Abstract

In this article, we propose to describe linguistic phenomena which contribute to creating uncertainty in a literary text. In particular, we will analyze different narrative strategies that introduce the sinister (Freud, 1919) into a text which, while being an author’s account, utilizes forms of expression typical of the traditional oral legend “El Monte de las Ánimas” by Gustavo Adolfo Bécquer. The unsettling effect that this legend produces on the reader stems from several phenomena analyzed by literary theory (such as in the study of the Fantasy genre). However, we would like to propose an approach based on some notions from the fields of linguistics and discourse analysis as determining factors in this effect. We will discuss three aspects: the reproduced speech (Maldonado, 2001) or the representation of the speech of others (Authier-Revuz, 2003), the epistemic modality that describes the enunciator’s knowledge regarding the mentioned facts (Nuyts, 2001; García Negroni & Tordesillas Colado, 2001) and the evidential verbs that account for the way the speaker obtains information (Aikhenvald, 2004), especially the cases of transmitted indirect evidence, folklore or popular knowledge (Willett, 1988). In our opinion, the articulation of these three elements constitutes a possible path to describing the aforementioned effect.