Isak Dinesen’s weird voodoo novel

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Abstract

With its awkward generic shifts, odd repetitions, confusing spatial dislocations, unstable characters and inconclusive supernatural horrors, I here argue, bilin-gual Danish author Isak Dinesen’s The Angelic Avengers weirds our expe-rience of living in a familiar, predictable and rule-governed universe. In my analysis, I especially foreground Dinesen’s use of West Indian voodoo, which is a prominent weirding device largely overlooked by the novel’s relatively few critics. Dinesen, I argue, wrote her novel amidst a widespread international voodoo and zombie vogue, tapping into popular representations of Caribbean witchcraft in nonfiction, pulp fiction and film. In The Angelic Avengers, I argue, Dinesen appropriates voodoo themes and characters, to conjure the pres-ence of ominous agencies that trouble enlightened reason’s ability to explain and master the world.

Original languageEnglish
JournalJournal of Horror Studies
Volume14
Issue1
Pages (from-to)29-45
Number of pages17
ISSN1751-939X
DOIs
Publication statusPublished - Apr 2023

Keywords

  • Danish literature
  • The Anthropocene
  • West India
  • global weirding
  • horror
  • pulp fiction

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