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eBook details
- Title: Tradition and Illusion: Antiquarianism, Tourism and Horror in H. P. Lovecraft (Critical Essay) (Biography)
- Author : Extrapolation
- Release Date : January 22, 2004
- Genre: Language Arts & Disciplines,Books,Professional & Technical,Education,
- Pages : * pages
- Size : 226 KB
Description
It has often been noted that there were two distinct sides to the personality and interests of H. P. Lovecraft (1890-1937), the cosmic and the antiquarian. Although these may seem to contradict each other, they both were absolutely central to Lovecraft's worldview. An understanding of Lovecraft's antiquarianism, his love for heritage tourism and his profound attachment to the idea of tradition, is essential to an understanding of his philosophy of cosmicism. The tension between the antiquarian and the cosmic, between the continuity of cultural traditions and the insignificance of those traditions on a cosmic scale, is the source of Lovecraft's worldview and of the unique power of his fiction. Although Lovecraft's cosmicism has been explored by several scholars (Mariconda, Schultz, Joshi 1996: 480-508), much less attention has been paid to his antiquarianism, although his antiquarian travels and writings, and his passion for historic preservation, were as important to him as his fiction, on which they had a tremendous impact. Lovecraft liked to boast of his descent from "unmixed English gentry" and was a devoted student, and defender, of his New England heritage. This led him to conduct long antiquarian tours of New England and later of the entire east coast, both urban and rural, observing and documenting various types of historic material culture, especially architecture. His research provided sources for setting and atmosphere in his fiction, but this was not their chief motive. Both his research and his fiction grew out of an antimodernist ideology (1), a horror at what he perceived as the loss of tradition and the disintegration of American culture in the face of the moral, racial and scientific chaos of the twentieth century. This ideology, influenced by the Colonial Revival Movement and, more generally, by a yearning for an authentic American culture to be found in perceived continuities with a colonial or pre-industrial, Anglo-Saxon golden age, was also evident in his passionate advocacy for historic preservation in his native Providence, Rhode Island.
 "Tradition and Illusion: Antiquarianism, Tourism and Horror in H. P. Lovecraft (Critical Essay) (Biography)" by Extrapolation # Book PDF Kindle ePub Free){kind=link}