H. P. Lovecraft's Dark Arcadia: The Satire, Symbology and ContradictionThis volume attempts an objective reassessment of the controversial works and life of American horror writer H. P. Lovecraft. Ignoring secondary accounts and various received truths, Gavin Callaghan goes back to the weird texts themselves, and follows where Lovecraft leads him: into an arcane world of parental giganticism and inverted classicism, in which Lovecraft's parental obsessions were twisted into the all-powerful cosmic monsters of his imaginary cosmology. |
Contents
| 1 | |
| 11 | |
Two The Birds and the Bees According to H P Lovecraft | 59 |
Lovecraft and the Theseus Myth | 67 |
Lovecrafts MoonLadder | 121 |
Phillips Gamwell and the Innsmouth Coda | 147 |
Six HP Lovecraft and the Magna Mater | 160 |
AppendixEmpires in the Air | 243 |
Chapter Notes | 247 |
| 267 | |
| 273 | |
Common terms and phrases
abyss alien ancestor ancient Arcadian archetypal Arkham aspects associated bacchanalian Call of Cthulhu cannibalistic Carman classical cosmic craft Danforth Dangerous Sex dark death decadent described dreams Dunwich Horror Elder Things entities Erich Neumann evil father feminine figure final finally find first ghouls giganticism goddess Greek H. P. Lovecraft Horror at Red hypnotic Ibid idea identified imagery infantile influenced inverted italics likewise Lilith Love Lovecraft calls Lovecraft’s later Lovecraft’s narrator Lovecraft’s story Lovecraft’s weird fiction Lovecraftian Maurice Levy Medusa’s Coil moon moon-ladder Mother Mountains ofMadness Murray Murray’s myth narrator’s necrophilic Nightmare observes ofthe parental paternal perhaps Peter Cannon Pickman’s poem polemical prefigures primal primordial Puritan Red Hook reflect Robert Waugh Roman S. T. Joshi sadistic sexual Shadow Over Innsmouth shoggoths significant significantly sinister specifically suggests sylvan symbolism Theseus Tomb ultimately underworld Weininger Whisperer in Darkness witch Witch-Cult writes York