanny, the eerie, and the weird. Further, I discuss critics who have touched upon Sigmund Freud’s The Uncanny (1919) such as Mark Fisher, and their importance in King’s work. I then introduce my notion of the social uncanny, which is how the social uncanny impacts multiple individuals in a location or world that is similar to our own reality; unfamiliar events that unfold make people feel a sense of wrongness (unfamiliar emotions emerge, such as dread and horror) and are shocking because the uncanny does not belong in that reality. I also discuss how my version of the uncanny that I discuss in relation to King’s work differentiates from other definitions of the uncanny. Further, I explain the difference between the individual and social unconscious and how King uses the social unconsciousness within his work. Chapter One focuses on how the history of a location influences people and civilization (not just one person, but entire communities) by using the uncanny, and how physical locations control multiple people. The social uncanny cannot exist without history, because history largely impacts the way in which people remember and see a place. Chapter Two discusses how the uncanny plays with what people understand and know about their everyday reality, and when things in one’s reality changes, whether it is a person, feeling, location, sound, object, or movement, it creates the social uncanny. This is done in King’s prose by manipulating and changing temporality by using repetition to play with what people understand of reality, and how one’s reality becomes unfamiliar once the uncanny takes place. Chapter Three focuses on how the uncanny plays with and manipulates objects and technologies within society by using movement or through personification. The infrastructure of society is being manipulated in order to make the basic physical and organizational systems unrecognizable.

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https://scholar.acadiau.ca/islandora/object/theses:2634