Original scientific paper
H.P. Lovecraft and Peering Beyond the Bounds of Infinity
Taha Al-Sarhan
Abstract
The purpose of this study is to examine how H.P. Lovecraft’s concept of the sublime, particularly through his Cosmic Horror, serves as an inversion of traditional humanistic conceptions of the sublime. Drawing primarily from Edmund Burke’s A Philosophical Enquiry into the Origin of Our Ideas of the Sublime and Beautiful (1844), with some reference to Immanuel Kant’s Observations on the Feeling of the Beautiful and Sublime (1960), the paper demonstrates how Lovecraft’s works present a darker vision of the sublime. Through close analysis of Lovecraft’s key stories, including The Call of Cthulhu (1928), “The Unnamable” (1925), The Shadow over Innsmouth (1931), and At the Mountains of Madness (1936), the study explores how Lovecraft harnesses cosmic terror to reject humanistic notions of beauty and the sublime. While Burke’s sublime leaves room for human awe in the face of vastness and terror, Lovecraft’s sublime amplifies human insignificance, offering no path to transcendence or empowerment. Instead, humans are rendered powerless, trapped in a material reality dominated by incomprehensible, infinitely superior forces. Lovecraft’s inversion of the sublime shifts the focus away from human potential and towards existential terror, revealing the futility of human endeavors in the face of the unknown.
Keywords
sublime; monsters; dread; experience; sensation; Lovecraft; Kant
Hrčak ID:
322702
URI
Publication date:
30.11.2023.
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