Category Archives: Scholarly works

Added to Open Lovecraft

28 Friday Feb 2020

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Added to the Open Lovecraft page on this blog…

* J. E. Stephens, “The Expert as Character in the Work of Le Fanu and Lovecraft: Spirituality, Empiricism, and Rationality”, B.A. degree dissertation for the University of Arizona, December 2019.

* G. Harman, “Horror of Phenomenology: Lovecraft and Husserl”, Philosophy, Ethics, Religious Studies, #5, 2019. (In Russian. Drawing on and presenting in Russian some of the Lovecraftian ideas of Graham Harman, relating to Lovecraft, the object and its ‘objectivity’. Appears to be a translation of a text by Harman?)

And not yet on the page, but set for release to open access in December 2020, “The Geography of Horror: Lovecraft’s (Re)construction of New England”.

Call: Papers on the Fantastic

26 Wednesday Feb 2020

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The Northeast Alliance for Scholarship on the Fantastic and the Allied Fantastic Areas (NAS-FAFA?) is calling for papers for a conference at Southern New Hampshire University, in October 2020. Deadline: 1st June 2020. The venue is said to be “two hours from Providence”, by American reckoning of such things.

1) Specifically they want new papers that highlight ‘Wonder and the Marvellous’…

the more positive aspects of the fantastic genre … texts that bring about a sense of wonder in their receivers through their representation of the marvellous

Which seems to fit Lovecraft’s Dreamlands tales, and opens the door for a rare appreciation of tales such as “Iranon”, “The Cats of Ulthar”, and even “Hypnos”, or a survey of the quite extensive influence of his Dreamlands in rock music and comics from circa 1966-1986. “Hypnos”, especially, has been curiously neglected by critics. For instance, neither Joshi or Klinger have annotated it despite its rich vein of references and allusions. But I have an annotated version about 70% done, which will fill that gap, and which may perhaps be released for Lovecraft’s 2020 birthday.

2) The other part of the call is for ‘Monsters & the Monstrous’. But specifically papers on the scariness of such things, and how in devising such scariness an artist can draw on other traditions…

the things, whether mundane or marvelous, that scare us [discussed in papers which offer] fresh explorations into [how creatives have drawn on and transformed] texts from various countries, time periods, and media.

Which may offer some possibilities for paper on Lovecraft’s uses of the Classical tradition, and Lovecraft’s creative transformation of his fear of seeing the tradition’s dissolution in the face of modernity.

“I hope it will not make it utterly un-decipherable to you…”

20 Thursday Feb 2020

Posted by in Lovecraftian arts, New books, Odd scratchings, Scholarly works

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Some of Lovecraft’s best poetry, now ably translated into Spanish. The leading Spanish newspaper El Pais has a review of the new volume.

Lovecraft is a prophet of human insignificance in the cosmos, yet Garcia Roman finally decides that one of the tonal keys to Lovecraft’s poetry is that… “The poems show an author of maturity. One who is less pessimistic … If Lovecraft opened any doors to hope, he did so in his verses.”

Journal: Gramarye

15 Saturday Feb 2020

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I’d overlooked a book in summer 2019, Shapeshifters: A History. A short, but seemingly sound, historical survey of this cultural phenomenon. There appear to be no journal reviews of it, but then these days journal editors are increasingly refusing to review titles not published by a university or prestige press.

But looking for such a review led me to discover a new journal I wasn’t aware of, Gramarye: The Journal of the Chichester Centre for Fairy Tales, Fantasy and Speculative Fiction from the University of Chichester in the south of England.

It has produced 16 issues so far, balancing articles with a healthy crop of reviews.

The latest Gramarye is issue 16 and has “In Search of Jenny Greenteeth” by Simon Young and “‘A Fairy, or Else an Insect’: Traditions at Fairy Wells” by Jeremy Harte, both topics on which I mused a couple of years ago (“On Jenny Green-teeth”, “‘Lady Wells’ in the High Peak”, “Mothlach”, and “On The Butts, Baggins, and Butterflies”). The same issue also has the review of Shapeshifters: A History.

As such I’m inclined to get No.16, but… it’s not on Amazon in either ebook or paper. It’s available from the university, but instead of a simple PayPal connection the eager buyer goes to one of those annoying clunky “sign-up before you can buy” shopping-carts. Which it appears only takes credit-cards. Then, a departmental assistant manually emails you the purchased PDFs. It’s not ideal.

It’s a pity that departmental journals are not also assigned an ‘impact rating’, in the same manner as a dept’s scholarly article-output. Such a official rating (which affects their taxpayer income) might chivvy up the publicity and distribution for such journals, and see a few summer interns or apprentices assigned to tasks such as getting them all on Amazon as ebooks. But of course the ideal in terms of ‘impact’ would be a big crowd-funder which would ‘buy out’ all the back-issues and make them open access, and then for a small legacy or bequest to ensure the journal continues to be open access.

Anyway, nothing very ‘Lovecraft’ except tangentially in some of the reviews. But other items of interest to me in other issues of Gramarye:

#14. ‘From Ogre to Woodlouse: A Journey through Names’, Jeremy Harte. [Presumably on the noted Gawain word ‘woodwose’].
#13. ‘Tolkien’s style’, Colin Manlove.
#6. ‘The American Fantasy Tradition’, Tom Shippey.

Shippey has always been a bit sniffy about Howard’s Conan, so it would be interesting to see his take on that aspect of fantasy and its place in the American tradition.

A two-year subscription to the PDF version of Gramarye is £20, about $26. The paper edition is not much more. It appears you can’t back-date a subscription and have it start from, say, #13.

Journal: Fantasy Art and Studies

14 Friday Feb 2020

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New to me, a regular scholarly journal on Fantasy Art and Studies, which has already reached seven issues. Mostly in French, but the editors appear to try to have at least one English article in each issue. It looks robust and sound, for instance with an R.E. Howard translation in the Spring 2019 ‘Pop Norse’ issue. The latest issue is on Arthurian works.

They have a current Call for texts and illustrations for an issue on Animaux Fabuleux / Fabulous Animals / Amazing Beasts. Which might perhaps lend itself to an illustrated study of the creatures of Lovecraft’s Dreamlands, and perhaps also the tightly integrated extension of such in The House of the Worm (1975).

The Mythic, the Fantastic, and the Alien

13 Thursday Feb 2020

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The Mythopoeic Society’s scholarly Mythcon 51 is a hot ticket! No really, it’ll be hot. Hot as in… Albuquerque, New Mexico, from 31st July – 3rd August 2020. Although the place is apparently at a high altitude, which means it won’t also be humid. The 2020 theme is “The Mythic, the Fantastic, and the Alien”, which opens it to musings on Lovecraft and his circle. Registration is now open, but no call for papers yet.

Discovering H.P. Lovecraft in review

02 Sunday Feb 2020

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Under their Black Wings has a useful overview review of Discovering H.P. Lovecraft, edited by Darrell Schweitzer, with a focus on “The Derleth Mythos” by Richard L. Tierney.

For those looking for a paper copy I’d add that you should know that there was a “revised and expanded” edition in 2001, so be sure not to get the earlier edition from eBay. Also that the revised edition is now in a budget £3.80 Kindle ebook.