ABSTRACT
The following article analyzes the uses of the Gothic literary uncanny devices of doubling and shapeshifting in the novel The Kingdom of this World by Alejo Carpentier. Despite the fact that this text is traditionally placed within its own category of the Marvelous Real, it presents the traditionally Gothic devices mentioned earlier. As an introduction, this analysis starts by comparing one of the basic principles of the Gothic—the manifestation of irrational and inexplicable phenomena—with Carpentier’s premise of Latin America’s inherently magical and uncanny nature, which he coined as the Marvelous Real. In the second section, this paper discusses how the various instances of fantastic phenomena depicted in the text function as cases of either doubling or shapeshifting. As a result, this paper argues that these devices are exclusively employed between the French masters and Haitian slaves characterized in the novel. In the case of the French colonizers, the manifestations of a butchered double, instead of a whole one, function as incontrovertible yet overlooked ill omens of their gruesome fate. On the other hand, the animalistic shapeshifting of the revolutionaries Mackandal and Ti Noël is a source of empowerment for the slave population as its uncanny hybridity is not a source of fear for them but rather a reminder of their power and heritage. Finally, this paper concludes that it is the ambivalent essence of the uncanny, which depicts doubling and shapeshifting as both threatening and empowering, that links the Gothic and the Marvelous Real together, despite Carpentier’s apprehension toward the former.
