English Language and Literature
Total Page：16
File Type：pdf, Size：1020Kb
Masaryk University Faculty of Arts Department of English and American Studies English Language and Literature Jan Zbořil H. P. Lovecraft and the Cthulhu Mythos Master‘s Diploma Thesis Supervisor: doc. Michael Matthew Kaylor, PhD. 2015 I declare that I have worked on this thesis independently, using only the primary and secondary sources listed in the bibliography. …………………………………………….. Author‘s signature 2 Acknowledgements I would like to thank my supervisor, Supervisor: doc. Michael Matthew Kaylor, PhD, for his patience and understanding. 3 Table of Contents Introduction 5 1. The Author 7 1.1 Biography 8 1.2 Dreams and Horrors 16 1.3 Philosophy 19 2. Cthulhu Mythos 23 2.1 Fear of the Unknown 33 2.2 Religion 36 2.3 Necronomicon 39 2.4 Beings 47 2.5 Tales 48 2.5.1 ―The Call of Cthulhu‖ 49 2.5.2 ―The Dunwich Horror‖ 54 2.5.3 At the Mountains of Madness 58 2.5.4 The Shadow over Innsmouth 61 Conclusion 65 Works cited 68 4 Introduction In comparison to my BA thesis which dealt with the most critical and crucial differences between Stephen King‘s Shining and Stanley Kubrick‘s famous movie adaptation, I have decided to deal solely with works of a single man, coincidentally Stephen King‘s predecessor and virtually his mentor, Howard Phillips Lovecraft, who is by some considered to be the most essential literary writer of the horror genre, and the leading author of and on the supernatural fiction of the 20th century. One of the aims of the following is to examine Lovecraft‘s personal life, upbringing and interests, as well as the development of his relationships with others, and to strive to postulate what has lead to his renown. Some of the secondary sources will shine a light on the development of Lovecraft‘s youth, and can provide not only Lovecraft‘s own notes, scraps, and even descriptions of his dreams and nightmares, but also specific catalysts and inspirations throughout his life, from melancholy and pessimism influencing directly his ways of writing style and storytelling, to his delicate sense for the primal fear of the unknown, or the hunt for forbidden esoteric knowledge, so abundantly used in his tales. I would also like to briefly describe his literary philosophies like Cosmicism and apathetic agnosticism, which are used frequently not only in his works, but also in many of his letters to close friends, for example Robert E. Howard or August Derleth, with whom he began a wider circle of writers corresponding together, most of which later started adding stories to the Cthulhu Mythos. I will also examine Lovecraft‘s personal psychological problems, and the influence of his dreams and nightmares on both his life and literary works, with detailed description of his affliction. The first part then finishes with the analysis of Lovecraft‘s opinions and philosophies, mainly in the context of his literary creation. 5 In the second and main part of the work I will explore Lovecraft‘s most famous creation, the world of the Cthulhu Mythos itself. Firstly, I will analyze the Mythos in depth along with its origins and development, concentrate on certain elements and patterns of Lovecraft‘s world-building that are shared by most of his stories, and examine Lovecraft‘s opinion on fear and its direct use and causality in literature. Lovecraft‘s relationship with religion and its influence on his works, or lack thereof, will also be evaluated. I will then examine an artefact of the forbidden lore long forgotten belonging to the Mythos, the Necronomicon, and map its development throughout Lovecraft‘s works in detail. The final part of the work focuses on the close analysis of several of the stories of the Cthulhu Mythos. I will only work with Lovecraft‘s own stories, disregarding the works of the other members of the Lovecraft circle, specifically some of the ―Cthulhu Mythos‖ cycle of his bibliography. Due to author‘s preference for writing short stories rather than novels, I will concentrate on the essential stories of the Mythos upon which the core of the research will be build. I will moreover briefly examine some of the Lovecraftian entities in the analysis of the stories, as they are an integral part of the Mythos. 6 1. The Author A person of legendary status, considered by many to be the creator of the modern horror genre, and the true master of the fear of the unknown, Lovecraft is considered an expert of the written word as well, as his domain was the purple prose, almost taking pleasure in enlarging on progressively more and more congested overly long and descriptive paragraphs, employing infrequently used and rare words, constructing a unique and memorable atmosphere. He is widely considered possibly the greatest of all writers of horror fiction and the macabre, on a par with Edgar Allan Poe himself, a person whom he admired for his entire life. Many critics doubt Lovecraft‘s genius and consider his works to fall short, and he is sometimes criticized for artistic imbalance, characterless style, or topical simplicity. Lovecraft‘s playfulness with language, however, breathes life into his works, a distinct, deeper and more personalized atmosphere. While his name may not be as widely known among the general public, many authors admire Lovecraft and were directly influenced and inspired by him. Lovecraft was an antiquarian recluse and he loved books above all things, even over the people around him, which is probably the reason he was so literate and capable of being so overly verbose. Even so, it is notable that Lovecraft is one of the most overlooked American authors of the horror literature. Nevertheless, his creations became the symbol of the weird and terrifying, such as Cthulhu, a cosmic entity of unimaginable and seemingly limitless power lying in wait in the ruins of a sunken city at the bottom of the South Pacific Ocean, and the legendary Necronomicon, a grimoire of dark powers bound in human skin, containing forbidden knowledge man was not meant to know. 7 Most of his stories take place in a single universe, sharing fictional locations, slightly twisted laws of nature, beings and even gods created by Lovecraft, and constructing a single unified cosmos. 1.1 Biography Howard Phillips Lovecraft has with time become the leading writers of weird fiction. Most of his life is described in various works, although the richest sources are Lovecraft‘s own letters. As such, what follows will work closely with the Selected Letters to map his life, his personality, his life perspective, and the development of his stories and ideas. Lovecraft was a very keen writer of personal letters, and was known for writing sometimes even more than twenty letters a day. This will be followed by the writings of Sunand Tryambak Joshi, mainly I Am Providence: The Life and Times of H. P. Lovecraft, which is a revision of Joshi‘s previous biography A Dreamer And A Visionary; H. P. Lovecraft In His Time, which is considered by many the definitive Lovecraft biography. Lovecraft was born on August 20, 1890 in Providence, Rhode Island, to Winfield Scott Lovecraft, a travelling salesman of rare jewels and precious metals, who worked for Gorham & Co., Silversmiths, of Providence, and Sarah Susan Lovecraft, a daughter of Whipple Van Buren Phillips, a wealthy American industrialist. Lovecraft always considered his parentage important and persistently tried to discover whatever he could about his ancestry (Providence 10). As such, he revelled in the idea of being a member of the English gentry, as through his maternal side he could trace his roots to 17th century, directly to the Massachusetts Bay Colony. According to Joshi, the name Lovecroft could be traced to the middle of the 15th century; however, whether the name was actually related to the writer himself is debated (Providence 1). Lovecraft was 8 always very keen to maintain racial purity, and quite fond of ascertaining his ancestry, which was ―of unmixed English gentry‖ (Providence 6). Nevertheless, it was noted by Joshi that it is very possible that Lovecraft had merely fantasized and ‗wished‘ for his noble ancestry to be true rather than there being any factual evidence. This may had been one of the causes of his racialist tendencies, formulating views on racial division in the age of fifteen, and keeping prejudices for most of his life (Providence 55). In 1983, his father suffered from an illness that impelled him to be moved to the Butler Hospital, where he later most likely died of paresis, a type of neuro-syphilis, in 1898, as the scarce remaining evidence suggests (Providence 13-14). After his father‘s hospitalization his mother took him to Providence, to be raised in the house of her father Whipple, her mother Robie Alzada Place Phillips, and her two sisters Lillian Delora Phillips and Annie Emeline Phillips, as her father was able to provide them with a comfortable life and everything they needed. It was actually his grandfather Whipple who had made the uttermost impact on Lovecraft‘s life and influenced him most, as he became the boy‘s father figure (Providence 17). He was also an enthusiastic traveller, and often entertained his grandson with tales of his adventures and experiences. However, most importantly, it was he that interested Lovecraft in the path of literature and weird tales, or gothic horror through the form of stories made up. From a very young age he was closely connected to the world of the written letter, and was always fascinated by the worlds of distant exotic lands of enthralling cultures (Providence 18). One that had a great impact on Lovecraft‘s writings was Arabian Nights, one of his first beloved books, as he writes to his friend Robert E.