“H. P. Lovecraft: the Maze and the Minotaur” (Volumes I and II), a scan of a 1975 PhD thesis by John Lawson Mcinnis III.

The purpose of this dissertation is to show the use of the Grecian myth of Theseus and the Minotaur in the writings of Howard Phillips Lovecraft, twentieth century American writer of fantasy and science fiction tales.

While the idea of ‘Lovecraft and the Minotaur’ may raise eyebrows today, the thesis appears to have a useful broader exploration of the related idea of ‘the maze’ in Lovecraft’s life and work. Prior to the Selected Letters, the author was able to use a Brown University thesis of 1950 to source quotes from the letters. Such as…

“No — we are not scared of the dark now, though we used to be prior to 1895 or ’96. Our grandfather cured us of this tendency by daring us (when our years numbered approximately 5) to walk through certain chains of dark rooms in the fairly capacious old house at 454 Angell. Little by little our hardihood increased.” [Lovecraft]

Within this early childhood experience may lie some of the roots of Lovecraft’s propensity for the maze, which appears here as a series of “chains of dark rooms.”

The thesis is noted on page 565 of S.T. Joshi’s Lovecraft Bibliography, where Joshi only briefly notes the challenge made to a key element of Mcinnis’s 1975 argument, that relating to “In the Walls of Eryx”. This part of the thesis was undermined just a year later, by a claim from Kenneth Sterling. Sterling — recalling an event some forty years earlier — had stated that he had been inspired toward the maze idea by an Edmond Hamilton story he had read, and that he had then presented Lovecraft with the ‘invisible maze’ idea fully-formed. The idea eventually became their co-authored science-fiction story “In the Walls of Eryx” (written 1936).