More Open Lovecraft

12 Saturday Jan 2013

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New additions to my Open Lovecraft page…

* Cecile Colin (2012), “La maison hantee dans l’oeuvre de H.P. Lovecraft: l’homme, la mort, l’univers”, Transatlantica, 1, 2012. (In French. Part of the crime pulps special issue of Transatlantica. Title in English: “The Haunted House in the work of H.P. Lovecraft: man, death, and the universe”. Freely available mid Dec – mid Jan 2013, but since redacted? A link to the corrupted PDF is included here, in the hope the error is simply technical in nature).

* Rachel Mizsei Ward (2010), “Plushies, My Little Cthulhu and Chibithulu : The Transformation of H.P. Lovecraft’s Cthulhu from Horrific Body to Cute Body”. Presented at Cine Excess IV: International Conference on Cult Film Traditions, Brunel University (UK), April 2010.

* Didier Kahn (2005), “La question de la palingenesie, de Paracelse a H.P. Lovecraft en passant par Joseph Du Chesne, Agrippa d’Aubigne et quelques autres, Journee Francois Secret : Les Muses Secretes : Kabbale, alchimie et litterature a la Renaissance, Verona Italy, 2005. (In French. English title: “The question of palingenesis [i.e., reincarnation, and] Paracelsus in H.P. Lovecraft…” Summary at HAL: “In this short history of early modern palingenesis [western beliefs in reincarnation] experiences, we discuss in depth the conceptions of Paracelsus and Joseph Du Chesne before turning to the literary fortune of palingenesis, notably in Agrippa d’Aubigne’s Les Tragiques, but also in a work by H.P. Lovecraft inspired by the seventeenth-century alchemist Pierre Borel.”).

Lovecraft and the Middle Ages

12 Saturday Jan 2013

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Interesting new essay on Lovecraft, sadly imprisoned in an $80 academic book…

Brantley L. Bryant, “H.P. Lovecraft’s “Unnamable” Middle Ages”, in: Daniel T. Kline (ed.), Medieval Afterlives in Popular Culture (New Middle Ages), Palgrave, Dec 2012.

“examines the hidden influence of the medieval world on H.P. Lovecraft. […] While researching for the essay, Bryant read extensively through Lovecraft’s published criticism and correspondence to find medieval “afterlives” in the work of an author not usually connected with the Middle Ages.”

Another source for Mountains

02 Wednesday Jan 2013

Posted by in Historical context, New discoveries

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While browsing the Economist‘s Xmas issue I came across an unlikely-but-excellent article on Hell. Thanks to this article I also found a nugget that sounds very similar to the ending of At The Mountains of Madness…

“The Trojan hero Aeneas in Virgil’s Aeneid toured Hades [Hell], with difficulty enough, and [while there] he merely glanced towards Tartarus [the prison of the defeated gods], glimpsing a high cliff with a castle below it surrounded by a torrent of flame. That single sighting fixed him to the spot in terror.”

Very similar to Danforth’s final backward glance (in which he presumably glimpses Kadath), I thought. As far as I can tell, no-one’s spotted this possible source before. It suggests there may be further links between the Aeneid and Mountains.

History of Supernatural Fiction in 2 vols.

19 Wednesday Dec 2012

Posted by in Historical context, New books, Scholarly works

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PS Publishing’s website has is taking orders for S.T. Joshi’s monumental new work Unutterable Horror – a History of Supernatural Fiction, Volume 1: From Gilgamesh to the End of the Nineteenth Century, and Unutterable Horror – a History of Supernatural Fiction, Volume 2: The Twentieth and Twenty-first Centuries. £35 each, in hardcover.

 [ Hat-tip: S.T. Joshi’s blog ]

Open Lovecraft additions

15 Saturday Dec 2012

Posted by in Scholarly works

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New additions to the Open Lovecraft page:

* Hannes Storhaug-Meyer (2010), The Morphology of the Unknown : the narrative technique of Howard Philips Lovecraft (Masters degree dissertation, University of Oslo)

* Elizabeth A. Clendinning and Kathleen McAuley (2010), “The Call of Cthulhu : narrativity of the cult in metal”, IN: The Metal Void: First Gatherings, Inter-Disciplinary Press, 2010.