Boris A. Maksimov, PhD in Philology, Senior Researcher, Department of Foreign Journalism and Literature, Faculty of Journalism, Lomonosov Moscow State University, Mokhovaya Street, 9, building 1, 125009, Moscow, Russia. ORCID ID: https://orcid.org/0000-0002-0735-2733
The paper aims to systematize the typical collisions of late Romantic “horror fiction” as identified by H.F. Lovecraft in his writer’s diary (“Commonplace book”) and in his “Notes on Weird Fiction”, which are rarely considered in the context of narrativism. Lovecraft considers the plot of the unnatural revival of an “antiquity” which was isolated from progressive society, forgotten and mummified, to be the mainstay of the Victorian Gothic. The catalyst for the Gothic plot is usually an mechanistic attempt to assimilate alienated relics. Lovecraft identifies several plot “formulas” for the revival of antiquity which threatens modern civilization: (1) activation of spiritless matter (corpse, “lower” realms of nature, bodily parts and organs, inanimate “facilities”), that ultimately inverts the hierarchy of psyche and physiology; (2) recurrent memories that literally resurrect the historical or biological past; (3) psycho-somatic degeneration and impersonation (which is presented as a local substitution of higher forms for lower, rudimentary ones).
gothic fiction; plot; antiquity; degeneration; recollection.
10.02.2024
15.03.2024
Maksimov, B.A. “‘Gothic’ Plot Outlines in H.P. Lovecraft’s Notes”. Literaturovedcheskii zhurnal, no. 3(65), 2024, pp. 123–137. (In Russ.)
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