Comme le montre l’analyse de dix auteurs appartenant à trois domaines linguistiques différents, anglophones, hispanophones et francophones : Pedro Antonio de Alarcon, Jorge Luis Borges, Ruben Dario, Henry James, Howard Phillips Lovecraft, Léopoldo Lugones, Guy de Maupassant, Edgar Allan Poe, Jean Ray, Marcel Schwob, la géométrie est présente partout dans les récits fantastiques du xixe au xxe siècle. Cercles, carrés ou pyramides s’inscrivent dans l’architecture ou dans le physique du personnage. Ces formes, qui permettent de faire naître l’angoisse, imposent peu à peu la circularité (cercles, courbes, sphères) comme une figure dominante. Les espaces où évolue le protagoniste s’arrondissent autour de lui jusqu’à venir l’étouffer. Le mécanisme de la peur qu’engendre ce processus peut alors être centrifuge ou centripète : soit il découle du lieu où se trouve le héros fantastique soit il est produit par le personnage lui-même. De cette géométrie angoissante découle un procédé fondamental : celui de l’atmosphère fantastique. Celle-ci — faite, comme l’étymologie le révèle, d’une forme de vapeur (atmos) enveloppant le monde ou le sujet à la manière d’un globe (sphaira) — témoigne de l’importance non seulement des courbes, mais encore des divers états de l’eau : glace, neige, élément liquide ou gazeux. L’atmosphère montre ainsi à quel point le fantastique est lié à la femme, support essentiel de l’Unheimliche, en ce que cette dernière est à la fois — pour le personnage masculin et pour les auteurs ici analysés — une figure de l’Autre (unheimlich) et une manifestation de la Mère (heimlich) / As shown in the analysis of ten authors from three different linguistic areas, English, Spanish and French: Alarcon, Borges, Dario, James, Lovecraft, Lugones, Maupassant, Poe, Ray and Schwob. The geometry is everywhere in the fantastic stories from the nineteenth to the twentieth century. Circles, squares or pyramids are part of architecture or the character's physical. These forms, which allows the birth of anxiety, gradually impose the circularity (circles, curves, spheres) as a dominant figure. The spaces where the protagonist is evolving, curving around him till he suffocates. The mechanism of the fear generated by this process could be centrifugal or centripetal: it follows either the place where the fantasy hero is located or it is produced by the character himself. From this agonizing geometry, a fundamental process is set up : the fantastic atmosphere. This one done, as the etymology reveals, from a vapor shape (atmos) enveloping the world or the character in the manner of a globe(sphaira) - testify the importance not only about the curves, but equally the various states of water : ice, snow, liquid or gaseous element. The atmosphere shows how much the fantastic is linked to the woman, Unheimliche's essential support, in that this last one is both - for the male character and the authors analyzed here - a figure of the Other (unheimlich) and a manifestation of the Mother (Heimlich)

Denna uppsats undersöker gotiska teman som melankoli, isolering, galenskap och död i verk av Edgar Allan Poe och Howard Phillips Lovecraft. Utgångspunkt är följande forskningsfråga: På vilket sätt framträder melankoli, isolering, galenskap och död i de olika verken, samt vilka är likheterna och skillnaderna mellan hur temana framkommer? Metoden är grundad i tematisk analys, intertextualitet och komparation. De verk som analyseras i uppsatsen är Poes The Fall of The House Usher, Ligeia och Berenice. Verk av Lovecraft som analyserats är Cthulhu, The Color out of Space, The Tomb och Polaris. Resultaten visar att alla teman finns närvarande i verk av båda författarna, men att de tar olika former. Poes melankoli är till exempel mycket närmare hans karaktärer än Lovecrafts melankoli, som är mer kopplade till miljöer och objekt. Vidare visar undersökningen bland annat också att Poe inte fokuserar på fysiska dödsbeskrivningar utan på andra typer av död. Lovecrafts dödsbeskrivningar å andra sidan är mer externa och kopplade till monster. / This essay examines the presence of what is considered to be gothic themes such as melancholy, isolation, madness and death in works of Edgar Allan Poe and Howard Phillips Lovecraft. The following research question was formulated: In what way do melancholy, isolation, madness, and death appear in the various works, and what are the similarities and differences between how the themes emerge? Methods of thematic analysis, intertextuality and comparison are used. The works analysed in the essay are Poe’s The Fall of The House Usher, Ligeia and Berenice. The works analysed are also Lovecraft’s The call of Cthulhu, The Colour out of Space, The Tomb and Polaris. The results show that all the themes are present in works by both authors, but that they take different forms. Poe’s melancholy is for example much closer to his characters than Lovecrafts melancholy, which are more connected to environments and objects. The study also shows among other things, that Poe does not focus on physical death descriptions but on other types of death. Lovecraft's death descriptions on the other hand, are more external and linked to monsters.

Made available in DSpace on 2015-04-14T14:42:12Z (GMT). No. of bitstreams: 1 466516.pdf: 3482012 bytes, checksum: 54cfbb5b8db1506786f5332e5861052b (MD5) Previous issue date: 2015-03-16 / The present work has as objective to comprehend fans appropriations and reframing (Jenkins, Hills, Jenson) of the character Cthulhu, Howard Phillips Lovecraft s creation, in the context of cyberculture (L?vy, Manovich, Castells, Santaella). Lovecraft, born in Providence, United States, lived between 1890 and 1937, and wrote short stories and poems on the fantastic genre of literature. His creations survived time, being modified and reinterpreted in different entertainment spheres and, in cyberculture, appropriated by fans in large scale around the world. By the analysis of posts and conversations in the page Cthulhu , on Facebook, it was objectified to comprehend who is the fans Cthulhu. In addition, it was aimed to investigate what would the differences be between these reframings and Lovecraft s short story, The Call of Cthulhu , in a context where the new media and the Social Network Websites amplify and facilitate content s production methods and its propagation among the fandom. The methodologies chosen were the documental analysis and the conversation analysis in social media, being done together and later on related with the theoretical approaches chosen. Through the research, the character, before a terrible and irrational monster, gained from the fans personality, human traits, merged with memes and transcended its purpose beyond the original short story destroying humanity -, becoming a socializing creature. / O presente trabalho tem por objetivo compreender as apropria??es e ressignifica??es de f?s (Jenkins, Hills, Jenson) acerca do personagem Cthulhu, cria??o de Howard Phillips Lovecraft, no contexto da cibercultura (L?vy, Manovich, Castells, Santaella). Lovecraft, nascido em Providence, Estados Unidos, viveu entre 1890 e 1937, e escreveu contos e poemas do g?nero da literatura fant?stica. Suas cria??es sobreviveram ao tempo, sendo modificadas e reinterpretadas em diversas esferas do entretenimento e, na cibercultura, apropriadas pelos f?s em grande escala ao redor do mundo. Por meio da an?lise de postagens e conversa??es dentro da p?gina Cthulhu, no Facebook, objetivou-se compreender quem ? o Cthulhu dos f?s. Tamb?m, desejou-se investigar quais seriam as diferen?as entre essas ressignifica??es para o conto de Lovecraft, O Chamado de Cthulhu, em um contexto onde as novas m?dias e os Sites de Redes Sociais amplificam e facilitam as formas de produ??o e difus?o de conte?do entre o fandom. As metodologias escolhidas foram a an?lise documental e a an?lise de conversa??o em redes sociais, sendo realizadas em conjunto e relacionadas posteriormente com os aportes te?ricos escolhidos. Por meio da pesquisa constatou-se que o personagem, antes um monstro tem?vel e irracional, ganhou dos f?s personalidade, tra?os humanos, fundiu-se a memes e transcendeu seu prop?sito al?m do conto original o de destruir a humanidade -, tornando-se uma criatura socializante.

Due to their inclusion of characters or objects that are the result of scientific investigation or subject to scientific scrutiny, Frankenstein, Strange Case of Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde, and “The Colour Out of Space” are works that may be classified as science fiction. However, despite these narratives’ engagement with scientific practice, at crucial moments when scientific description would be expected, it is prominently absent. This report investigates the effects of these absences within the narratives and suggests that such absences do not appear due to the author’s unfamiliarity with the science of her or his era, but rather serve the positive purpose of creating the effect of the sublime through horror, which is most effective when the reader is forced to confront the unknown or unreadable. To corroborate this hypothesis, this report also examines the treatment of certain hybrids within the three stories and the way that the terror they inspire seems to rely on the ways in which they mingle the known with the unknown and resist coherent description. Overall, this report seeks to illuminate the complex interaction of the known and the not yet known that has enabled a fruitful interaction between science fiction and horror as genres since the inception of science fiction as a definable genre. / text

Weird fiction criticism has been largely focused on either analyzing texts via the biographies of weird fiction authors, or concentrating on the words on the page to a degree that ignores all outside context. Although these approaches are valuable, more utility is to be found in analyzing weird fictions via their specific historical locations. This dissertation demonstrates the validity of this approach by surveying the works of five American weird fiction authors from the Twentieth Century (Lovecraft, Smith, Howard, Bloch, and Ligotti), and giving new interpretations that are based on an understanding of their placement within specific historical milieus (respectively, anti-WWI sentiment, surrealism and the problem of representation, Southern and Southwestern regionalism, pastiche and publishing culture, and metafiction and genre fiction). This survey supports the need for a new critical approach to weird fiction as described in this dissertation, and furthers our understanding of weird fiction by investigating hitherto unexplored perspectives on weird texts.

ABSTRACT An attempt to put the horror writer H. P. Lovecraft on the map of psychoanalytical criticism, this analysis examines Lovecraft’s use of setting, characters, and narrative mode and structure in “The Call of Cthulhu” (1926) to show how his construction of horror has its ground in psychology, or, more specifically, in ideas of identity and violated boundaries of the self. In addition, brief reflections on Modernist art, its connections with psychoanalysis, and its analogies to Lovecraftian imagery are provided in order to show the echoes of the Zeitgeist in Lovecraft’s horrors. Although Lovecraft made claims for the universality of the horror he depicted, the present analysis also maps its specific and time-bound characteristics. / e-mail: lordlabil@hotmail.com

Den här uppsatsen analyserar användandet av hybris som tema och motiv i tre olika skräckberättelser, Mary Shelleys Frankenstein (1818) och H.P. Lovecrafts två noveller ”The Other Gods” (1933) respektive ”From Beyond” (1934). De tre berättelserna använder alla hybris som tema och berättartekniskt verktyg för att på liknande vis gestalta karaktärer och skräck på ett sätt som blir mer specifikt för skräck som genre. Sett utifrån en klassisk syn på begreppet man kan finna i bland annat myten om Ikaros och Noël Carrolls mer moderna begrepp under namnet ”overreacher plot” som här kan länkas till hybris-begreppet, tillsammans med andra källor, lyfter uppsatsen exempel på hur hybris är en återkommande och viktig faktor för skräcken i berättelserna. Detta trots att ett sekel skiljer Shelleys och Lovecrafts verk åt.

The topic of video games is expansive, encompassing numerous domains that have yet to be thoroughly examined within a scholarly context. Modern games, especially those in the adventure and role-playing genres, are oftentimes heavily laden with text, and therefore serve as excellent subjects when formulating hermeneutical models for simulated virtual contexts. Furthermore, many games belong under the umbrella of literary studies due to their reliance upon text to forge interactive, fictional narratives. While this means many games possess qualities that render them germane to academics within the sphere of English studies, they remain neglected outliers due to manifold factors, ranging from outmoded biases against the medium, to a lack of established evaluative methodologies. As a result, the field is largely bereft of consensus strategies for engaging digital works featuring literary exposition and dialogue in the form of on-screen text; however, existing theories, including more abstruse ones relating to ergodic literature, hypertext and cybertext, provide a foundation on which to construct new modalities for assessing texts that exist within virtual environs. Research indicates that audience experiences in text-driven games are markedly different than those offered by analog texts due to their interactivity and non-linearity, thus reinforcing the need for the expansion of existing models. Of additional concern, analyses of modern text-oriented games prefigure some important implications for the areas of pedagogy and textual information conveyance in general. These considerations all coalesce to illustrate the exigency for a new or updated theory for understanding and interpreting text in digital substrates, ultimately allowing for inchoate and emergent art facilitated by technology to be recognized as academically relevant.

The Shadow Over Innsmouth is a book written by H.P Lovecraft and is one of the first books in the genre of cosmic horror. The book has been translated several times by different translators from English to Japanese. Finding equivalence between two languages is always a challenge when translating, especially in Lovecraft’s case, whose texts are full of archaic expressions and words which are unique to the time and culture in which the book was written. Acknowledging these facts, this study aims to compare translation of religious metaphors used in the book. Lovecraft has a very distinctive view on religion that can be seen by the usage of religious metaphors in his texts. By comparing translations made by three different translators, this study shows different strategies and approaches when translating something as culturally sensitive as religion. By analyzing the metaphors, it becomes clear that there are contextual and intertextual levels that also must be considered when translating Lovecraft’s works. Results of this study show how different strategies and approaches affected the text and what kind of difficulties the translators had.

While some theorists have hinted at various social functions served by the gothic genre—such as providing an outlet for grief, anxiety, and violence in their various forms—recent research within the last few decades into sociology, military science, and trauma studies supplies compelling new ways of rereading the horror genre. In addition to providing an outlet for grief, anxiety, and violence in their various forms, horror media can now be read as a preemptive measure in an effort to mediate the immediate and long-term effects of the trauma and horror faced by humanity. I argue that in much the same way an author may write a self-help tract such as The Gift of Fear to try and inform women how to repel a sexual predator by graphically relating harrowing tales of sexual predation, so do some horror texts and film claim to preemptively mediate different types of trauma before, during, and after it occurs. This is done in each case not by merely scaring readers, but by inoculating them against them against future debilitating trauma before, during, and after it may occur. The relatively recent (or at least recently popularized) genre of self-help books that overtly seeks to prepare its audience for future trauma by exposing them to it in a controlled environment draws upon the canon of gothic literature for its inspiration as well as for its rhetorical strategies and literary devices. Without discounting the aesthetics and the utility of horror as a psychological outlet, I will show that gothic media can be reread and reconfigured within this new framework. By realigning horror studies within the framework of trauma studies and the possibility for inoculation against future trauma, this study will provide new insight into one how popular culture often portrays trauma through text, and I will seek to establish a new category affiliated with both trauma theory and horror, the study and representation of pre-memory. This thesis will also present as a case study the rhetorical self-inoculation of American horror author H.P. Lovecraft.