Abstract
Supernatural Horror in Literature is used to develop a definition of weird fiction along two fronts: one epistemological, the other having to do with the idea of the subject. Differentiating between philosophical extrapolations and aesthetic tendencies, this chapter examines weird fiction from a philosophical point of view without turning weird fiction, which is an art, into a philosophy. The influences of philosophical ideas drawn from Spinoza, Nietzsche, Bergson, and Deleuze over the aesthetics of weird fiction are considered, as are weird fiction’s indication of certain philosophical ideas in anticipation of their historical development in philosophy proper.
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- 1.
H.P. Lovecraft, Supernatural Horror in Literature, Dagon and Other Macabre Tales (Sauk City, WI: Arkham House, 1965), 368.
- 2.
Ibid.
- 3.
Lovecraft, “The Dunwich Horror,” The Dunwich Horror and Others (Sauk City, WI: Arkham House, 1963), 155.
- 4.
Lovecraft, Supernatural Horror, 436.
- 5.
Ibid, page 399.
- 6.
Ibid.
- 7.
Baruch Spinoza, Complete Works (Indianapolis/Cambridge: Hackett, 2002), page 312.
- 8.
Lovecraft, Supernatural Horror, 365.
- 9.
Lovecraft, Supernatural Horror, 366.
- 10.
Lovecraft, Supernatural Horror, 365.
- 11.
Lovecraft, Supernatural Horror, 397.
- 12.
Lovecraft, Supernatural Horror, 395.
- 13.
Henri Bergson, Creative Evolution (New York: Dover Press, 1998), 232 passim.
- 14.
Lovecraft, Supernatural Horror, 395.
- 15.
Lovecraft, Supernatural Horror, 421.
- 16.
Lovecraft, Supernatural Horror, 368.
- 17.
Lovecraft, Supernatural Horror, 423.
- 18.
Lovecraft, Supernatural Horror, 396.
- 19.
Lovecraft, Supernatural Horror, 427.
- 20.
Henry James, “Introduction,” The Aspern Papers (London: Macmillan and Co, 1922), XVII.
- 21.
Friedrich Nietzsche, Human, All Too Human (Lincoln, NE: University of Nebraska Press, 1996), 23.
- 22.
Ibid.
- 23.
Edgar Allan Poe, “Ligeia,” Tales and Sketches 1831–1842 (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1978), 316.
- 24.
H.P. Lovecraft, “The Call of Cthulhu,” The Dunwich Horror and Others (Sauk City, WI: Arkham House, 1963), 125.
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Cisco, M. (2018). Bizarre Epistemology, Bizarre Subject: A Definition of Weird Fiction. In: Moreland, S. (eds) New Directions in Supernatural Horror Literature. Palgrave Macmillan, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-95477-6_10
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-95477-6_10
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