I just heard about a French conference: Presence de Lovecraft : l’illustration en question (trans.: The presence of Lovecraft: a question of illustration”), which happened in France on 13th-14th June 2013…
“Lovecraft’s works entertain an essential relationship to the very notion of illustration, for various reasons. … Lovecraft consistently managed to include in his short stories blank spaces [Such as the Necronomicon] that seem to call for continuation or illustration of his texts. [There are also many videogames, comics, films to discuss, and wider topics in adaptation of literary works …]”
Participants and programme papers, with my approximate translations…
Denis Mellier (Universite de Poitiers): “Nouvelles notes a distance 1995-2012: sur la poetique de l’exces chez Lovecraft et de quelques solutions graphiques qui lui furent appliquees” [New notes for the period 1995-2012: the poetics of Lovecraftian excess and some of the graphics solutions applied to it]
Christopher Robinson (HEC Paris): “From Necronomicon to Alien“. [Presumably about the influence of Lovecraft on Giger?]
Pierre Jailloux (Paris 8): “Presence de l’indicible: found footage et poetique Lovecraftienne”. [The presence of the unspeakable: found footage and Lovecraftian poetics]
Philippe Met (University of Pennsylvania, USA): “H.P. Lovecraft revu et corrige par Lucio Fulci”. [H.P. Lovecraft revised and corrected by Lucio Fulci]
Isabelle Perier: “Adaptation et transmedialite: Kadath, la Cite Inconnue”. [Adaptation and transmediality: Kadath the Unknown City]
Jerome Dutel (Universite Jean Monnet): “Dessiner celui qui est d’ailleurs: The Outsider (2004) de Gou Tanabe et L’atranger (1999) de Horacio Lalia”. [Drawing that which is elsewhere: on two French comics adaptations by Lalia]
Eric Lysoe (Universite Blaise Pascal): “”The strange and disturbing Asian paintings of Nicholas Roerich”: le referent pictural et ses fonctions dans At the Mountains of Madness“. [“The strange and disturbing Asian paintings of Nicholas Roerich”: the pictorial references and their function in At the Mountains of Madness“]
Julien Schuh (Universite Reims Champagne-Ardenne): “L’empreinte : reproduction, transposition, adaptation chez Lovecraft”. [The footprint: transferring and adapting Lovecraft]
Remi Cayatte (Universite de Lorraine): “H.P. Lovecraft: acteur majeur de la culture populaire moderne”. [H.P. Lovecraft: a major figure in modern popular culture]
Roger Bozetto (Universite de Provence): “De l’imagine a l’inimaginable”. [To imagine the unimaginable]
Karen Vergnol-Remont (Universite Blaise Pascal): “Howard Philips Lovecraft: un auteur dont le génie inspire”. [Howard Philips Lovecraft: an author inspired by genius]
Arnaud Moussart (Universite Jean Monnet): “Night Gaunts de Brett Rutherford: entre illustration et (re)creation”. [The Night Gaunts of Brett Rutherford: between illustration and (re)creation]
Round-table discussion with Nicolas Fructus, Gilles Francescano and Philippe Jozelon.
Hi, here is some information that might interest you, on how HPL arrived in France and on how, after knowing the success here he came back to his country with honor and pride.
It’s an article (often cited by S.T Joshi in some of his books) by Paul R.Michaud in the Providence Evening Bulletin 108, N° 302 (29th December 1970), 12 “In Paris, Lovecraft lives”.
This article is very important because it’s really the discovery here in France, by the future founder of Necronomicon Press (with his brother Marc R. Michaud), of Lovecraft. It is announcing his ‘return home’, and the beginning of Lovecraft scholarship in America which was becoming confident at that time.
A funny thing is that the article per se is full of errors concerning HPL, errors that were brought to Paul R. Michaud by Jacques Bergier (a little bit of a mythosmaniac). We will have to wait for the Lovecraft studies or the publications, and the big diffusion of the letters and testimonies of HPL friends, to get closer of the truth regarding HPL life. France ‘lost the lead’ on Lovecraft studies (if we ever had it) in the 80’s, when the US researchers got more deeply involved in HPL and with more access to people, of course. But all began with Arkham Press which maintained HPL in a sort of “artificial coma” (being a private editing house, with a few readers) and the help of fanzine publication and little books about the master, then boosted by Necronomicon Press in the 80/90’s, then the Internet came.
I have begun a page on my blog here:
http://innsmouthmania.blogspot.fr/2013/07/lovecraft-une-aventure-litteraire-en.html
This will grow in the coming days, as I want to include all items regarding HPL in France (beginning in 1954, by the 1960s practically all of HPL’s fiction was published in France). The translations and editions of his books, but also the newspaper article references, the French fanzines, games, movies, music, etc.
So it will take time, but I have include my friends of the French wiki dedicated to HPL for the necessary searches.
Amitiés,
Robert.
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