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Thesis
A Dark Decaying Force: Weird Realism and Racial Hyperobjectivity in H.P. Lovecraft
University of West Florida Libraries
Master of Arts (MA), University of West Florida
2022
Abstract
The vast body of work by supernatural horror writer H.P. Lovecraft has widely influenced modern literature and reached into popular and academic culture. Despite the undeniable effect of Lovecraft’s genre-defying and defining work, his mass of letters, essays, and poetry have been widely under- or misrepresented by scholars and critics. This representation of Lovecraft—determined only by his fiction and popular poems—offers an anemic depiction of the multifaceted interests that Lovecraft explored. From astronomy, philosophy, politics, and history, Lovecraft became one of the foremost self-educated writers in American history. His essays, letters, and poetry, provide a holistic framework for approaching his widely-criticized views on race and racial politics. Through his work, personal obsessions with British antiquarianism morph into Anglophilic metaphors of ancient alien deities and draw on his fears of human insignificance: the key characteristic of Lovecraft’s cosmicism and cosmic cynicism. Lovecraft predicts Timothy Morton’s hyperobject in the way he presents race as the core producer of terror through internal and ecological degeneration, terrestrial and cosmic invasion, and individual alienation from one’s race or species. Ultimately, Lovecraft’s work creates not just a complex metaphorical world with ancient cosmic beings, clear presentations of his xenophobia, or contempt for the comma, but a “key” to the writer’s troubled life and declining psychology.
Details
- Title
- A Dark Decaying Force
- Resource Type
- Thesis
- Contributors
- David M Baulch (Advisor)Kevin M Scott (Committee Member)Kevin M Scott (Advisor)David M Baulch (Committee Member)Robin R Blyn (Committee Member)Thomas Lopez (Committee Member)Christopher S Satterwhite (Committee Member)Regina A Sakalarios-Rogers (Committee Member)David M Earle (Committee Member)Pamela Meyers (Committee Member)
- Publisher
- University of West Florida Libraries
- Format
- pdf
- Number of pages
- 63
- Copyright
- Permission granted to the University of West Florida Libraries to digitize and/or display this item for non-profit research and educational purposes. Any reuse of this item in excess of fair use or other copyright exemptions requires the permission of the copyright holder.
- Identifiers
- 99380151696906600
- Academic Unit
- English
- Language
- English
- Awarding Institution
- University of West Florida; Master of Arts (MA)
- Theses and Dissertations
- Master of Arts (MA), University of West Florida