In his 1919 essay The Uncanny, Sigmund Freud investigated the roots of horror with specific reference to motifs of blinding and mutilation in two classic German “fairy-tales” – Hoffmann’s The Sandman, in particular, and also Hauff’s The Severed Hand, both written in 1816. As in the most horrific tales of the Brothers Grimm, both stories reveal mechanisms of atavistic dread and corporeal destruction beneath their elegant surfaces. This special ebook edition of The Sandman and The Severed Hand also includes Freud’s The Uncanny, presenting two classics of phantasmic German literature and also a definitive psycho-analysis of the horror story and its primal underpinnings.
