Tuesday, May 20, 2008

Dr. Evans on folklore, horror, and Lovecraft

Dr. Timothy H. Evans, associate professor of folk studies, has been researching Lovecraft and his relationship to folklore, a vast relationship encompassing the folkloric influences on Lovecraft and the subculture his writings spawned.

“I was a fan of Lovecraft when I was a teenager. I liked his stories a lot, but I read them all, then I moved on to other things. Then in the mid 90’s, a new biography was published, and I read that and it revived my interest.”

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Chris Perridas said...

The entire text:

(Echo, Western Kentucky University)

The Folklore of Horror

by Kimberly Shain Parsley

H.P. Lovecraft was an early 20th century horror writer and man of letters. Naturally, any scholarship on him would be conducted by a member of the English faculty, right? Wrong.

Dr. Timothy H. Evans, associate professor of folk studies, has been researching Lovecraft and his relationship to folklore, a vast relationship encompassing the folkloric influences on Lovecraft and the subculture his writings spawned.

“I was a fan of Lovecraft when I was a teenager. I liked his stories a lot, but I read them all, then I moved on to other things. Then in the mid 90’s, a new biography was published, {S T Joshi - CP} and I read that and it revived my interest.”

He said that after reading the biography, he realized the extent to which he shared a common interest with Lovecraft, that of folklore.

Lovecraft was born in Providence, R.I. in 1890. His father suffered a nervous breakdown and was institutionalized when Lovecraft was only three, and died when Lovecraft was eight. His neurotically overprotective mother cared for him. Other familial influences included two aunts and his grandfather, who introduced him to weird stories and strange tales. These early stories, coupled with an interest in Greek mythology, were the basis for many of Lovecraft’s stories.

“Drawing on legends and beliefs, on the architecture of old houses and the iconic power of religious symbols, horror writers often evoke ‘tradition’ and the ‘past’ in order to explore a perceived loss of tradition in the present,” Dr. Evans wrote in an article published in the Journal of Folklore Research. “Much horror literature is predicated upon feelings of insecurity brought about by cultural change, by the idea that our families and communities, our familiar beliefs and cultural forms, are increasingly under assault by forces beyond our control.”

Lovecraft surely felt just such insecurity and cultural change after the death of his grandfather, when due to financial difficulties; he and his mother were forced to leave their family home, giving up as well a measure of their social status. Lovecraft lived with his mother until her death. He was 25 when she died, and began to flourish almost instantly, Evans said, setting out on travels along the Eastern seaboard.

“He visited many significant and historic sights along the coast. He was particularly interested in colonial times and cultures. He spent a lot of time in places like Charleston, Quebec City, and especially New England,” Evans said. “He was a very knowledgeable scholar of New England history, culture and folklore.”

Evans said much of Lovecraft’s travel writings focused on historic architecture, arts and crafts, furniture and graveyard art. In addition, he collected oral folklore from the places he visited, particularly supernatural legends and beliefs.

Evans described Lovecraft as an antiquarian, loving all things old and traditional and viewing the modern industrial era with scorn. Indeed, even in his letters, Lovecraft would write in the archaic style of an 18th century gentlemen, even dating his letters hundreds of years in the past. It is estimated that he wrote between 75,000 and 100,000 letters during his life. Many of those letters are stored at the Brown University Library in Providence. Evans received a fellowship from Brown University and a faculty scholarship from Western Kentucky University, which offered him the opportunity to spend time in Providence studying the letters. Evans has published two articles on Lovecraft in academic journals and is writing a book, tentatively entitled H. P. Lovecraft’s America.

“His letters are really fascinating because some of them are very long, and they’re beautifully written for the most part,” Evans said. “He was a very well educated—though largely self educated, rather brilliant person.”


Evans said that Lovecraft’s longing for tradition and old ways is apparent in his fiction and letters.

“In his hometown of Providence, he became a very active historic preservationist, but those themes also get into his stories and become sort of the background or material out of which he creates his stories.”

Evans said that Lovecraft was not well known during his lifetime. His stories were primarily published in pulp magazines. “As time has gone by, he’s become more popular. He sells very well now, but he’s also established more of a critical reputation. A volume of his stories was recently published in the prestigious Library of America series.”

Evans began his research by studying Lovecraft, the man, but has since become interested in the popular subculture surrounding his creations. Books by other writers and movies have since been based on works by Lovecraft. “The Call of Cthulhu,” is a role playing game based on a Lovecraft story of the same name. There are also Lovecraft related board games and video games. One Lovecraft invention that is frequently mentioned in or is the basis of several recent horror movies and books is the Necronomicon.

The Necronomicon was a non-existent book of ancient occult lore, a kind of hoax that Lovecraft invented, and referred to and quoted in some of his stories. Since his death, some people have come to believe in its actual existence. There have even been spurious versions of it published.

“One thing about Lovecraft is there’s so much too him. You can interpret him in all kinds of ways. That’s part of what makes him interesting.”

“He invented this whole kind of mythology, sometimes called an anti-mythology, a sort of alternative history of the universe.”

Evans compared this anti-mythology to the world created by J.R.R. Tolkien in the Lord of the Rings. Additionally, Lovecraft’s stories have inspired a “heavy metal/gothic” culture, “which I suspect Lovecraft would not have liked,” Evans said.

“Part of what I look at in my work is how Lovecraft took actual folklore—folk legends, beliefs, and material things like architecture—and brought those into his stories then manipulated and changed them around and came up with his own creations,” Evans said. “So he uses real folklore in the folklore he makes up and they all get mixed up and you can’t tell what’s real and what isn’t, and he creates his own world that way.”

For more pictures of Lovecraft's work, go to

www. nightserpent. com.

Tue May 20, 01:14:00 PM

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