Objects and the Uncanny
In the Picture of Dorian Gray, the uncanny appears in the first few pages of the novel as it opens with the infamous portrait and the painter announcing he has just completed it. However, the uncanny truly manifests itself as well as it's harrowing and spine-chilling effects in the second half of the novel when the innocence of Dorian is forever corrupted and he fully engulfs himself in this new way of being. Therefore, in an attempt to demonstrate this all well as the degradation of the painting (object) which is happening simultaneously to the corruption of Dorian's soul is by visualizing the vocabulary used in descriptions of the second half of the story, especially with the loom visualization which allows to visually see Dorian's decent. The word "Dorian" follows a drastic fall in the visualization mirroring the one the character experiences in the novel.
La peau de chagrin
The uncanny and objects are very much interrelated in this novel as the fantastique appears within the most elaborate and detailed description of a shop and oppressive bourgeois interior I have ever read. I chose to focus on the very lengthy description in Le Talisman of the antique shop to showcase the intrinsic relationship between objects and the uncanny which is epitomized in this description.
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- Champ Lexical Sandrine Servant
