H.P. Lovecraft: The Inevitable Past

Abstract

This thesis is a study of the way in which American horror and science fiction writer Howard Phillips Lovecraft approaches the concept of the past, and its relevance to the present, in a selection of his works. I look in particular at two of his horror novellas The Case of Charles Dexter Ward and The Shadow Over Innsmouth; three of his short stories, 'The Rats in the Walls', 'The Picture in the House', and 'The Silver Key'; and two of his science fiction novellas At the Mountains of Madness and The Shadow Out of Time. I address the conflicting inter-relationships between personal, national and global history presented in these texts, and pay particular attention to the way in which Lovecraft uses complex narrative framing to portray both love and fear of the past. Ideas about nationalism, post-colonialism and modernism inform my discussion of Lovecraft's New England and its history. It is argued that through these complex narrative frames, Lovecraft explores the way in which personal, national and global history is understood by human beings. By creating deliberately misleading and distorted narrative filters, Lovecraft examines the way in which history generates anxiety about its perceived influences on the present, and its implications for the future. However, Lovecraft also represents history as a necessary means by which people define their significance in the cosmos. A dissection of Lovecraft's narrative frames reveals that ignorance about, or denial of, aspects of one's history generates apprehension, an apprehension that can only be resolved through acknowledgement of one's personal and/or national past.