For Zola, as for Huysmans, nature itself is uncanny because it is the domain of the feminine, a domain that is constitutionally defective, lacking, even pathological.

In any event, whether a supernatural tale remains altogether fantastic or eventually modulates to the uncanny or the marvelous, the reader is faced with disconcerting ontological and perceptual problems.Indeed, the disorienting effect of the supernatural...

Supernatural fiction contains its own generic borderland: a neutral territory, which Tzvetan Todorov calls ‘the fantastic,’ between ‘the marvelous’ and ‘the uncanny.’ According to Todorov, ‘The fantastic is that hesitation experienced by a person who...

We are aberrations—beings born undead, neither one thing nor another, or two things at once … uncanny things that have nothing to do with the rest of creation, horrors that poison the world by sowing...