Lovecraft Studies

This article considers the contradictory relationship that Luis Borges had with the work of H. P. Lovecraft. For this reason, the literary features of the argentinian writer will be analyzed through his there are more things tale and it will be proved how he first-hand met the work of Lovecraft to the point that he made a simbiosis of the American writer mythology and his owns. These approaches will be developed on the lovecraftian horror category, which will be ironically treated by Borges.

ABSTRACT: The objective of this paper is to place Borges' short story "There are More Things" (TMT) as a pastiche that includes Lovecraft's technique to write supernatural horror. Its originality resides in identifying the sources of Lovecraft's work that could have been read by Borges and in pointing out specific and general references in "There are More Things" to Lovecraft's short stories. The method uses Lovecraft's supernatural horror theory. The conclusions state how Borges included in TMT the eight characteristics considered by Lovecraft as essential in writing a weird tale.
RESUMEN: El objetivo de este ensayo es ubicar el cuento "There are More Things" de Borges como un pastiche que incluye la técnica para escribir horror sobrenatural de Lovecraft. Su originalidad radica en la identificación de las fuentes de la obra de Lovecraft que podría haber leído Borges y en señalar referencias específicas y generales a cuentos de Lovecraft en "There are More Things". El método utiliza la teoría del horror sobrenatural de Lovecraft. Las conclusiones indican cómo Borges incluyó en tmt los ocho elementos que Lovecraft consideró esenciales para escribir una weird tale.
PalabRas clave: Borges; Lovecraft; Weird tale; Sobrenatural; Hipotexto; Horror cósmico.

This paper suggests how the ‘weird fiction’ of H.P. Lovecraft might be mobilised within secondary English classrooms to examine aspects of visual literacy, literary style, narrative form and intertextuality. The approach that is outlined is characterised, after Lovecraft’s famous monster, as a ‘Cthulhuic literacy’ and is framed by Multiple Literacy Theory that positions learning as intrinsically relational and encourages teachers to use affect positively to enhance textual practice (Masny & Cole, 2009). Affect is put to work in the classroom as an organising principle, beginning with the choice of text to be used and continuing through the particular ways in which teacher and students work with the selected text.

Paper presented at The Third Biennial Dr. Henry Armitage Memorial Scholarship Symposium, a mini-conference within the overall convention framework of NecronomiCon Providence: The International Festival of Weird Fiction, Art, and Academia. Providence, RI. 18 August 2017.

Biography and abstract posted in the program on pages 6 through 7.

A Lovecraft no le bastó el amplio universo bibliográfico real y legendario representado en libros emblemáticos del saber antiguo de las sociedades que crearon esos libros o manuscritos, universo del que pudo tener conocimiento, noticia o incluso acceso y tuvo que “crear” o inventar libros y documentos que se adecuaran a sus tramas literarias, con tal pertinencia que parece que esos libros de verdad existieran, y no solo él, sino que rodeado de un círculo de fieles seguidores y cultivadores de su arte, los estimuló primero a escribir sus propios relatos y después a crear otros libros “canónicos” de la nueva “religión” que ya para entonces estaban creando: Los Mitos de Cthulhu.

Ici, la définition du symbole va dans le sens où, si le symbole peut être un objet, une image, il peut aussi être un mot écrit, qui représente quelque chose d'autre que ce qu'il est dans sa nature propre. Le mot comme symbole permettant à l’auteur de suggérer une comparaison entre ce qui est de l’ordre du réel et surréel.Bien plus que des noms communs… Constamment H.P. Lovecraft tisse une toile, un piège dans lequel le héros comme le lecteur tombe inévitablement. L'image et la figure symbolique en sont des éléments incontournables. La culture littéraire du « fantastique » est livrée en pâture à ces représentations conceptuelles [...]

Bien qu'elle soit désormais largement admise comme fantaisiste, la thèse selon laquelle l'auteur américain de « fictions surnaturelles » (supernatural fictions) Howard Phillips Lovecraft (1880 – 1937) aurait eût de l'intérêt pour ledit surnaturel (comprendre : en dehors de celui lié à sa qualité d'écrivain), voire même qu'il aurait été un « initié », mérite toujours autant qu'on s'y attarde. En effet une nouvelle opinion, a priori plus raisonnable que la précédente mais qui en procède en fait indirectement, tend subtilement à la supplanter : si l'on en croit celle-ci, en dépit de son « matérialisme mécaniste » revendiqué, Lovecraft n'en demeurerait pas moins un « inspiré » et son œuvre en témoignerait malgré elle.

Sur quels éléments de sa fiction s'appuient ces considérations ? Comment ont-elles constituées des biais par lesquels l'occultisme a ensuite tenté d'annexer son œuvre ? Et surtout : pourquoi celle de cet auteur en particulier ?

The present essay proposes to trace a profile of Shub-Niggurath – one of the terrifying deities conceived by Howard Phillips Lovecraft – through the Moon Archetype. The first part illustrates that the double sexuality of Shub-Niggurath – who, though being a Mother Goddess of Fertility, has a more frequent masculine hypostasis, the Goat with a Thousand Young – is informed by the great myth structured upon the distinction between the whole and the part, that is to say between full moon and crescent moon, the latter isotopic with the goat horn. The second part analyses a Lovecraftian tale by the British writer Ramsey Campbell, «The Moon-Lens» (1964), which entirely concerns this deity. Beyond the double sexuality of Lovecraftian origin, the Shub-Niggurath of Campbell exhibits several repugnant and hybrid traits which are referable to the lunar law of becoming. The initiation to Shub-Niggurath experienced by the tale’s main character consists of an initiatory death in the form of a descent into the netherworld – analogous to that of the moon during the three nights of darkness – and an initiatory rebirth degraded to a blasphemous metamorphosis.

I propose to analyse the vivid resemblance between the literary works of the Russian poet-Symbolist Alexander Blok and HP Lovecraft from the perspective of their mythopoetics. Such an approach is entirely original; although scholars have studied both authors extensively, none has attempted a comparative assessment of their aesthetic worldviews. I want to address not only the writings of Blok and Lovecraft themselves, but also their extra-textual substantiality, including the evolution of Blok’s and Lovecraft’s Weltanschauung as incarnated in their heritage. My analysis proceeds in two stages. First, I classify the most significant publications on which a comparative study can be based and second, I establish the actual conception on the structural and typological levels, using primarily comparative and intertextual methods as theoretical frameworks.

Why, exactly, these two writers? Because there is a striking similarity in the depth of their world perception and in their philosophical development. Chronologically, both authors lived in the same era (the tipping point of modern history with the First World War, the Russian revolution, etc.), which can substantially explain their crucial  (i.e. eschatological) feeling of the end of time.
Given the extensiveness of this topic, I offer here only an introductory commentary. The works dedicated to Blok and Lovecraft (individually) are voluminous. Of the two, only Blok has received significant attention in both Russian and Western literary studies, largely as the key figure in the literature of the Russian fin de siècle (or Silver Age). Lovecraft’s work has remained primarily the domain of Western scholars, who have addressed his influence on modern American literature, fine art and cinema. Existing work in Russian is preoccupied with the artistic methods used in his fiction, the structure of The Cthulhu Mythos, and Lovecraft’s substantial role in American neo-Gothic culture. Comparing the poetics of the supernatural in Blok and Lovecraft’s works demands an examination of their entire oeuvre, including poetry, fiction, articles, and correspondence.

The Decadent movement of the late 19th-early 20th century has evolved from different sources, it has had a variety of forms and reflections, it has gone through several phases, but there are two things that connect them all:
• Validation of fear as a primal philosophical and aesthetical force;
• acknowledgment of the art of decay as a new cultural phenomenon.
Since then, the new, Modernist, culture was shaped in such a way that it absorbed the elements of Symbolism (primarily French), supernatural (i.e. mysticism and reframed Gnosticism, alongside other post-Hellenistic traditions), and the philosophy of pessimism (mostly established by Schopenhauer and Nietzsche), giving to the contemplative audience of the fin de siècle era an absolutely new, eschatological and irrevocable, outlook, which we could define as Neo-Gothic Decadence.
Our main task in this talk (and later, potentially, in a paper) is to reveal how the omnipresence of Neo-Gothic/Decadent ideas, reflections and thoughts has appeared—and has been manifested—in the works of H.P. Lovecraft, Arthur Machen, and Alexander Blok. Every one of them could be defined as a perfect type of a Decadent author, with different backgrounds (American/Welsh/Russian) yet similar perceptions of the artistic dynamics. All three of them were also ahead of their time with their pioneering writings (Lovecraft’s Weird/horror fiction; Machen’s Edwardian supernatural works; Alexander Blok’s mystical Symbolism).  If in case of connections between Machen and HP Lovecraft, we can definitely demonstrate the direct impact on one on the other (“Machen is a Titan—perhaps the greatest living author—and I must read everything of his”, H.P. Lovecraft wrote to Frank Belknap Long on June 3, 1923), Alexander Blok’s name from the first glance could be regarded as superfluous in this list. This view however changes if we take a careful look at Blok’s poetry, essays, and correspondence and prove that he was one of the neo-Gothic/Decadent league.

Cari amici, cari colleghi, vi ricordo che il 20 aprile scade la call for papers del seminario “All’Ombra di Innsmouth. Religioni e Miti nell’Opera di Howard Phillips Lovecraft” (Ariccia, 7-9 luglio 2022). Terzo seminario sulle “Religioni Fantastiche” promosso dal Museo delle Religioni “Raffaele Pettazzoni”.
In basso, potete trovare tutte le informazioni utili in merito.
Vi sarò grato se potrete diffondere questo promemoria nei vostri canali.

Call for papers in pdf:
https://drive.google.com/file/d/1eOSqhkrEWPhx0Jbzgmc3STqSeE1vODhH/view?usp=sharing

Partindo da leitura de três contos de H. P. Lovecraft – "Ar frio" (1926/1928), "Sonhos na Casa da Bruxa" (1932/1933) e "O assombro nas trevas" (1935/1936) – procurou-se tecer algumas considerações a respeito da representação do catolicismo na obra ficcional deste autor. Concluiu-se que a marca desta é, antes do mais, uma interessante ambiguidade.

Ensayo de divulgación con un panorama sintético de la influencia de Edgar Allan Poe en la literatura universal contemporánea, concentrándose en ciertos géneros y autores: la poesía y Baudelaire, en la obra de Herman Melville, en Julio Verne, el cuento materialista de terror y H.P. Lovecraft, la novela policial y Arthur Conan Doyle, así como el Gótico Americano de William Faulkner.

Selon Todorov, le fantastique naît de l’incertitude quant au caractère surnaturel d’un fait. Le rêve en est un ressort classique, qui soit crée ou prolonge cette incertitude (lorsqu’on ignore si l’on rêve), soit la résorbe (lorsqu’il est établi qu’on rêvait). Ce schéma se fonde sur l’idée, héritée d’une longue tradition philosophique, que le rêve ne serait qu’illusion. Or l’œuvre de Lovecraft semble à cet égard opérer une subversion qui a son manifeste dans Beyond the Wall of Sleep (1919) et The Call of Cthulhu (1926), et  dont nous examinerons les manifestations dans The  Dreams in the Witch House (1932) et The Shadow out of Time (1935).

En effet, le scepticisme rationnel n’y est pas rejeté au profit d’une approche symbolique ou mantique. Le rêve y est embrassé comme vécu par-delà l’opposition réel-imaginaire, ne devant d’être « illusoire » qu’à une méprise : on croit avoir rêvé quelque chose qui s’avère avoir été  réellement perçu, reçu télépathiquement, ou remémoré.  Ainsi le rêve n’est-il plus chez Lovecraft un facteur d’incertitude, mais de certitude, et devient-il une « preuve » de l’existence d’un arrière-monde dont l’apparence surnaturelle ne tient qu’à l’étroitesse de l’entendement humain.

Dès lors, le rêve est moins effrayant par son contenu que par ses implications, et nous verrons que son articulation à d’autres registres de faits, à la manière d’une enquête policière, s’inscrit dans une stratégie d’encerclement du protagoniste et du lecteur : si le premier voit lui échapper l’espoir d’avoir été trompé, c’est sur le second que se reporte la charge de l’incertitude, notamment à travers l’évocation finale d’un fait réel. Ainsi l’horreur s’insinue-t-elle des songes du protagoniste à sa réalité, et de celle-ci, l’espace d’un instant en forme de coup de grâce, par-delà le mur diégétique.

On November 3, 1927, H. P. Lovecraft sent a letter to his friend Wandrei. He related a dream that had impressed him with its vivacity, about a threat haunting the mountains of the Vascones. Lovecraft as a quaestor, the provincial officials and a cohort of the Twelfth Legion were in the city of Pompelo to face it. The story allows an interesting analysis from multiple points of view: the choice of the names for the characters, the chosen date, the description of the celestial vault, the peculiarities of the Vascones or a real ancient inscription that could be behind the whole plot of the dream.

ABSTRACT: Abstract: The aim of this article is to analyze the epistemological and aesthetic grounds for Lovecraft’s theory of cosmic horror. In order to make sense of the celebrated epithet applied to Lovecraft, describing him as «a literary Copernicus», what is needed is an understanding of the deep connection between his narratives and scientific images of the world, his distinctions between intellectual assent and aesthetic belief and between the mundanely gruesome and true cosmic fear, and the metaphysical assumptions that underpin his late literature.

KEY  WORDS: Aesthetic belief, cosmic horror, intellectual belief, Lovecraft, modern  thought.


RESUMEN: Las pretensiones de este artículo son desarrollar las bases estéticas y epistemológicas de la literatura de horror cósmico tal como la propuso Lovecraft, subrayando tanto su vinculación con los procedimientos de la ciencia moderna, su tesis de que lo intelectualmente concebible (y estéticamente creíble) es una variable contextual dependiente de la posición epistémica del sujeto, su distinción entre horror mórbido y horror cósmico, y su plena afiliación al género de horror metafísico.

PALABRAS  CLAVE: Asentimiento intelectual, creencia estética, horror cósmico, Lovecraft, modernidad.

One among H. P. Lovecraft’s most renowned and remarked thematic points are his peculiar and
unique monsters. Cthulhu, for example, is one of the highlighted monsters in pop culture of the 20th and 21th centuries. However, the critics usually consider only one group of these monsters as a paradigm to Lovecraft’s whole work: tentacular and gelatinous beings, whose accurate descriptions are impossible to be made. We intend with this paper to show that
Lovecraft presented, during his career, different types of monstrosities, sometimes shapeless and unnamable, and sometimes scientifically described. We intend, therefore, to list each of these monstrous categories and analyze their implications inside each work, based on the thinking of Luiz Nazário and Noël Carroll.

O presente artigo procura analisar a obra de H. P. Lovecraft e suas diversas investidas em outras mídias após sua morte. O autor experimentou nos últimos dez anos, uma espécie de renascença cultural, que começou a legitimá-lo como artista digno de figurar no cânon da alta literatura, além de ser considerado um dos mestres do gênero do horror. Desse modo, ao investigar as razões desse surpreendente renascimento de Lovecraft na esfera da chamada "alta cultura" (literatura, artes, filosofia), estaremos ao mesmo tempo buscando as motivações de seu interesse no âmbito da cultura popular e midiática, estudando as formas e apropriações como seus temas, ideias ou mesmo obras foram absorvidos pelos meios de comunicação contemporâneos.

The Theology, Religion, and Pop Culture series examines the intersection of theology, religion, and popular culture, including, but not limited to television, movies, sequential art, and genre fiction. In a world plagued by rampant polarization of every kind and the decline of religious literacy in the public square, Theology, Religion, and Pop Culture is uniquely poised to educate and entertain a diverse audience utilizing one of the few things society at large still holds in common: love for popular culture.

H. P. Lovecraft (1890 – 1937), the most important American author of Weird Fiction, is known best for creating the Cthulhu mythos: an alternative universe, reigned by monstrous Gods, in which humanity eventually became meaningless. A contemporary audience can identify with the posthuman world depicted by Lovecraft; he is credited with inventing Cosmic Horror, a genre which makes explicit the insignificance of humanity within the vastness of space. It is within this dichotomy we find the horror in Lovecraft’s stories. The protagonists of Lovecraft’s stories are frequently struck by ‘Cosmic Fear’ after encountering a supernatural scenario, turning them into impotent and insane individuals. During past decades, various boardgames, videogames and tabletop role-playing games (TRPGs) have been trying to implement the characteristic of Cosmic Horror into their game play. In 2017, the Deutsche Lovecraft Gesellschaft e.V. created FHTAGN, the latest Lovecraftian TRPG in German. FHTAGN is named after a quote from Lovecraft’s Call of Cthulhu (“Ph'nglui mglw'nafh Cthulhu R'lyeh wgah'nagl fhtagn", which can be translated as "In his house at R'lyeh, dead Cthulhu waits dreaming.") FHTAGN is partly designed on the American TRPG Call of Cthulhu by Chaosium. Both games promise to rely heavily on Lovecraft’s concept of Cosmic Horror within the game’s story world(s), as well as in the ways in which creatures and rituals are handled in the game. This article will trace the extent to which the characteristic narrative structures of Lovecraft’s oeuvre were adapted in FHTAGN in order to outline the various possibilities and limitations of such a transmedia adaptation. For instance, it will examine how the powerlessness of the protagonist in Cthulhu’s universe subverts the agency of the player and how Cosmic Horror is implemented in example scenarios from FHTAGN.

This article considers the different ethical effects of extra-terrestrial forces entering the milieu of the Earth in H. P. Lovecraft’s 1927 story “The Colour out of Space” and Alex Garland’s 2018 film Annihilation. The article first introduces Lovecraft’s concept of the “cosmic” and, following his proposition of the cosmic indifference toward the Human, identifies cosmic forces as “inhuman,” incompatible with the Human. The article then discusses the significance of anthropocentric ethics and its relatively recent critiques found in Émil Cioran’s concept of the “void” or the introduction of the spatiotemporal territory of the “Anthropocene.” The article then proposes to discuss the effects of the cosmic force in relation to Nature not as “supernatural” but as “supranatural” or “innatural.” Annihilation provides an example of inhuman yet supranatural cosmic occurrence, a proliferation of Nature. After considering the anthropocentric and cosmic significance of the motif of cancer, the article continues on to discuss its transformations of Nature, the Human, and their ethical relations. Lovecraft’s story, seen through a Marxist reading of themes of alienation, fatigue, and depletion, reveals its cosmic force to be inhuman and innatural, exemplifying the frightening materiality of capitalism itself. While both works share the premise of transformations brought by an extra-terrestrial force and exemplify how anthropocentrism affects our perception of it, each proposes vastly different effects of the intrusion.

Published November 2017 in the anthology "Horror in Space
Critical Essays on a Film Subgenre".

Looks at meteorite-horror films, such as The Blob, Monolith Monsters, Slither, Deadly Spawn, etc - how HP Lovecraft's The Colour out of Space was an influence on them, and how these films are allegory for consumerism in small towns.

Cet article vise a expliquer le lien privilegie entre la mythologie lovecraftienne et le jeu d’aventure. Au prealable, le « jeu d’aventure » est defini comme un genre videoludique permettant la reconstitution d’un recit pre-ecrit grâce a une activite du joueur concentree sur l’exploration et la resolution de problemes par le truchement d’un avatar et a un rythme independant du jeu. Ce type de jeu est distingue des jeux d’action-aventure et des jeux de role. Le lien entre ce type de jeu et Lovecraft est demontre en observant qu’environ 10% des jeux d’aventure d’horreur sont explicitement inspires de Lovecraft, et que pres de 50% des adaptations de Lovecraft sont des jeux d’aventure. Le fait que la mythologie lovecraftienne soit partiellement du domaine public pourrait expliquer son exploitation frequente. Cependant, puisque le rapport a Lovecraft et au mythe de Cthluhu n’est pas toujours mis en evidence, on doit penser qu’il ne s’agit pas d’un facteur suffisant. Des liens structurels...