A Sombra de Innsmouth, de Howard Phillips Lovecraft: Uma análise estética da construção do medo

Abstract

This paper has as its main aim to analyze and pinpoint the close relationship between the primordial aspects of the twentieth-century American writer H.P. Lovecraft’s aesthetics and “cosmicist” philosophical view on life and writing in his work The Shadow Over Innsmouth; and how fear, one of Gothic Literature main effects, is obtained from these aspects. As a result of this analysis, we intend to expand the conception of Gothic Literature aesthetics and, consequently, deepen our knowledge of this writer, somehow unknown principally in the academic context. To this purpose, essays, personal letters, among other Lovecraft’s works were analyzed to obtain information about his life and fruitful writing career. Moreover, theoretical support is given by Bakhtin’s essays on polyphony; S. T Joshi’s, who is the greatest scholar on Lovecraft as well as Lovecraft’s works compiler, and H.P. Lovecraft’s own critical contributions.