Uncanny Aspects In Beowulf
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Uncanny aspects
Sense of strangeness, of genuinely enigmatic forces pervades theory of death instinct and repetition compulsion.
Uncanny= malicious careless, unreliable, mysterious, strange, dangerous. From german unheimlich. Can also mean concealed
Phenomenon of the “double” = considered identical because they look alike p.940
Mental processes where both possess knowledge, feelings and experience
The feelings of repulsion associated with the uncanny are not unlike the emotions of the able-bodied when they are visualizing the disabled. Freud notes that the terror or repulsion of the uncanny is ambivalent is found precisely in its relation to and yet deviance from the familiar. What is uncanny can be related to disability and is made clear when Freud cites specifically disememered limbs etc. as unheimlich. What is uncanny about dismembrement seems to beth familiarity of the body part that is then made unheimlich by its severing.The familiarity of a body as a whole is based on a dynamic act of repression, however the ego is a multifaceted structure to be understood in its physical complexity. In this process the heimisch body becomes th eunheimlich and the disabled parts can be seen as the originary body made unfamiliar by repression
“The uncanniness of the monster Grendel in the poem Beowulf is an expression of yearning for the lost culture of Anglo-Saxon heroic world with all its bravery and hopelessness. Grendel also represents the uncanny double not only of Beowulf but also of the world and the reader. The answers to where does the uncanny starts and ends are not immaterial because of their subjectivity. What is more important is the experience of the uncanny itself if it can be found.”
Beowulf, a hero for heroes overcomes the hideous creature Grendle, in order to aid the Danes, whom are in the need of aid. Beowulf sits awake in
uncertainty of what comes in the depths of the everlasting night. This shows
that Beowulf has an uncanny amount of courage. He, as any human in this
predicament