Kusligt och abjekt

Magiskt tänkande hos Rydberg och Lagerlöf

Abstract

Uncanny and Abject: Magical Thinking in the Works of Selma Lagerlöf and Carina Rydberg

This article utilises Freud’s notion of ”the uncanny” and Kristeva’s concepts of ”abject” and ”abjection” in their original meanings as tools in the analysis of certain aspects of Carina Rydberg’s The Devil’s Formula (2000) and Selma Lagerlöf’s Charlotte Löwensköld (1925) and Anna Svärd (1928). There are a number of surprising connections between these narratives in a broader intertextual sense. For instance, Thea Sundler, one of the protagonists in Lagerlöf’s work, is at the outset of the novel scary because she seems so manipulative, but her character escalates from this uncanniness into evoking stronger fears of abjection at the end of the narrative, while the narrator-protagonist Carina in Rydberg’s work is in the outset of the novel marked by abjection, later undergoes a change in terms of subjectivation, but ends in scaring the reader through uncertainities typical of the uncanny.