Animal symbolism in works of H. P. Lovecraft

Howard Phillips Lovecraft is widely considered to be one of the most influential writers of modern horror fiction and one of the main pioneers of the genre in its current form. One of the less discussed attributes of his work is his use of animal symbolism, despite how common it is, and serves several important functions. We will examine the different forms of animal symbolism in Lovecraft’s writing, their use and their respective functions. Our main goal will be to examine how animal symbolism in Lovecraft’s work was influenced by cultural and mythological sources and his own opinions towards different creatures and what they represent, in which case we will examine how his knowledge and beliefs may have influenced his depiction of animals. Our focus will be on the depiction of cats, dogs, snakes, aquatic, and amphibious animals as these play a significant role Lovecraftian fiction. We will also examine how animal symbolism connects to the key themes in cosmic horror, such as its negation of anthropocentrism.

Language Performativity and Horror Fiction: A Cognitive Stylistic Approach

This paper argues that horror fiction creates its effect through exploiting the workings of language in the minds of readers. As a genre that crosses many art forms, it might be tempting to analyze the multimodal vehicles of horror; the visual effects, the jump scares and the ominous music. However, studying the ability of language, on its own and without any audio-visual effects, to instill horror in its readers becomes even more enticing. The idea that words have the power to disrupt the reality of its readers is deeply rooted in the view of language as performative. The paper further argues that horror writers have manipulate linguistic structures in a peculiar way to serve the purpose of frightening their readers. To this end, an eclectic text-based cognitive stylistic approach is employed to analyze an excerpt from William Peter Blatty’s The Exorcist (1971), demonstrating how the process of horror creation is both a textual and a cognitive one, whereby the mental image of reality in the minds of readers is manipulated and distorted by means of linguistic structures, hence horrifying them. Results reveal that for horror to be achieved, layers of blending take place in readers minds in order to arrive to horrific meanings textually described. Additionally, manipulation of syntactic complexity and the morphology of verbs intensifies the horrific effect.

The conceptual interpretation of S. King`s literary heritage

S.King is a modern American writer of supernatural, horror fiction, science fiction and fantasy. His works are powerful because he integrates his life experiences and observations into idiosyncratic stories. He uses a free style of writing. Generally By the help of supernatural beings, vampire, demon, insubstantial events he mystifies and shocks readers, confuses their minds. The writer’s psycho-emotional situation, inner world rebound his works. This article is devoted to the conceptual interpretation of S.King’s creativity. In his works he tries to show the depth of his imagination. Key words: modern American literature, fantasy, horror fiction, psycho-emotional creativity, mystical elements

MYTHOPOETICS OF THE CEMETERY SPACE IN HORROR FICTION (Based on the Material of Modern Russian Literature)

This article deals with the locus of the cemetery in modern Russian horror. We examine approaches to the depiction of scary spaces in literature, describe the cemetery as a locus of horror, study the motives associated with the cemetery in horror, detect intermedial connections, provide interpretation of folklore and literary references. The cemetery is one of the key loci of folk culture, presented in folklore as a space of contact with the otherworldly (with the world of the dead), which explains the interest of horror authors in these ‘scary’ places. The modern literature of horror offers modifications of the image of the cemetery, their main characteristics, intertextual interaction with Russian and foreign traditions, which allow us to speak of this image as a unit of the genre canon of horror. The paper examines how exactly the image of the cemetery is presented by modern Russian authors: A. Ivanov, A. Ateev, M. Romanova, K. Alekseev, I. Lesev. We have established that various clichés of folklore and horror literature are used in connection with the locus of the cemetery. These include the motive of a ‘bad place’, the motive of reviving the dead, the motive of crossing the borders, violation of a ban/taboo. The cemetery can be viewed in a literary work as a source of supernatural horror (and even, as in Alekseev’s work, may turn into a thinking creature) or, as in Ivanov’s novels, represent a false source of danger. We conclude that the cemetery in horror becomes a place where not only worlds but also eras are connected, which reveals the important function of horror – the comprehension of the past of an individual and society. The portrayal of the cemetery in horror draws on a rich literary and folkloric tradition.

THE DEVELOPMENT OF THE UKRAINIAN HORROR FICTION ON THE BACKGROUND OF EUROPEAN GOTHIC TRADITIONS: A BRIEF OVERVIEW

Przedmiotem publikacji jest ścisły zarys problematyki ukraińskiej literatury grozy przedstawiony na tle europejskich tradycji gotyckich w literaturze. Poruszone zostało zagadnienie niejednoznaczności stosowanej terminologii, którą zazwyczaj wykorzystuje się do tworzenia metodologii badań oraz ich samych. Autor podejmuje próbę umiejscowienia gotycyzmu literackiego w literaturoznawstwie. Artykuł zawiera zwięzłą analizę specyfiki prozy gotyckiej w literaturze Anglii, Francji, Niemiec, Polski i Czech, jednakże szczególnie wyróżniono ukraiński gotycyzm literacki, jego swoistość, wyjątkowość. Dostrzeżona została również ukraińska proza „chimeryczna”, choć jej zaliczenie do literatury gotyckiej jest sporne. Ukraińskiemu nurtowi gotyckiemu w literaturze właściwe jest również zastosowanie mitologii ludowej, folkloru i demonologii. Autor doszedł downiosku, że gotycyzm literacki w twórczości pisarzy ukraińskich stanowi doniosły wkład do literatury europejskiej, również światowej. Wymaga stałych badań literaturoznawczych z uwagi na jego nieustającą ewolucję i pojawianie się takich nowych gatunków nurtu gotyckiego jak fantastyka, fantasy czy literatura grozy.

TRANSFORMATION OF A FAIRY TALE IN «HYBRID» SCIENCE FICTION (BASED ON AMERICAN AND RUSSIAN PROSE OF THE XXth CENTURY)

The article introduces and substantiates the concept of «hybrid» science fiction, which combines the elements of science fiction and horror fiction. In «hybrid» fiction, science fiction surroundings cannot rationalize the text, but, on the contrary, they are replaced by motives of supernatural horror. «Hybrid» science fiction, in contrast to «hard» science fiction , develops the idea of ​​ unknowability of the Universe. It is worth mentioning here, that «hard» science fiction has been described well enough, but there is a shortage of research work in relation to its «hybrid» version, so this research can be considered as pioneering. We use E. M. Neyolov’s typology that describes the connection between a fairy tale and «hard» science fiction. Basing on this typology, we analyse «hybrid» fiction, in which science fiction scenery was replaced by the anti-rational principle. The research methodology involves a combination of structural, typological and comparative methods. As a material for the study, we use the works of such Russian and American authors as D. Glukhovsky, S. Lukyanenko, G. R. R. Martin, S. King, C. McCarthy, H. P. Lovecraft and others. The purpose of the article is to identify and describe the transformation of fairytale discourse in the works of these authors that leads to the genre transition from science fiction to horror fiction. The texts are being analysed from three points of view: system of characters, the structure of space and the direction of time. It is concluded that in «hybrid» science fiction the typological model of the fairy tale was distorted, reconsidered or destroyed, and it is the aberration of the fairytale motif that opens the gate for the genre transformation from «hard» science fiction to horror fiction. For example, the struggle of the superhero with the supervillain is traditional both for fairy tales and for science fiction, but it is replaced by psychologization of the hero and the extreme complication of the metaphysics of the Good and the Evil in «hybrid» science fiction . Besides that, the well-organized space of fairytale and science fiction as well as a close-cut separation of «ours» and «aliens», and also the mythologem of «threshold» are mixed in «hybrid» fiction and lose their symbolical unambiguity. Finally, science fiction and fairytale time in «hybrid» fiction ceases to exist and gives way to the tragic timelessness of chaos and nightmare. Thus, «hybrid» fiction destroys both the canons of «hard» science fiction and the constructs of the fairy tale genre.

The Psychology, Geography, and Architecture of Horror: How Places Creep Us Out

Why do some types of settings and some combinations of sensory information induce a sense of dread in humans? This article brings empirical evidence from psychological research to bear on the experience of horror, and explains why the tried-and-true horror devices intuitively employed by writers and filmmakers work so well. Natural selection has favored individuals who gravitated toward environments containing the “right” physical and psychological features and avoided those which posed a threat. Places that contain a bad mix of these features induce unpleasant feelings of dread and fear, and therefore have become important ingredients of the settings for horror fiction and films. This article applies McAndrew and Koehnke's (2016) theory of creepiness to the study of classic horror settings and explores the role played by architecture, isolation, association with death, and other environmental qualities in the experience of creepiness and dread.

Introduction

The aim of the introductory chapter is threefold. Firstly, the chapter points out the monograph’s originality by contextualising the book in relation to ongoing scholarly debates about vampire fiction and Italian film history. Secondly, the chapter presents the corpus of thirty-three films to be studied, outlining the thematic and industrial criteria behind the selection. The corpus goes from vampiric/Frankensteinian monster-mash I vampiri / Lust of the Vampire (Riccardo Freda, 1957), which is generally considered the first Italian horror film, to horror parody Il cav. Costante Nicosia demoniaco, ovvero: Dracula in Brianza / Dracula in the Provinces (Lucio Fulci, 1975). Thirdly, in order to introduce some key elements of Italian cultural specificity, the chapter provides a brief history of literary and cinematic horror fiction in Italy prior to 1956, with particular attention to vampire-themed works.

Philosophy’s dark heir: On Nick Land’s abstract horror fiction

Nick Land is a British philosopher who developed a compelling transcendental materialist critique of anthropocentric philosophies throughout the 1990s before leaving academia at the turn of the century and moving to Shanghai. While he is now best known for his controversial pro-capitalist political writings, he has also recently developed a theory of what he calls ‘abstract horror fiction’, as well as applied it in practice by writing two abstract horror novellas. Although one might think that Land’s horror fiction, like his recent far-right politics, marks a new and independent body of work from his earlier academic writings as a philosopher, this article argues that Land turns to writing horror fiction, because he sees the genre as a better compositional form than traditional philosophy to continue his critique of anthropomorphism insofar as it is able to stage a confrontation with that which lies beyond all parochial human comprehension. I begin by outlining Land’s earlier critique of anthropocentric philosophies with recourse to the brute fact of humanity’s inexorable extinction as a way to undermine their attempts to project human values and concepts onto an inhuman cosmos for all time. I then examine Land’s theory of abstract horror to see how he envisions horror fiction as the best aesthetic means for transcendentally channeling the traumatic limits of human experience. I conclude with an analysis of Land’s two horror novellas, Phyl-Undhu and Chasm, to draw out the ways in which his earlier critical philosophy continues to inform their literary motifs. What ultimately emerges from this analysis of Land’s fiction is a conception of horror as the dark heir to critical philosophy.