The Willows by Algernon Blackwood, das Unheimliche and sociology: Horror literature in the dispute on what is recognized as real
The Willows by Algernon Blackwood, das Unheimliche and sociology: Horror literature in the dispute on what is recognized as real

Summary/Abstract: The article is an attempt to analyze The Willows by Algernon Blackwood in terms of the sociological concept of multiple realities. Trying to answer the question of how people experience reality, due attention will be paid to the literary description of the situation in which a human being is confronted with a reality that terrifies and disturbs. Literature in general, including horror literature, is treated here as an important, from the cognitive standpoint, platform for discussion about human experiences, which, following Sigmund Freud, can be described as uncanny. I treat Blackwood’s The Willows as a reconstruction of the dispute over the legitimacy of knowledge and the sources of cognition in the conditions of a specific epistemological (categorical) chaos in the face of experiencing the uncanny.

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