Defense Date

11-21-2008

Graduation Date

2008

Availability

Immediate Access

Submission Type

dissertation

Degree Name

PhD

Department

English

School

McAnulty College and Graduate School of Liberal Arts

Committee Chair

Anne Brannen

Committee Member

Laura Callanan

Committee Member

Linda Kinnahan

Keywords

Lovecraft, modernism, grotesque, weird fiction, Cthulhu

Abstract

This study serves to bring Lovecraft into a new and more significant literary context, and to highlight the relationships between modernist and grotesque literature. Various authors are mentioned with reference to both modernist and grotesque literary tendencies, and Lovecraft's "modernist grotesque" characteristics are analyzed in their connection to the three concepts that are prominent in both modernism and the grotesque: alienation, subjectivity, and absurdity. Biographical information about Lovecraft is used minimally in this study, which focuses on textual analysis of many elements of Lovecraft's writing that seem to have been previously overlooked, including religious satire, scrutiny of scientific practices, and the modernist concept of "literary difficulty." This dissertation serves to establish a new place for Lovecraft in the larger context of English literature, and to establish a new way of thinking about modernism with reference to its possible roots in the experimental and "diagnostic" impulses of the literary grotesque.

Format

PDF

Language

English

Download

Share

COinS