A Centennial Anthology of Essays
in Honor of H.P.
Lovecraft
Edited by David E. Schultz and S.T. Joshi
![[Cover]](pics/epicure.jpg)
Dust Jacket Text
The Rhode Island writer H.P. Lovecraft (1890-1937) has long
been considered a master of weird and horror fiction; but academic critics
have shied away from his work, both because they have not felt that horror
fiction is serious literature and because Lovecraft published much of his
work in the lowly “pulp” magazines of the 1920s and 1930s. But now a new
generation of scholars is reassessing Lovecraft’s wide learning, his
serious approach to writing, and the many levels of meaning that his work
reveals.
This book, compiled for the centennial of Lovecraft’s birth,
contains thirteen original essays by the leading American scholars on
Lovecraft. A wide variety of critical approaches – biographical, thematic,
formalist, comparative, history of ideas, genre study – is used to display
the breadth and riches of Lovecraft’s novels and stories.
Three biographical essays supply startling new facts and
interpretations of Lovecraft’s life and literary career, embodying much
original research. Kenneth W. Faigh, Jr.’s essay on Lovecraft’s parents
and Jason Eckhardt’s essay on Lovecraft’s New England heritage supply
important background information on his work. Will Murray supplies a
radical new interpretation of Lovecraft’s relations to the pulp
magazines.
A series of thematic essays explores Lovecraft’s work from
differing perspectives. In an overview, Donald R. Burleson finds five
dominant themes in his fiction, all related the the fundamental notion of
humanity’s insignificance in the vastness of an indifferent universe – what
Lovecraft himself termed “cosmicism.” Peter Cannon, Stefan Dziemianowicz,
Steven J. Mariconda, David E. Schultz, and Robert H. Waugh discuss various
aspects of Lovecraft’s style, imagery, and narrative method, showing both
the richness and the interconnectedness of his work.
The four final essays deal with comparative and genre studies.
Robert M. Price treats of Lovecraft’s myth cycle and of how later writers
and critics have misinterpreted this creation by failing to perceive
Lovecraft’s atheistic and amoralistic philosophy. R. Boerem, Norman R.
Gayford, and Barton Levi St. Armand probe Lovecraft’s relationship to the
horror fiction tradition, to literary modernism, and to the fictive
universe of Jorge Luis Borges.
The book concludes with an extensive annotated bibliography
supplying information on the best editions of Lovecraft’s work and the
best scholarship devoted to him over the last five or six decades. In
sum, it is hoped that this book will both clear away many of the
misconceptions surrounding Lovecraft’s life, work, and reputation, and
suggest directions for future study. On the centennial of his birth,
Lovecraft finally appears to be gaining the academic and general
recognition that eluded him in life.
Contents
- Introduction
- S.T. Joshi
- The Parents of Howard Phillips Lovecraft
- Kenneth W. Faig,
Jr.
- The Cosmic Yankee
- Jason C. Eckhardt
- Lovecraft and the Pulp Magazine Tradition
- Will Murray
- On Lovecraft’s Themes: Touching the Glass
- Donald R. Burleson
- Letters, Diaries, and Manuscripts: The Handwritten Word in
Lovecraft
- Peter Cannon
- Outsiders and Aliens: The Uses of Isolation in Lovecraft’s
Fiction
- Stefan Dziemianowicz
- Lovecraft’s Cosmic Imagery
- Steven J. Mariconda
- From Microcosm to Macrocosm: The Growth of Lovecraft’s
Cosmic Vision
- David E. Schultz
- Landscapes, Selves, and Others in Lovecraft
- Robert H. Waugh
- Lovecraft’s “Artificial Mythology”
- Robert M. Price
- Lovecraft and the Tradition of the Gentleman Narrator
- R.
Boerem
- The Artist as Antaeus: Lovecraft and Modernism
- Norman R.
Gayford
- Synchronistic Worlds: Lovecraft and Borges
- Barton Levi St.
Armand
Reviews
Bibliographic Information
An Epicure in the Terrible: A Centennial Anthology of Essays in Honor
of H.P. Lovecraft. Edited by David E. Schultz and S.T. Joshi. Rutherford,
NJ: Fairleigh Dickinson University Press; 1991; ISBN 0-8386-3415-X.
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