1 00:00:01,450 --> 00:00:07,060 Hello and welcome to this short talk on an American writer, Howard Phillippe, Lovecraft 2 00:00:07,060 --> 00:00:12,250 or H.P. Lovecraft, as he's more commonly known. My name is Stewart Lee. I'm a member of the 3 00:00:12,250 --> 00:00:17,680 English faculty at the University of Oxford. And this podcast forms part of our series 4 00:00:17,680 --> 00:00:23,230 on fantasy literature. I want to use Lovecraft 5 00:00:23,230 --> 00:00:28,300 to tackle three questions. First, what should we include under 6 00:00:28,300 --> 00:00:34,180 the category of fantasy? Secondly, the accepted place of fantasy in the academy. 7 00:00:34,180 --> 00:00:39,550 By that, I mean universities and literary courses and so on. And finally, 8 00:00:39,550 --> 00:00:44,560 critiquing fantasy, the concept of good, bad books. 9 00:00:44,560 --> 00:00:50,230 But first of all, a bit of biographical information. H.P. Lovecraft was born in 1890 10 00:00:50,230 --> 00:00:55,480 and died in 1937. His relatively short life was spent mainly in Rhode 11 00:00:55,480 --> 00:01:00,640 Island and Providence area of New England. Although during his unsuccessful marriage, 12 00:01:00,640 --> 00:01:05,960 he also spent time in some of the seedy areas of New York City. His childhood 13 00:01:05,960 --> 00:01:12,170 was isolated with an overly protective mother and to an extent was quite lonely. 14 00:01:12,170 --> 00:01:17,240 His father was committed to asylum when Lovecraft was only three and his mother also eventually 15 00:01:17,240 --> 00:01:22,400 later died in one when Lovecraft was a young man. It's worth noting also that 16 00:01:22,400 --> 00:01:27,500 his prosperity declined throughout his life, as did his health. So whilst he was brought up 17 00:01:27,500 --> 00:01:32,930 in relative comfort, the family finances worsened with the death of his grandfather. So Lovecraft's 18 00:01:32,930 --> 00:01:39,370 life has an overall sense of disappointment and struggle. 19 00:01:39,370 --> 00:01:44,440 Lovecraft once said that there were three parts to him, a love of the strange and fantastic, which we 20 00:01:44,440 --> 00:01:50,630 should come back to, a love of the ancient, a permanent and a love of scientific logic. 21 00:01:50,630 --> 00:01:55,970 He was fascinated in geography, notably that of Antarctica, astronomy 22 00:01:55,970 --> 00:02:01,070 and geology, and even began a scientific gazette at the age of nine, 23 00:02:01,070 --> 00:02:06,320 albeit only a single sheet of paper. In terms of the ancient impermanent, 24 00:02:06,320 --> 00:02:11,600 we can perhaps include his desire for stability and ancestry. He saw himself 25 00:02:11,600 --> 00:02:17,210 very much as being of Anglo-Saxon stock in New England and was quite clearly an Anglophile. 26 00:02:17,210 --> 00:02:22,340 He would occasionally sign off his letters with God Save the Queen. And he was mortified by the United 27 00:02:22,340 --> 00:02:28,550 States reluctance to join Britain immediately at the outbreak of World War One. 28 00:02:28,550 --> 00:02:33,680 So to the first question, what is fantasy literature, or in particular, why would we 29 00:02:33,680 --> 00:02:39,650 include H.P. Lovecraft in this genre? Let us consider 30 00:02:39,650 --> 00:02:44,740 who Lovecraft himself noted is having influence on him. We could 31 00:02:44,740 --> 00:02:50,080 easily draw up a list of writers like Edgar Allan Poe, Nathaniel Hawthorne, 32 00:02:50,080 --> 00:02:55,270 Thomas Bullfinch, Edward Ball were Litten, Algernon Blackwood, M.R. 33 00:02:55,270 --> 00:03:00,820 James and Arthur Machen. Indeed, makins story. The Great God Pan 34 00:03:00,820 --> 00:03:06,050 is cited directly in Lovecraft's The Dunwich Horror from 1928. 35 00:03:06,050 --> 00:03:12,000 Now, here, we could say that these writers are mainly in the area of supernatural or ghost stories. 36 00:03:12,000 --> 00:03:17,100 But as has already been mentioned in other talks, there's clearly an intertwining between fantasy 37 00:03:17,100 --> 00:03:22,270 and the Gothic and the supernatural. If we start to consider other 38 00:03:22,270 --> 00:03:27,340 influences that Lovecraft himself noted, we can perhaps see that we're moving back towards fantasy 39 00:03:27,340 --> 00:03:32,440 a bit more. Lovecraft was of a generation that read and absorbed Grimm's fairy 40 00:03:32,440 --> 00:03:37,720 tales and more interestingly, the translation of the Arabian Nights, which may indeed 41 00:03:37,720 --> 00:03:43,780 have seeded one of his more famous character inventions. The Arab al has read. 42 00:03:43,780 --> 00:03:48,790 We know that Lovecraft also read Conan Doyle's The Lost World translations 43 00:03:48,790 --> 00:03:54,490 of Ovid, and most importantly, he was greatly influenced by Lord Done Sanie, the fantasy writer 44 00:03:54,490 --> 00:04:01,120 who he even went to see lecture and cites directly in his story, The Nameless City from 1921. 45 00:04:01,120 --> 00:04:07,700 All of this moves us back towards fantasy in a way, maybe from the supernatural. 46 00:04:07,700 --> 00:04:12,770 Some of the writers mentioned also blur the boundaries between fantasy and the supernatural, 47 00:04:12,770 --> 00:04:17,810 such as Make Makin or Poe, particularly with the latter, where some of his stories are in 48 00:04:17,810 --> 00:04:23,220 this dreamlike world and never, never land. Outside 49 00:04:23,220 --> 00:04:28,680 of reading other things which may have influenced Lovecraft are illustrations 50 00:04:28,680 --> 00:04:33,930 by the artist Gustav Daury. These accompanied additions of Paradise Lost 51 00:04:33,930 --> 00:04:41,160 and Coleridge reaches Rime of the Ancient Mariner, which Lovecraft saw as a boy. 52 00:04:41,160 --> 00:04:46,410 But it's true to say that when you start to read Lovecraft short stories, you are immediately taken into 53 00:04:46,410 --> 00:04:51,570 a world of tombs, crypts, derelict mansions, all the tropes 54 00:04:51,570 --> 00:04:56,730 of the gothic or supernatural. And it would be hard to describe a story like the terrible old 55 00:04:56,730 --> 00:05:01,980 man written in 1920 as anything but a horror story where two crooks fall foul 56 00:05:01,980 --> 00:05:07,680 of the sinister. Oh, man. It's also important to note that 57 00:05:07,680 --> 00:05:12,870 for most writers of the 20th century, or certainly the early part of the 20th century, they never really 58 00:05:12,870 --> 00:05:18,090 use the term fantasy. C.S. Lewis or Tolkan may have considered 59 00:05:18,090 --> 00:05:23,690 themselves writing romances, for example. Lovecraft is is no 60 00:05:23,690 --> 00:05:29,090 is not different at all. He, in turn, didn't use the word fantasy, but he'd like to think of himself 61 00:05:29,090 --> 00:05:34,120 as writing what we might call weird fiction. If you wish 62 00:05:34,120 --> 00:05:40,040 to take this a bit further, you really need to engage with three of Lovecraft's essays. 63 00:05:40,040 --> 00:05:45,140 1921 in defence of Dagon, a collection of essays in response to criticism 64 00:05:45,140 --> 00:05:50,940 of his own stories. 1925 to 27 and and later revised in 1933 65 00:05:50,940 --> 00:05:56,130 to 34. His essay, Supernatural Horror in Literature, which is a historic analysis 66 00:05:56,130 --> 00:06:01,830 of what he termed weird fiction. In this, he states for modern masters as makin 67 00:06:01,830 --> 00:06:06,970 done he, Blackwood and M.R. James. And 1933, his notes on 68 00:06:06,970 --> 00:06:12,160 writing weird fiction, which emerge from what we call his commonplace books, which was a set of notes 69 00:06:12,160 --> 00:06:18,620 and plots on classic weird fiction and various tropes and motives. 70 00:06:18,620 --> 00:06:24,070 To Lovecraft, weird fiction was where nothing in the story actually contradicted natural law, 71 00:06:24,070 --> 00:06:29,080 even if things did not exist in reality, but instead supplemented it in ways not 72 00:06:29,080 --> 00:06:34,150 imagined as yet as he said he wanted to write stories at a level beyond the galling 73 00:06:34,150 --> 00:06:39,700 limitations of time and space and natural law, which forever in prisoners frustrate 74 00:06:39,700 --> 00:06:45,700 our curiosity about the infinite cosmic spaces beyond the radius of our site and analysis, 75 00:06:45,700 --> 00:06:51,280 a quote taken from his notes on writing weird fiction. Roger Luckhurst, 76 00:06:51,280 --> 00:06:56,320 in his introduction to the world's classic series of Lovecraft stories, sees this almost 77 00:06:56,320 --> 00:07:01,950 as liminal fantasy, something that borders between reality and supernatural. 78 00:07:01,950 --> 00:07:07,800 The writer of weird fiction is the poet of Twilight Visions and Childhood Memories. 79 00:07:07,800 --> 00:07:13,410 So whilst Lovecraft may write of New England or the slums of New York as if they are real, 80 00:07:13,410 --> 00:07:21,400 underlying them are these sinister horrors which point to something older and far more darker. 81 00:07:21,400 --> 00:07:26,500 Most importantly, there are two clear reasons why we might wish to consider Lovecraft 82 00:07:26,500 --> 00:07:31,550 as a writer of fantasy literature. First, within his short 83 00:07:31,550 --> 00:07:36,770 stories is what Luckhurst termed a dense matrix of cross references. They link 84 00:07:36,770 --> 00:07:41,840 back and forth to give but a few examples. The terrible Oh Man, which I've already mentioned, 85 00:07:41,840 --> 00:07:47,450 is then alluded to in a tale written six years later. The Strange High House in the Mist. 86 00:07:47,450 --> 00:07:53,210 Characters such as Randolph Carter appear in multiple stories, such as the statement of Randolph Carter 87 00:07:53,210 --> 00:07:58,600 from 1920, the Silver Key from 1926, The Dream Quest of the Unknown Cadet 88 00:07:58,600 --> 00:08:04,250 from 1927. Fictitious places often based on real settings, 89 00:08:04,250 --> 00:08:10,360 play host to multiple stories such as the MISCA Tonic University, Arcam, 90 00:08:10,360 --> 00:08:15,510 Kingsport and so on. And most importantly, over time, we start to see 91 00:08:15,510 --> 00:08:20,650 the emergence of an underpinning mythology. If you wish to 92 00:08:20,650 --> 00:08:25,870 understand Lovecraft's mythology in his own words, you should really read 93 00:08:25,870 --> 00:08:31,330 the call of Carthew Lou. And at the mountains of Madness to longer stories. 94 00:08:31,330 --> 00:08:36,820 In summary, the mythology paints an epic picture of a race of elder ones or old ones 95 00:08:36,820 --> 00:08:43,020 who colonise the earth in prehistory, building great but horrendous cities. 96 00:08:43,020 --> 00:08:48,390 These elder ones now permeate the modern day world either through dreams 97 00:08:48,390 --> 00:08:53,790 or somethings, or occasionally they just enter into the real world 98 00:08:53,790 --> 00:08:59,380 for various traps, infections. Captured in ancient. 99 00:08:59,380 --> 00:09:04,480 An entirely fictitious book such as the Necronomicon by the Abdul Al has read 100 00:09:04,480 --> 00:09:09,550 character and repeated phrases like That is not dead, which can eternal lie. And 101 00:09:09,550 --> 00:09:14,680 with strange aeons, even death may die. We encounter creatures and gods such 102 00:09:14,680 --> 00:09:20,260 as Nyarlathotep, first appearing in a short story of that name, 1920. 103 00:09:20,260 --> 00:09:25,360 As Athos and Carthew Lou, all are seen as powerful and malevolent. 104 00:09:25,360 --> 00:09:30,640 And the underpinning message of Lovecraft's mythology is one of complete hopelessness and despair 105 00:09:30,640 --> 00:09:35,650 as as human protagonists are merely warding off the inevitable and constantly becoming aware of 106 00:09:35,650 --> 00:09:40,880 the complete insignificance of man in the cosmic order. This mythology 107 00:09:40,880 --> 00:09:46,010 so well established that after Lovecraft's death, other writers picked it up, such 108 00:09:46,010 --> 00:09:51,180 as August 30th. Another influence on Lovecraft, which 109 00:09:51,180 --> 00:09:56,400 we must include, which moves me to the second point about the place of fantasy in academic 110 00:09:56,400 --> 00:10:01,470 and publishing, is what we call the dime novels of pulp magazines, which Lovecraft 111 00:10:01,470 --> 00:10:06,720 read and contribute to, too. To me, this points to a wider issue. I believe 112 00:10:06,720 --> 00:10:11,880 in the acceptance of fantasy, certainly in the early part of the 20th century where standard 113 00:10:11,880 --> 00:10:16,930 publishers and the academy. This dissin found it 114 00:10:16,930 --> 00:10:22,400 and did not wish to engage with it. So writers such as Lovecraft. The only route for them 115 00:10:22,400 --> 00:10:28,590 was to go through publications such as the Dime novel, pulp magazines. 116 00:10:28,590 --> 00:10:33,630 Dime novels appeared in 1860 and usually about 130 pages long, and the subject 117 00:10:33,630 --> 00:10:39,000 matter was basically throw away adventures. Lovecraft read a lot of these, especially stories 118 00:10:39,000 --> 00:10:44,070 he's described as weird fiction and also pulp magazines like All Star magazine 119 00:10:44,070 --> 00:10:49,320 and Munsie magazines. This led him to becoming heavily involved in what we call 120 00:10:49,320 --> 00:10:55,020 amateur journalism. Where would be writers would contribute short pieces from money to journals. 121 00:10:55,020 --> 00:11:00,120 You'd get a few dollars for a couple of thousand words, not enough to live on. But it did get your 122 00:11:00,120 --> 00:11:07,510 writing career started and he began publishing in the pulp magazines United Amateur and Vagrant. 123 00:11:07,510 --> 00:11:12,760 Most famously was his long relationship with the most important of these weird tales, which first 124 00:11:12,760 --> 00:11:17,860 appeared in 1923 and ran for 31 years, as well as writing 125 00:11:17,860 --> 00:11:24,760 in these magazines, of course. Lovecraft also read many stories of similar ilk. 126 00:11:24,760 --> 00:11:30,100 Before I move to a discussion of Lovecraft style, just a quick note to say that Lovecraft also 127 00:11:30,100 --> 00:11:35,170 wrote poetry. In fact, he produced about 300 poems, all of which mimicked 128 00:11:35,170 --> 00:11:40,570 various styles. Joshi, a writer I will mention at the end, categorised 129 00:11:40,570 --> 00:11:45,970 these into occasional poetry, patriotic poetry, eighteenth century, 130 00:11:45,970 --> 00:11:51,010 poor verse or rubbish. But he also notes there was an emergence of 131 00:11:51,010 --> 00:11:56,200 weird verse in 1917. So a poem like Fungai from Younger's, 132 00:11:56,200 --> 00:12:01,570 which comes in several parts, tells a typical Lovecraftian tale inverse, where there's the discovery 133 00:12:01,570 --> 00:12:06,620 of a rare book which includes tales of Nyarlathotep as a thought. And 134 00:12:06,620 --> 00:12:11,750 so on, Lovecraft himself recognised, though, that he was no poet. There was a weakness 135 00:12:11,750 --> 00:12:16,790 there, as he said, take the form away and nothing remains. I have no 136 00:12:16,790 --> 00:12:21,970 poetic ability. Finally, let us now turn our attention 137 00:12:21,970 --> 00:12:27,230 to Lovecraft's style. There are some excellent stories, 138 00:12:27,230 --> 00:12:33,500 it has to be said, such as the caller Carthew Lou in 1926, the done which horror 1928 139 00:12:33,500 --> 00:12:39,650 at the Mountains of Madness, 1931, The Shadow Over Innsmouth, 1931 as well. 140 00:12:39,650 --> 00:12:44,720 And there are some very Dun's Saini in tales, almost mythic tales, which take us into these kind of 141 00:12:44,720 --> 00:12:49,870 dreamlike worlds which sometimes defy criticism. For example, the doom that came to sign 142 00:12:49,870 --> 00:12:55,280 Earth in 1919. The Tree 1920, the Cats of Alver 1920 143 00:12:55,280 --> 00:13:00,680 the white ship calcifies 1920. The Quest of Iran on 1921. 144 00:13:00,680 --> 00:13:08,100 The Other Gods 1921. And The Dream Quest. The Unknown Catus 1927. 145 00:13:08,100 --> 00:13:14,490 But it has to be said that much of Lovecraft's other work is very formulaic. 146 00:13:14,490 --> 00:13:19,860 Now, this can be explained in part for the fact that he was writing mainly for the pulp magazines. 147 00:13:19,860 --> 00:13:25,040 The readers knew what they wanted on Lovecraft had to deliver. That 148 00:13:25,040 --> 00:13:30,200 is look at a standard Lovecraftian plot. Usually take 149 00:13:30,200 --> 00:13:35,390 place in a remote setting, often in New England, a wooded, hollow and isolated 150 00:13:35,390 --> 00:13:40,760 location, a cemetery, or if he wants to venture venture further from New England, it might be 151 00:13:40,760 --> 00:13:46,700 in the Congo jungle. The bulk land of a castle in Ireland, Xome priory in England, 152 00:13:46,700 --> 00:13:52,700 derelict houses and so on. The stories are often written in the first person 153 00:13:52,700 --> 00:13:58,220 of the 47 tales published between 1927 and 1927, 30 154 00:13:58,220 --> 00:14:03,940 are in the first person. Usually narrated by someone who is witness something horrible 155 00:14:03,940 --> 00:14:09,610 happening to someone else. Again, examples like the statement of Randolph Carter 156 00:14:09,610 --> 00:14:15,050 or from beyond from 1920 or hipness from 1922. 157 00:14:15,050 --> 00:14:20,120 The protagonists at some point will go mad or nearly mad. This is often due to 158 00:14:20,120 --> 00:14:25,250 their inability to come to terms with what they are seeing, the horror, the scale in terms 159 00:14:25,250 --> 00:14:30,780 of space and time or the unimportance of human beings. 160 00:14:30,780 --> 00:14:35,790 There will often be a double time shift. The protagonist will read or be 161 00:14:35,790 --> 00:14:40,800 taken back to the 18th or 17th century and then often even further back to 162 00:14:40,800 --> 00:14:45,940 the Preedy history of the mythos. Dreams are used 163 00:14:45,940 --> 00:14:51,370 very frequently. They will reveal the ancient cities that often defy geometry. 164 00:14:51,370 --> 00:14:57,100 They'll be accompanied by where lyric melody, chords, vibrations and harmonic ecstasy's, 165 00:14:57,100 --> 00:15:04,880 such as in Beyond the Wall of Sleep, the temple, the moon bog the festival. 166 00:15:04,880 --> 00:15:11,380 Finally, there is his style. What is being described as a. ism. 167 00:15:11,380 --> 00:15:16,450 Edmund Wilson, the famous critic from the 1950s, notably said the only real horror of 168 00:15:16,450 --> 00:15:21,490 most of these fictions is the horror of bad taste and bad art. This is perhaps 169 00:15:21,490 --> 00:15:26,950 going too far, but one can certainly see repetitions and weaknesses 170 00:15:26,950 --> 00:15:33,420 in Lovecraft style. Everything, for example, is eldritch, stygian gibbous. 171 00:15:33,420 --> 00:15:39,000 For example, here are some of the quotes from some of his stories on the screen. 172 00:15:39,000 --> 00:15:44,010 And he will say it's almost like an on a reluctance to describe what the protagonist 173 00:15:44,010 --> 00:15:49,470 is seeing, uncouth thow sounds I could never hear again and survive 174 00:15:49,470 --> 00:15:54,570 visions so extravagant I cannot even relate them. To convey any idea of these 175 00:15:54,570 --> 00:16:00,120 monstrosities is impossible. The frightful visit and vividness, the inconceivable, 176 00:16:00,120 --> 00:16:05,130 indescribable and unmentionable monstrosity. I can't even hint what it was like for 177 00:16:05,130 --> 00:16:10,620 it was a compound of all that is unclean, uncanny, unwelcome, abnormal and detestable horrors 178 00:16:10,620 --> 00:16:15,780 beyond horrors. The thing cannot be described. There is no language for such 179 00:16:15,780 --> 00:16:20,910 a busines of shrieking and immemorial lunacy, such eldritch contradictions 180 00:16:20,910 --> 00:16:26,040 of all macho force and cosmic order. Lovecraft was, 181 00:16:26,040 --> 00:16:31,050 of course, aware of this, and he parodied parodies it to a degree in a story called 182 00:16:31,050 --> 00:16:36,690 The Unnameable, when the protagonist, a writer, is criticised by his friend, to quote, 183 00:16:36,690 --> 00:16:42,180 he added, My constant talk about unnameable, an unmentionable things was a very pure device, 184 00:16:42,180 --> 00:16:47,250 quite in keeping with my lowly standing as an author. I was too fond of ending my stories with 185 00:16:47,250 --> 00:16:53,040 sights or sounds, which paralysed my heroes faculties and left them without courage, words or associations 186 00:16:53,040 --> 00:16:58,110 to tell what they experienced. What is less 187 00:16:58,110 --> 00:17:03,150 amusing, though, is the clear racism and class snobbery that runs through Lovecraft's 188 00:17:03,150 --> 00:17:08,180 writings. Beginning with a poem published in 1912, the title of 189 00:17:08,180 --> 00:17:13,220 which I cannot repeat, there was his belief that we could see that he was sorry, 190 00:17:13,220 --> 00:17:18,380 that he could see a decline in civilisation and values. He 191 00:17:18,380 --> 00:17:24,170 read Spangler's The Decline of the West and grants the passing of the Great Race. 192 00:17:24,170 --> 00:17:29,690 To give some examples, which we can repeat, he often depicts 193 00:17:29,690 --> 00:17:35,300 lowly peasants or people coming in immigrants to the United States 194 00:17:35,300 --> 00:17:40,330 in very negative terms. For example, 195 00:17:40,330 --> 00:17:45,550 here are some quotes gave, not the least impression of Caucasian blood, simple animals they wore. 196 00:17:45,550 --> 00:17:50,830 Gently descending down the evolutionary scale, the skulls denoted nothing short of utter 197 00:17:50,830 --> 00:17:56,010 idiocy. Cretinism, a primitive semi ape them. And so on 198 00:17:56,010 --> 00:18:01,110 and so forth. Perhaps the most telling, quote, the two ton is the summit 199 00:18:01,110 --> 00:18:06,840 of evolution, which sends a chill through us when remember all the various theories 200 00:18:06,840 --> 00:18:11,850 and political ideologies that ran riot in Europe in the 1920s. 201 00:18:11,850 --> 00:18:17,020 And, of course, the 1930s. So there we are. 202 00:18:17,020 --> 00:18:22,330 Hey, H.P. Lovecraft, a writer who evokes much criticism but much 203 00:18:22,330 --> 00:18:27,460 adulation across many readers of fantasy literature, and I'd like to just 204 00:18:27,460 --> 00:18:32,890 leave you here with a few books that you might wish to pursue. If you want to explore 205 00:18:32,890 --> 00:18:37,563 Lovecraft further.