Skip to main content
Article
Licensed
Unlicensed Requires Authentication

Character and Perspective in Cosmic Horror: Lovecraft and Kiernan

  • EMAIL logo
Published/Copyright: June 14, 2021
Become an author with De Gruyter Brill

Abstract

Despite their overt focus on inexplicable alien forces, cosmic horror stories are also determined by their human cast. Far from being merely fodder for horror, the characters significantly contribute to the generation of meaning, including that of the supernatural entity or phenomenon itself. The same holds for the narrators’ (implicitly) political perspectives on the world of which they are part. Much of the perspective propounded in Lovecraft’s cosmic horror stories partakes of myth, adopting in particular the latter’s universal view and pronounced sidelining of humanity as a whole, which it intensifies to the point of horror. Appearances to the contrary notwithstanding, this universal perspective is consistent with the racism permeating and structuring Lovecraft’s writing. Though eschewing racism and universalism, the cosmic horror of Kiernan’s “Tidal Forces” negotiates literary reflections of colonialism from an unreflective white perspective.


Corresponding author: Heinrich Wilke, MA, English Department, University of Potsdam, Am Neuen Palais 10, 14469Potsdam, Germany, E-mail:

References

Barron, L. 2008. The Imago Sequence and Other Stories. New York: Night Shade Books.Search in Google Scholar

Blumenberg, H. 1985. Work on Myth. Translated by R. M. Wallace. Cambridge, MA, and London: MIT Press.Search in Google Scholar

Boerem, R. 2011. “Lovecraft and the Tradition of the Gentleman Narrator.” In An Epicure in the Terrible: A Centennial Anthology of Essays in Honor of H.P. Lovecraft, edited by D. E. Schultz, and S. T. Joshi, 269–85. New York: Hippocampus Press.Search in Google Scholar

Bould, M. 2002. “The Dreadful Credibility of Absurd Things: A Tendency in Fantasy Theory.” Historical Materialism 10 (4): 51–88, https://doi.org/10.1163/15692060260474378.Search in Google Scholar

Carlin, G., and N. Allen. 2013. “Slime and Western Man: H. P. Lovecraft in the Time of Modernism.” In New Critical Essays on H.P. Lovecraft, edited by D. Simmons, 73–90. New York: Palgrave Macmillan.10.1057/9781137320964_5Search in Google Scholar

Chakravartty, P., and D. F. da Silva. 2012. “Accumulation, Dispossession, and Debt: The Racial Logic of Global Capitalism-An Introduction.” American Quarterly 64 (3): 361–85, https://doi.org/10.1353/aq.2012.0033.Search in Google Scholar

Clark, P. D. 2014. “The ‘N’ Word through the Ages: The Madness of H.P. Lovecraft.” Media Diversified. May 24, 2014. https://mediadiversified.org/2014/05/24/the-n-word-through-the-ages-the-madness-of-hp-lovecraft/.Search in Google Scholar

Coronil, F. 1996. “Beyond Occidentalism: Toward Nonimperial Geohistorical Categories.” Cultural Anthropology 11 (1): 51–87, https://doi.org/10.1525/can.1996.11.1.02a00030.Search in Google Scholar

Dyer, R. 1997. White. London and New York: Routledge.Search in Google Scholar

Gayford, N. R. 2011. “The Artist as Antaeus: Lovecraft and Modernism.” In An Epicure in the Terrible: A Centennial Anthology of Essays in Honor of H.P. Lovecraft, edited by D. E. Schultz, and S. T. Joshi, 286–312. New York: Hippocampus Press.Search in Google Scholar

Gikandi, S. 2003. “Picasso, Africa, and the Schemata of Difference.” Modernism/Modernity 10 (3): 455–80, https://doi.org/10.1353/mod.2003.0062.Search in Google Scholar

Gregori, A. 2018. “Crossing Impossible Boundaries? Fantastic Narrative and Ideology.” In Exploring the Fantastic: Genre, Ideology, and Popular Culture, edited by I. Batzke, E. C. Erbacher, L. M. Hess, and C. Lenhardt, 117–40. Bielefeld: Transcript.10.1515/9783839440278-006Search in Google Scholar

Hiller, S. 1991. The Myth of Primitivism: Perspectives on Art. London and New York: Routledge.Search in Google Scholar

House, W. 2017. “We Can’t Ignore H.P. Lovecraft’s White Supremacy.” Literary Hub. September 26, 2017. https://lithub.com/we-cant-ignore-h-p-lovecrafts-white-supremacy/.Search in Google Scholar

Jackson, R. 2009. Fantasy: The Literature of Subversion. London and New York: Routledge.Search in Google Scholar

Jones, T. 2018. “The Weird Tale.” In The Edinburgh Companion to the Short Story in English, edited by P. Delaney, and A. Hunter, 160–74. Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press.10.1515/9781474400664-013Search in Google Scholar

Joshi, S. T. 1990. The Weird Tale. Austin, TX: University of Texas Press.Search in Google Scholar

Kiernan, C. R. 2019. Houses under the Sea: Mythos Tales. Burton, MI: Subterranean Press.Search in Google Scholar

Klinger, L. S. (2014). “Foreword.” The New Annotated H.P. Lovecraft, by H.P. Lovecraft, edited by L. S. Klinger. Liveright, New York and London, pp. xv–lxvii.Search in Google Scholar

Ligotti, T. 2018. The Conspiracy against the Human Race: A Contrivance of Horror. New York: Penguin.Search in Google Scholar

Lord, B. 2004. “The Genetics of Horror: Sex and Racism in H.P. Lovecraft’s Fiction.” Also available at files.meetup.com/9161102/Lord-The Genetics of Horror.pdf.Search in Google Scholar

Lovecraft, H. P. 1976. Selected Letters Volume V: 1934–1937, edited by A. Derleth, and J. Turner. Sauk City, WI: Arkham House.Search in Google Scholar

Lovecraft, H. P. 1999. The Call of Cthulhu and Other Weird Stories. Edited by S. T. Joshi. New York: Penguin.Search in Google Scholar

Lovecraft, H. P. 2001. The Thing on the Doorstep and Other Weird Stories. Edited by S. T. Joshi. New York: Penguin.Search in Google Scholar

Lovecraft, H. P. 2004. The Dreams in the Witch House and Other Weird Stories. Edited by S. T. Joshi. New York: Penguin.Search in Google Scholar

Lovecraft, H. P. 2006. Collected Essays Volume 5: Philosophy, Autobiography and Miscellany. Edited by S. T. Joshi. New York: Hippocampus Press.Search in Google Scholar

Lovecraft, H. P. 2012. The Annotated Supernatural Horror in Literature. Edited by S. T. Joshi. New York: Hippocampus Press.Search in Google Scholar

Lovett-Graff, B. 1997. “Shadows over Lovecraft: Reactionary Fantasy and Immigrant Eugenics.” Extrapolation 38 (3): 175–92, https://doi.org/10.3828/extr.1997.38.3.175.Search in Google Scholar

Mbembe, A. 2017. Critique of Black Reason. Translated by L. Dubois. Durham and London: Duke University Press.10.2307/j.ctv125jgv8Search in Google Scholar

Mbembe, A. 2019. Necropolitics. Translated by S. Corcoran. Durham and London: Duke University Press.10.2307/j.ctv1131298Search in Google Scholar

McClintock, A. 1995. Imperial Leather: Race, Gender and Sexuality in the Colonial Contest. London and New York: Routledge.Search in Google Scholar

Mills, C. W. 2008. “White Ignorance.” In Agnotology: The Making and Unmaking of Ignorance, edited by R. N. Proctor, and L. Schiebinger,, 230–49. Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press.10.1093/acprof:oso/9780190245412.003.0004Search in Google Scholar

Miéville, C. 2005. “Introduction.” In At the Mountains of Madness: The Definitive Edition, edited by H. P. Lovecraft, xi–xxv. New York: Modern Library.10.1163/9789047404613_002Search in Google Scholar

Miéville, C., and J. A. Weinstock. 2016. “Afterword: Interview with China Miéville.” In The Age of Lovecraft, edited by C. H. Sederholm, and J. A. Weinstock, 231–43. Minneapolis and London: University of Minnesota Press.Search in Google Scholar

Monleón, J. B. 1990. A Specter Is Haunting Europe: A Sociohistorical Approach to the Fantastic. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press.10.1515/9781400861347Search in Google Scholar

Moore, A. 2014. “Introduction.” In The New Annotated H.P. Lovecraft, by H.P. Lovecraft, edited by L. S Klinger, xi–xiv. New York and London: Liveright.Search in Google Scholar

Moreton-Robinson, A. 2015. The White Possessive: Property, Power, and Indigenous Sovereignty. Minneapolis and London: University of Minnesota Press.10.5749/minnesota/9780816692149.001.0001Search in Google Scholar

Newell, J. 2020. A Century of Weird Fiction 1832-1937: Disgust, Metaphysics and the Aesthetics of Cosmic Horror. Cardiff: University of Wales Press.10.2307/jj.14491651Search in Google Scholar

Poole, W. S. 2016. “Lovecraft, Witch Cults, and Philosophers.” In The Age of Lovecraft, edited by C. H. Sederholm, and J. A. Weinstock, 215–30. Minneapolis, MN and London: University of Minnesota Press.Search in Google Scholar

Rieder, J. 2008. Colonialism and the Emergence of Science Fiction. Middletown, CT: Wesleyan University Press.Search in Google Scholar

Russ, J. 1975. “Towards an Aesthetic of Science Fiction.” Science-Fiction Studies 2 (2): 112–19.Search in Google Scholar

Schultz, D. E. 2011. “From Microcosm to Macrocosm: The Growth of Lovecraft’s Cosmic Vision.” In An Epicure in the Terrible: A Centennial Anthology of Essays in Honor of H.P. Lovecraft, edited by D. E. Schultz, and S. T. Joshi, 208–29. New York: Hippocampus Press.Search in Google Scholar

Sebastiani, Silvia. 2013. The Scottish Enlightenment: Race, Gender, and the Limits of Progress. Translated by J. Carden. New York: Palgrave Macmillan.10.1057/9781137069795Search in Google Scholar

Simmons, D. 2013. “‘A Certain Resemblance’: Abject Hybridity in H. P. Lovecraft’s Short Fiction.” In New Critical Essays on H.P. Lovecraft, edited by D. Simmons, 13–30. New York: Palgrave Macmillan.10.1057/9781137320964_2Search in Google Scholar

Singh, N. P. 2017. “On Race, Violence, and ‘So-Called Primitive Accumulation.’” In Futures of Black Radicalism, edited by G. T. Johnson, and A. Lubin, 39–58. London and New York: Verso.10.1215/01642472-3607564Search in Google Scholar

Smith, J. 2016. Imperialism in the Twenty-First Century: Globalization, Super-Exploitation, and Capitalism’s Final Crisis. New York: Monthly Review.Search in Google Scholar

Sweeney, C. 2004. From Fetish to Subject: Race, Modernism, and Primitivism, 1919-1935. Westport, CT, and London: Praeger.10.5040/9798400654480Search in Google Scholar

Tilley, L., and R. Shilliam. 2017. “Raced Markets: An Introduction.” New Political Economy: 1–10.10.4324/9781003165989-1Search in Google Scholar

Trouillot, M. R. 2002. “The Otherwise Modern: Caribbean Lessons from the Savage Slot.” In Critically Modern: Alternatives, Alterities, Anthropologies, edited by B. M. Knauft, 220–37. Bloomington and Indianapolis: Indiana University Press.Search in Google Scholar

Weheliye, A. G. 2014. Habeas Viscus: Racializing Assemblages, Biopolitics, and Black Feminist Theories of the Human. Durham and London: Duke University Press.10.1515/9780822376491Search in Google Scholar

Willmott, G. 2008. Modernist Goods: Primitivism, the Market and the Gift. Toronto: University of Toronto Press.10.3138/9781442688643Search in Google Scholar

Wynter, S. 2003. “Unsettling the Coloniality of Being/Power/Truth/Freedom: Towards the Human, After Man, its Overrepresentation – An Argument.” CR: The New Centennial Review 3 (3): 257–337, https://doi.org/10.1353/ncr.2004.0015.Search in Google Scholar

Yusoff, K. 2018. A Billion Black Anthropocenes or None. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press.10.5749/9781452962054Search in Google Scholar

Published Online: 2021-06-14
Published in Print: 2021-06-25

© 2021 Walter de Gruyter GmbH, Berlin/Boston

Downloaded on 5.5.2026 from https://www.degruyterbrill.com/document/doi/10.1515/zaa-2021-2038/html?lang=en
Scroll to top button