Lovecraft Research Paper

In this part of the essay, Lovecraft explains the origins of horror in the history of horror literature.
Horror is one of the most old things in the world, it is as old as speech and it appears in the folklore of all races (Lovecraft, 1927). Lovecraft thought that horror was born in humanity itself, in rituals, demons and spectres, reaching its highest point in Egypt and the semitic nations and influenced by the Book of Enoch and Claviculae of Solomon (Lovecraft, 1927). Then, tales of witches, werewolves, druids, vampires, ghouls, sacrifices and similar thing improved horror during the Middle Ages, with cults and the Gothic ecclesiastic arquitectural style with gargoyles like the ones of Notre Dame and St Michel a bit later. (Lovecraft, 1927).

(Lovecraft, 1927). For him, Scandinavian stories are full of horror, with Ymir and his shapeless spawn, then Beowulf and the Nibelung tales are full of eldritch weirdness (Lovecraft, 1927). “Eldritch” is a term that means “weird, ghostly, sinister” and Lovecraft used that term in his stories and even today there is a board game called “Eldritch Horror” based on his books, so it was an important term for Lovecraft. He thinks that in Dante and Spenser we see “the macabre atmosphere” and the horror in the environment, events and characters and in Malory we find the “strange” theft of the sword and silk from a corpse, ghosts and undeads. (Lovecraft, 1927). Lovecraft talks about the witches in Macbeth, and the ghost in Hamlet and those are very important because both of them drive the characters of their stories mad and this is something Lovecraft uses in all of his stories, this kind of horror and madness goes through horror writers until he himself uses it because it has survived. Later on, more horror stories started to appear because of their fame although with rationalism the supernatural element is lost for a while but in the end it survives and continues evolving (Lovecraft,

Lovecraft mentions that Walpole knew medieval romance and mystery, and for Lovecraft mystery is present in all his stories so he considers it something really important in a horror story. Walpole is the author of The Castle of Otranto, 1764, a tale with the supernatural element that influenced horror literature. (Lovecraft, 1927). Lovecraft thinks that the story is “tedious, artificial, and melodramatic, with sprightliness that does not permit the creation of a truly weird atmosphere” but there are parts where the supernatural appear in the story: a gigantic armour fragmented all over the place, a portrait leaving his frame, a thunder destroying the place, and a spectre (Lovecraft, 1927). He thinks that the story does not have the required elements to be called weird or horror literature but it was received well (Lovecraft, 1927), and although he criticizes it then he thinks that its scene, characters and events created a standard that could be used by better writers to create a real horror story and this made a real Gothic school appear and grow up (Lovecraft, 1927). Lovecraft says that the most important thing in these stories was the castle. The ruined castle, deserted, catacombs, ghosts and legends of the place, etc, these elements created a sense of fear (Lovecraft, 1927). The evil villain was the nobleman, the hero was of high birth, foreign names, fading lights, traps,