By web submission at 09/03/2013 - 16:22
The Lovecraftian Poe: Essays on influence, reception, interpretation and transformation - abstracts due by Nov 15, 2013
full name / name of organization:
Sean Moreland, Ph.D.
contact email:
moreland.sean@gmail.com
The editor invites original scholarly essays that address the reception and transformation of Edgar Allan Poe's thought and writing by H. P. Lovecraft.
That Poe was among the greatest influences on Lovecraft is widely known; Lovecraft famously referred to Poe as both his "model" and his "God of Fiction." Yet, despite widespread recognition of this fact amongst scholars and fans of both Poe and Lovecraft's work, there has surprisingly so far been no collection that brings together scholarly approaches to this topic. This collection aims to address this absence, gathering original essays that focus closely on the precise nature and extent of Poe's influence on Lovecraft, Lovecraft's role in Poe's wider reception and dissemination, and his adoption and adaptation of many of Poe's concepts and techniques.
Topics might include, but are not limited to, the following:
- Specific considerations of the way Lovecraft's fictions make use of and modify Poe's (for example, the reworking of “The Fall of the House of Usher” in “The Rats in the Walls,” or “M. Valdemar” in “Cool Air”).
- The influence of Poe's philosophical and critical writings on Lovecraft's thought (for example, the cosmicism of Poe's Eureka and Lovecraft's “cosmic indifferentism,” or Lovecraft’s conception of Poe’s “Unity of Effect”).
- Lovecraft's critical assessment of Poe (in Supernatural Horror in Literature and elsewhere).
- The development of Gothic and science-fictional conventions in Poe and Lovecraft’s fictions.
- Philosophical, historical and aesthetic differences and continuities between Poe's and Lovecraft's writings.
- The interdependence of Poe and Lovecraft's literary and popular legacies.
- The ways in which Lovecraft's reception of Poe has influenced Poe's reception by later writers (examples might include Borges, Bradbury, Matheson, King, Ligotti or Kiernan.)
- The continuing importance of Lovecraft's contributions to Poe scholarship and appreciation.
The volume will include an introductory chapter by influential Lovecraft scholar S. T. Joshi.
Abstracts of 400 - 500 words on any aspect of this topic are invited, with a deadline of Nov 15, 2013. Finished essays will be due by May 2014. Abstracts may be directed to: moreland.sean@gmail.com
About the editor:
Sean Moreland is a professor, editor, and writer of poetry and short fiction. He has a Ph.D. in English from the University of Ottawa, where he currently teaches part-time. He recently co-edited the essay collection Fear and Learning: Essays on the Pedagogy of Horror (McFarland, 2013), is currently co-editing Holy Terrors: Essays on Monstrous Children in Cinema, and has recently published chapters in a number of books, including Deciphering Poe and Generation Zombie. He is on the editorial board for the Edgar Allan Poe Review, and is founder and a fiction editor of Postscripts to Darkness (PstD), a serial anthology of dark fiction and art.
