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Laura, Barrett. "Repetition with a difference: Representation and the uncanny in house of leaves." Horror Studies 2. (2011): 247–64. Added by: joachim (12/06/2019, 11:09) |
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| Resource type: Journal Article Language: en: English Peer reviewed DOI: 10.1386/host.2.2.247_1 BibTeX citation key: Laura2011 Email resource to friend View all bibliographic details  |
Categories: General Keywords: "House of Leaves", Danielewski. Mark Z., Fantastic, Literature, Randformen des Comics, Representation, USA Creators: Laura Collection: Horror Studies |
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| Abstract |
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The uncanny permeates Mark Danielewski’s House of Leaves (2000), a postmodern version of the classic haunted house tale. Characters are stalked by their pasts, the novel is burdened with its own belatedness in the history of the genre, and language seems to suffer from its own imprecision and inauthenticity. Rather than resulting in mere repetition, however, incessant echoes of the past give rise to new visions. The anxiety of influence that seems to plague Danielewski perhaps ironically provides a route out of entropy and derivation. A series of imperfect narrators and editors describe the eponymous house whose interior dimensions belie the limits of its architecture, suggesting that the possibilities of any medium are boundless. The novel simultaneously reveals the failures and triumphs of representations, uncanny in their simultaneous fullness and emptiness, their presence and absence. The haunted structure in Danielewski’s novel represents the novel, the darkroom, the canvas, the digital image – any medium able to be interpreted, any medium whose distance from reality renders it familiar and yet strange, any medium that creates the world as it attempts to replicate it.
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