This week, I continued my research of the personal life and writings of H. P. Lovecraft. I also derived from my guiding questions what I consider to be a reasonable thesis, and I even have the very rough workings of an outline.
A few of my notes from reading the introduction to a collection of his works by S. T. Joshi:
-"...cosmic horrors that bleakly underscored the insignificance of humanity and all its works in a blind, godless universe."
-Lovecraft was born on August 20, 1890 in Providence, Rhode Island
-father died (of syphilis); mother was crazy; liked his grandfather
-interested in chemistry and astronomy
-started writing at 7 years old; encountered [the writings of] Poe at 8
-dropped out of high school because of psychological problems
My original guiding questions/guiding ideas:
-Philosophy of Lovecraft?
-Influence on (American) literature?
-Relation to Poe?
-Influence on the Horror genre?
^--how is this significant to American literature?
-Supernatural horror as opposed to other horror
-Lovecraft's importance to the horror genre/influence of horror genre on American literature
(For the record, I really liked the idea of coming up with guiding questions instead of trying to define a thesis when we barely know anything about our subject. It worked much better.)
Thesis:
Based on some reading I did on and by Joyce Carol Oates and Stephen King, I have reached the following point that I will attempt to defend:
H. P. Lovecraft has had more direct influence on the horror genre as it exists today that any other writer.
The biggest obstacle in defending my thesis will, of course, be arguing that Lovecraft has had even more influence on modern horror than Poe, but I believe I will be able to claim that because Lovecraft's horror is more based on cosmic and science fiction-type events and phenomena, it is more pertinent to the present than Poe's more archaic style.
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