New Directions in Supernatural Horror Literature : The Critical Influence of H. P. Lovecraft

This collection of essays examines the legacy of H.P. Lovecraft's most important critical work, Supernatural Horror in Literature . Each chapter illuminates a crucial aspect of Lovecraft's criticism, from its aesthetic, philosophical and literary sources, to its psychobiological underpinnings, to its pervasive influence on the conception and course of horror and weird literature through the twentieth and early twenty-first centuries. These essays investigate the meaning of cosmic horror before and after Lovecraft, explore his critical relevance to contemporary social science, feminist and queer readings of his work, and ultimately reveal Lovecraft's importance for contemporary speculative philosophy, film and literature. Dedication 5 Acknowledgments 6 Contents 7 Notes on Contributors 9 Chapter 1: Introduction: The Critical (After)Life of Supernatural Horror in Literature 12 Section I: “The Oldest and Strongest Emotion”: The Psychology of Cosmic Horror 21 Chapter 2: The Birth of Cosmic Horror from the S(ub)lime of Lucretius 22 Cosmic Horror: A Terrible Sublime 22 Ghosts and Goulds: Cosmic Horror Before Lovecraft 23 A Morbid Metaphysics: Lovecraftian Cosmic Horror 27 “To Resuscitate the Dead Art”: Howard Lovecraft, Re-animator! 29 “We Survey a Dead Monster”: Lovecraft, Addison, and the Lucretian Sublime 33 The Cancer of Superstition: Lucretius’s Bastards 36 Magna Mat(t)er: Lucretius’s Dismorphmythic Materials 42 The Consolation of (Cosmic) Philosophy 43 Chapter 3: The Evolution of Horror: A Neo-Lovecraftian Poetics 52 Introduction: Lovecraft, Horror, and Naturalistic Psychology 52 “The Oldest and Strongest Emotion”: On the Evolution of Fear and Horror 53 “A Curious Streak of Fancy”: On Hyperactive Agency Detection 59 “A Vast Residuum of ... Inherited Associations”: Phobia and Monsters 61 “The Appeal ... Is Generally Narrow”: On the Audience for Weird and Horror 63 Conclusion 65 Chapter 4: Ansky’s The Dybbuk, Freud’s Future of an Illusion, Watson’s “Little Albert,” and Supernatural Horror in Literature 70 Introduction 70 Psychology and Psychologists in Lovecraft’s Writings 71 Watson, Pavlov, Freud, Jung, and Lovecraft 74 Lovecraft, Literature, and the Hypothetical “Racial Unconscious” 76 Ansky’s The Dybbuk: How It Came to Be 78 The Dybbuk: The Drama and the Many Lives It Lived 80 Conclusion 82 Chapter 5: Gazing Upon “The Daemons of Unplumbed Space” with H. P. Lovecraft and Stephen King: Theorizing Horror and Cosmic Terror 85 Lovecraft’s SHL and King’s Danse Macabre 86 “The Call of Cthulhu” and “Nyarlathotep” 89 “The Mist” 93 Section II: “A Literature of Cosmic Fear”: Lovecraft, Criticism, and Literary History 106 Chapter 6: “Lothly Thinges Thai Weren Alle”: Imagining Horror in the Late Middle Ages 107 The Prick of Conscience: An Early Horror Text? 110 Violence, Pain, and Other Paradoxical Pleasures 114 Art-Horror and Medieval Emotion Machines 120 Chapter 7: Lovecraft’s Debt to Dandyism 133 Part 1: Lovecraft’s Personal Investment in the Persona of the British Gentleman 134 Part 2: Lovecraft’s Connection to Brummellian Dandyism 140 Part 3: Lovecraft’s Insight into Literary Dandyism 145 Chapter 8: Lovecraft and the Titans: A Critical Legacy 160 Lovecraft Reads the Titans 161 Lovecraft’s Later Views of the Titans 166 Contemporary Views of the Titans 170 Works Cited 175 Chapter 9: Reception Claims in Supernatural Horror in Literature and the Course of Weird Fiction 176 The Soundest Readers 177 Publishing Outsiders 180 Cracks in the Shell 182 The Troubling of Consensus 183 Commodification, Slippage, and the Erosion of Meaning 187 Section III: “The True Weird”: (Re)Defining the Weird 193 Chapter 10: Bizarre Epistemology, Bizarre Subject: A Definition of Weird Fiction 194 Chapter 11: Speaking the Unspeakable: Women, Sex, and the Dismorphmythic in Lovecraft, Angela Carter, Caitlín R. Kiernan, and Beyond 212 H. P. Lovecraft, Sex, and Women 214 Biography and Sources 215 Miscegenation and Fishy Folk 218 Angela Carter Demythologises 220 Caitlín R. Kiernan 225 She Walks in Shadows (2015) 229 Conclusion 232 Chapter 12: Weird Cinema and the Aesthetics of Dread 238 Horror, the Literary Weird, and the “Lovecraftian” 239 Weird Cinema 242 The Aesthetics of Dread 247 Conclusion: Experiences in the Unreal 252 Chapter 13: Paranoia, Panic, and the Queer Weird 256 Homophobia, Decadence, and “The Hound” 265 Lovecraft’s Freud and Supernatural Horror in Literature as Fantasy 274 Index 282 Front Matter ....Pages i-xiii Introduction: The Critical (After)Life of Supernatural Horror in Literature (Sean Moreland)....Pages 1-9 Front Matter ....Pages 11-11 The Birth of Cosmic Horror from the S(ub)lime of Lucretius (Sean Moreland)....Pages 13-42 The Evolution of Horror: A Neo-Lovecraftian Poetics (Mathias Clasen)....Pages 43-60 Ansky’s The Dybbuk, Freud’s Future of an Illusion, Watson’s “Little Albert,” and Supernatural Horror in Literature (Sharon Packer)....Pages 61-75 Gazing Upon “The Daemons of Unplumbed Space” with H. P. Lovecraft and Stephen King: Theorizing Horror and Cosmic Terror (Alissa Burger)....Pages 77-97 Front Matter ....Pages 99-99 “Lothly Thinges Thai Weren Alle”: Imagining Horror in the Late Middle Ages (Helen Marshall)....Pages 101-126 Lovecraft’s Debt to Dandyism (Vivian Ralickas)....Pages 127-153 Lovecraft and the Titans: A Critical Legacy (S. T. Joshi)....Pages 155-170 Reception Claims in Supernatural Horror in Literature and the Course of Weird Fiction (John Glover)....Pages 171-187 Front Matter ....Pages 189-189 Bizarre Epistemology, Bizarre Subject: A Definition of Weird Fiction (Michael Cisco)....Pages 191-208 Speaking the Unspeakable: Women, Sex, and the Dismorphmythic in Lovecraft, Angela Carter, Caitlín R. Kiernan, and Beyond (Gina Wisker)....Pages 209-234 Weird Cinema and the Aesthetics of Dread (Brian R. Hauser)....Pages 235-252 Paranoia, Panic, and the Queer Weird (Brian Johnson)....Pages 253-278 Back Matter ....Pages 279-286 This collection of essaysexamines the legacy of H.P. Lovecraft’s most important critical work, __Supernatural Horror in Literature__. Each chapter illuminates a crucial aspect of Lovecraft’s criticism, from its aesthetic, philosophical and literary sources, to its psychobiological underpinnings, to its pervasive influence on the conception and course of horror and weird literature through the twentieth and early twenty-first centuries. These essays investigate the meaning of cosmic horror before and after Lovecraft, explore his critical relevance to contemporary social science, feminist and queer readings of his work, and ultimately reveal Lovecraft’s importance for contemporary speculative philosophy, film and literature.