Eta Hoffman's Story "The Sandman"

Paper Summary:

Analysis of the romantic horror story and critical interpretations. Discusses Freud's interest and the application of his psychoanalytic theory to the story. Structuralist literary criticism. Analysis of personality of literary characters vs. application of cultural and literary codes to construct meaning. Contends both theoretical approaches supply insights into the characters, although each has its limitations.

From the Paper:

"E. T. A. Hoffmann's story "The Sandman" is a striking account of the nearly inexplicable horror experienced by a man who is traumatized in childhood and whose fear returns in adulthood with tragic results. With four narrative voices, various characters' opinions about the nature of the main character's experience and feelings, a great deal of supernatural or uncanny material, and a sharp, surprising split between the earlier and later parts of the story it is a literary work that seems ripe for many kinds of criticism. Tales of Romantic horror often seem to lend themselves in particular to psychoanalytic criticism, especially when, like Hoffmann's tale, they seem to involve the disintegration of a character's personality and clearly involve childhood experience and sexual concerns. Indeed Sigmund Freud himself discussed the story at some length in his..."

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