From beyond: H. P. Lovecraft and the place of horror

Abstract

The work of the American horror writer H. P. Lovecraft offers a valuable opportunity to study the representation of space in literature, but while Lovecraft's biography provides a useful way of making sense of his horror fictions, it also risks obscuring the importance of his represented spaces. Many of these impossible spaces mark a threshold between the known and unknown, and the paper argues that an attention to narrative demonstrates that these thresholds constitute the fulcrum about which his plots move. The work of Mikhail Bakhtin also suggests that Lovecraft's belief that ‘change is the enemy of everything really worth cherishing’ explains why these thresholds are represented as threats rather than progressive engagements with social space.