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H.P. Lovecraft

The Decline of the West

Author S T Joshi

$41.95   $35.69

Paperback

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English
Wildside Press
01 March 2006
The author writes:
This book began as an expansion of my essay, H. P. Lovecraft: The Decline of the West, in The Weird Tale, but very quickly became something quite different, to the degree that the two works have little save the title in common. I have always been interested in Lovecraft the philosopher, and in my Starmont Reader's Guide to Lovecraft (1982) I attempted a very compressed account of his philosophical views. To treat so complex a thinker as Lovecraft in a few pages was obviously untenable, even though I think those few pages at least convey the unity of his thought--perhaps better than this fuller study does. One reviewer, however, was correct in noting that I did not sufficiently integrate Lovecraft's thought and his fiction, and I have now attempted to remedy the failing.

I am still not convinced that I have really written one rather than two books here. Does Lovecraft's fiction really depend upon his philosophy? I wrestle with this question further in my introduction, but here I can note that I had great difficulty deciding upon the proper structure for this book. I deal with four principal facets of Lovecraft's philosophy--metaphysics, ethics, aesthetics, and politics--in Part I, and those same facets as applied to the fiction in Part II. It might have made more sense to juxtapose the corresponding chapters of each part, but I finally determined that this would be both methodologically and practically unsound; methodologically for reasons explained in the introduction, and practically because it would fail to demonstrate the interconnectedness of Lovecraft's thought and because in Part II I frequently rely upon conceptions expressed throughout the whole of Part I.

By:  
Imprint:   Wildside Press
Country of Publication:   United States
Dimensions:   Height: 279mm,  Width: 211mm,  Spine: 10mm
Weight:   399g
ISBN:   9781587150685
ISBN 10:   1587150689
Pages:   172
Publication Date:  
Audience:   General/trade ,  ELT Advanced
Format:   Paperback
Publisher's Status:   Active

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