This article reviews and redefines the concept of the uncanny from Todorov’s theory in The Fantastic: A Structural Approach to a Literary Genre (1970) and analyses it in some barely studied prose writings by Juan Ramón Jiménez where it is present. Uncanny literature, which also lacks extensive research, is characterised by the “uncanny effect” it has on the characters and/or the reader: realizing the rarities that intermingle with our everyday life. In Jiménez’s prose, this effect manifests mainly through the compassionate way in which the narrator sees some characters who do not fit into heir environment because of their appearance and/or their behaviour. Among these, we observe children, madmen, sick people, women, foreigners, the incomprehensible and “unacquainted acquaintances”.

This article reviews and redefines the concept of the uncanny from Todorov’s theory in The Fantastic: A Structural Approach to a Literary Genre (1970) and analyses it in some barely studied prose writings by Juan Ramón Jiménez where it is present. Uncanny literature, which also lacks extensive research, is characterised by the “uncanny effect” it has on the characters and/or the reader: realizing the rarities that intermingle with our everyday life. In Jiménez’s prose, this effect manifests mainly through the compassionate way in which the narrator sees some characters who do not fit into heir environment because of their appearance and/or their behaviour. Among these, we observe children, madmen, sick people, women, foreigners, the incomprehensible and “unacquainted acquaintances”.

The aim of this article is to link the Heideggerian investigation of death —in its natural sense as a future fact and in its existential sense as an imminent possibility of existence— with Juan Ramón Jiménez’s poetic treatment of death, in whose poems both senses are present. Although the connection between the philosopher and the poet had already been noted by some researchers —though only in a limited way—, the novelty of the present article lies in showing in detail that, in the work of both authors, a reintegration of death into human existence takes place, through Heidegger's philosophical grounding and through the content that appears in certain poems by Juan Ramón Jiménez.

This article reviews and redefines the concept of the uncanny from Todorov’s theory in The Fantastic: A Structural Approach to a Literary Genre (1970) and analyses it in some barely studied prose writings by Juan Ramón Jiménez where it is present. Uncanny literature, which also lacks extensive research, is characterised by the “uncanny effect” it has on the characters and/or the reader: realizing the rarities that intermingle with our everyday life. In Jiménez’s prose, this effect manifests mainly through the compassionate way in which the narrator sees some characters who do not fit into heir environment because of their appearance and/or their behaviour. Among these, we observe children, madmen, sick people, women, foreigners, the incomprehensible and “unacquainted acquaintances”.