H. P. Lovecraft: The Decline of the West
(eBook)

Grouping Information

Book Cover Information

Hoopla Extract Information

stdClass Object
(
    [year] => 2016
    [artist] => S. T. Joshi
    [fiction] => 
    [coverImageUrl] => https://cover.hoopladigital.com/csp_9781479427543_270.jpeg
    [titleId] => 12678530
    [isbn] => 9781479427543
    [abridged] => 
    [language] => ENGLISH
    [profanity] => 
    [title] => H. P. Lovecraft
    [demo] => 
    [segments] => Array
        (
        )

    [pages] => 201
    [children] => 
    [artists] => Array
        (
            [0] => stdClass Object
                (
                    [name] => S. T. Joshi
                    [relationship] => AUTHOR
                )

        )

    [genres] => Array
        (
            [0] => American
            [1] => Literary Criticism
        )

    [price] => 0.49
    [id] => 12678530
    [edited] => 
    [kind] => EBOOK
    [active] => 1
    [upc] => 
    [synopsis] => 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.

In Part I, the author deals with four principal facets of Lovecraft's philosophy: metaphysics, ethics, aesthetics, and politics. In Part II, he studies those same facets as applied to the fiction.
    [url] => https://www.hoopladigital.com/title/12678530
    [pa] => 
    [subtitle] => The Decline of the West
    [publisher] => Wildside Press LLC
    [purchaseModel] => INSTANT
)