The statue of Athena Parthenos was a large-scale ivory and gold statue created in the 5th century BCE and dedicated to the goddess in the Parthenon on the Athenian Acropolis. The larger-than-life devotional image of one of ancient Greece’s most important goddesses was considered a wonder in ancient times. What do we know about […]

Greek mythology focused on the deeds of gods and semi-divine heroes, with most of the humans who got caught up in their escapades coming to a bad end. But some mortals made such an impression during their short lives that they were given a place in the heavens and made immortal. The process of […]

Although Sigmund Freud is known as the progenitor of psychoanalysis, The Uncanny, one of his most famous essays, is just as important in the world of literary criticism as in that of psychology. It also had a seismic impact across the arts. Throughout, Freud probes the possible meanings of that much-used, but not always […]

According to Freud, the uncanny is not just an unsettling or fearful sensation caused by the alien and unfamiliar. Spooky things, like living dolls, severed limbs, and doppelgängers, can be uncanny. This is because of their link to our subconscious, to repressed feelings of mingled pleasure and pain, which have a strange power to […]