The Annotated Supernatural Horror in Literature

The Annotated Supernatural Horror in Literature PDF Author: H. P. Lovecraft
Publisher:
ISBN:
Category : Fiction
Languages : en
Pages : 182

Book Description
Lovecraft's 'Supernatural horror in literature', first published in 1927, is a historical survey of horror literature, with insights into the nature, development and history of the weird tale. Lovecraft discusses horror writing in the Renaissance, the first Gothic novels of the late 18th century, the revolutionary importance of Edgar Allen Poe, the work of figures such as Nathaniel Hawthorne, Ambrose Bierce and William Hope Hodgson and the four 'modern masters' of the time - Arthur Machen, Lord Dunsany, Algernon Blackwood and M.R. James. In this annotated edition, S.T. Joshi has provided commentary on many points.

Supernatural Horror in Literature

Supernatural Horror in Literature PDF Author: H. P. Lovecraft
Publisher: The Palingenesis Project (Wermod and Wermod Publishing Group)
ISBN: 1909606006
Category : Literary Criticism
Languages : en
Pages : 212

Book Description
Originally published in 1927 in a small-circulation amateur magazine, spanning the period from antiquity until the 1930s, and covering both the Anglo-American world and Continental Europe, Lovecraft’s essay remains unparallelled as a survey of horror literature in our hemisphere. Said literature’s emergence as a genre coincided with the institutional establishment of liberalism, which represents a diametrically opposed worldview. This would suggest that horror literature, even if inadvertently or subconsciously, represents an attempt at escaping the limitations of the secular, materialist, rationalist Weltanschauung of liberal modernity, as well as a desire for meaning in a world rendered meaningless through ‘liberation’ from hierarchies, folk traditions, the occult, and the supernatural. Also of interest is the fact that the aesthetics of Gothic horror are invariably and luxuriantly beautiful (if in a dark way), whereas the logical extreme of rationality (utilitarianism, standardisation) is inherently anti-aesthetic. Would this not indicate, then, that the Age of Reason marked the beginning of a process that concluded in late modernity with the wholesale destruction of beauty, except where it, or the counterfeiting of it, was dictated by economic necessity? If so, we may view Lovecraft’s essay not merely as a resource for those seeking entertainment within a genre of literature, but also a map for those seeking to escape, and begin to transcend, the despair engendered by a worldview that pronounced itself dead when someone spoke of ‘the end of history’.

Supernatural Horror in Literature

Supernatural Horror in Literature PDF Author: H. P. Lovecraft
Publisher: Prabhat Prakashan
ISBN:
Category : Self-Help
Languages : en
Pages : 74

Book Description
"Supernatural Horror in Literature" is a 28,000 word essay by American writer H. P. Lovecraft, surveying the development and achievements of horror fiction as the field stood in the 1920s.

Supernatural Horror in Literature (Annotated Edition)

Supernatural Horror in Literature (Annotated Edition) PDF Author: H P Lovecraft
Publisher:
ISBN:
Category :
Languages : en
Pages : 118

Book Description
"Supernatural Horror in Literature" is a 28,000 word essay by American writer H. P. Lovecraft, surveying the development and achievements of horror fiction as the field stood in the 1920s and 30s.

Supernatural Horror in Literature Annotated

Supernatural Horror in Literature Annotated PDF Author: Howard Phillips Lovecraft
Publisher: Independently Published
ISBN:
Category :
Languages : en
Pages : 106

Book Description
Supernatural Horror in Literature is a 28,000 word essay by American writer H. P. Lovecraft, surveying the development and achievements of horror fiction as the field stood in the 1920s and 30s. The essay was researched and written between November 1925 and May 1927, first published in August 1927, and then revised and expanded during 1933-1934.

Supernatural Horror in Literature

Supernatural Horror in Literature PDF Author: H. Lovecraft
Publisher: Createspace Independent Publishing Platform
ISBN: 9781727215182
Category :
Languages : en
Pages : 136

Book Description
SUPERNATURAL HORROR IN LITERATURE is the seminal essay by Horror writer H. P. Lovecraft. This work is arguably the best exposition ever written for the Horror genre of Literature, and is a must-read for anyone even remotely interested in studies of the all dark literature.

Supernatural Horror in Literature-Original Edition(Annotated)

Supernatural Horror in Literature-Original Edition(Annotated) PDF Author: H P Lovecraft
Publisher:
ISBN:
Category :
Languages : en
Pages : 118

Book Description
"Supernatural Horror in Literature" is a 28,000 word essay by American writer H. P. Lovecraft, surveying the development and achievements of horror fiction as the field stood in the 1920s and 30s.

Supernatural Horror in Literature

Supernatural Horror in Literature PDF Author: H. P. Lovecraft
Publisher:
ISBN: 9781945032219
Category :
Languages : en
Pages :

Book Description
Supernatural Horror in Literature, H.P. Lovecraft's "master's thesis," is a tour de force of literary analysis, tracing the origins of the horror genre back to its origins and beyond. In it, Lovecraft starts with humanity's earliest days and traces horror-lit through the centuries from Horace Walpole through Mary Wollstonecraft, to Algernon Blackwood and Arthur Machen, and on into the present day.

New Directions in Supernatural Horror Literature

New Directions in Supernatural Horror Literature PDF Author: Sean Moreland
Publisher: Springer
ISBN: 3319954776
Category : Literary Criticism
Languages : en
Pages : 286

Book Description
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.

Supernatural Horror in Literature

Supernatural Horror in Literature PDF Author: H. P. Lovecraft
Publisher: Createspace Independent Pub
ISBN: 9781500499457
Category : Literary Criticism
Languages : en
Pages : 72

Book Description
Supernatural Horror in Literature H. P. Lovecraft The Most Important Essay on Horror Literature"Supernatural Horror in Literature" is a long essay by the celebrated horror writer H. P. Lovecraft surveying the field of horror fiction. It was written between November 1925 and May 1927 and revised in 1933–1934. It was first published in 1927 in the one-shot magazine The Recluse. More recently, it was included in the collection Dagon and Other Macabre Tales.Lovecraft examines the roots of weird fiction in the gothic novel (relying heavily on Edith Birkhead's 1921 survey The Tale of Terror), and traces its development through such writers as Nathaniel Hawthorne, Edgar Allan Poe (who merits his own chapter), and Ambrose Bierce. Lovecraft names as the four "modern masters" of horror Arthur Machen, Lord Dunsany, Algernon Blackwood and M. R. James.An H. P. Lovecraft Encyclopedia calls the work "HPL's most significant literary essay and one of the finest historical analyses of horror literature." Upon reading the essay, M. R. James proclaimed Lovecraft's style "most offensive." However, Edmund Wilson, who was not an admirer of Lovecraft's fiction, praised the essay as a "really able piece of work...he had read comprehensively in this field — he was strong on the Gothic novelists — and writes about it with much intelligence".[4] David G. Hartwell has called "Supernatural Horror in Literature" " the most important essay on horror literature".THE OLDEST and strongest emotion of mankind is fear, and the oldest and strongest kind of fear is fear of the unknown. These facts few psychologists will dispute, and their admitted truth must establish for all time the genuineness and dignity of the weirdly horrible tale as a literary form. Against it are discharged all the shafts of a materialistic sophistication which clings to frequently felt emotions and external events, and of a naively insipid idealism which deprecates the aesthetic motive and calls for a didactic literature to “uplift” the reader toward a suitable degree of smirking optimism. But in spite of all this opposition the weird tale has survived, developed, and attained remarkable heights of perfection; founded as it is on a profound and elementary principle whose appeal, if not always universal, must necessarily be poignant and permanent to minds of the requisite sensitiveness.The appeal of the spectrally macabre is generally narrow because it demands from the reader a certain degree of imagination and a capacity for detachment from everyday life. Relatively few are free enough from the spell of the daily routine to respond to tappings from outside, and tales of ordinary feelings and events, or of common sentimental distortions of such feelings and events, will always take first place in the taste of the majority; rightly, perhaps, since of course these ordinary matters make up the greater part of human experience. But the sensitive are always with us, and sometimes a curious streak of fancy invades an obscure corner of the very hardest head; so that no amount of rationalisation, reform, or Freudian analysis can quite annul the thrill of the chimney-corner whisper or the lonely wood. There is here involved a psychological pattern or tradition as real and as deeply grounded in mental experience as any other pattern or tradition of mankind; coeval with the religious feeling and closely related to many aspects of it, and too much a part of our innermost biological heritage to lose keen potency over a very important, though not numerically great, minority of our species.