A PSYCHOANALYTICAL APPROACH TO LE FANU’S IN A GLASS DARKLY
A PSYCHOANALYTICAL APPROACH TO LE FANU’S IN A GLASS DARKLY

Summary/Abstract: Following the work of Freud, psychoanalysis reveals an unconscious state the characters in a fiction may develop. We have decided to study a gothic vampire short story by Sheridan Le Fanu: Carmilla. Horror fiction can be considered as a projection in a heavily codified form of deeply instinctual drives. In Carmilla, we will first study the dream dimension as the main action occurs at night. Then, the character of Carmilla may be opposed to reality because she belongs to the realms of fantasy and monstrosity. She has then the appropriate quality for enjoying desire outside the law, outside the symbolic, outside the reality principle Victorian society defends. Through ambivalence and problems of representation, we will suggest that Carmilla embodies an original archetype trying to reach back the inorganic. The vampire, as the woman, is excluded by language.

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