The Veiled Face: Hyperbole and Reticence in Howard Phillips Lovecraft, and in Nineteenth- and Twentieth-Century Fantastic Genre and Horror Literature
Abstract
This paper analyses some of the stories of H. P. Lovecraft (1890-1937), considering them as part of a certain line of nineteenth- and twentieth-century fantastic genre and horror literature. This literary tradition plays with – and reflects on – the rhetorical devices of hyperbole and reticence. In the texts examined by the author, what cannot be represented is chased throughout the story and is finally revealed, but only to leave room for an irresolvable ambiguity. It is as if the hyperbole, by pushing language beyond its extreme limit, would suddenly turn into reticence. The last horror, unnameable and unthinkable, is nothing more than an empty signifier.
Downloads
References
Bellemin-Noël, Jean, “Des formes fantastiques aux thèmes fantasmatiques”, Littérature, 2 (mai 1971): 103-118.
Brooks, Peter, Reading for the Plot: Design and Intention in Narrative, Oxford, Clarendon Press, 1984.
Caillois, Roger, Au cœur du fantastique, Paris, Gallimard, 1965.
Ceserani, Remo, Raccontare il postmoderno,Torino, Bollati Boringhieri, 1997.
Conrad, Joseph, Typhoon and Other Tales, edited with an introduction by Cedric Watts, Oxford, Oxford University Press, 1986.
Conrad, Joseph, Heart of Darkness (1899), edited by Robert Kimbrough, New York-London, W. W. Norton & Company, 1988.
Finné, Jacques, La littérature fantastique. Essai sur l’organisation surnaturelle, Bruxelles, Éditions de l’Université de Bruxelles, 1980.
King, Stephen, Night Shift (1976), New York, Penguin, 1979.
Lausberg, Heinrich, Elementi di retorica (Elemente der literarischen Rhetorik, 1949), a cura di Lea Ritter Santini, Bologna, Il Mulino, 1988.
Lazzarin, Stefano, “Horreur, hyperbole et réticence chez Lovecraft”, Belphégor, III.2 (2004): 1-33, http://etc.dal.ca/belphegor/vol3_no2/articles/03_02_Lazzar_Lovecr_fr.html, web (ultimo accesso 26/01/2014).
Lazzarin, Stefano, “Il punto sul fantastico italiano (1980-2007)”, Moderna, IX.2 (2007): 215-252.
Leavis, Frank Raymond, The Great Tradition. George Eliot, Henry James, Joseph Conrad (1948), London, Chatto & Windus, 1950.
Lévy, Maurice, Lovecraft. A Study in the Fantastic (Lovecraft ou du fantastique, 1985), Detroit (Michigan), Wayne State University Press, 1988.
Lovecraft, Howard Phillips, Supernatural Horror in Literature (1927, 1945), with an introduction by Everett Franklin Bleiler, New York, Dover Publications, 1973.
Lovecraft, Howard Phillips, Omnibus, Ed. A. Derleth, Hammersmith (London), Harper Collins Publishers, 1999-2000, 3 voll.
Lugnani, Lucio, “Verità e disordine: il dispositivo dell’oggetto mediatore”, Ceserani, Remo, et alii, La narrazione fantastica, Pisa, Nistri-Lischi, 1983: 177-288.
Manganelli, Giorgio, “L’eterodossia del cuore” (1968), Angosce di stile, Milano, Rizzoli, 1981: 66-76.
Manganelli, Giorgio, La letteratura come menzogna (1967), Milano, Adelphi, 1985.
Orlando, Francesco, Gli oggetti desueti nelle immagini della letteratura. Rovine, reliquie, rarità, robaccia, luoghi inabitati e tesori nascosti (1993), seconda edizione riveduta e ampliata, Torino, Einaudi, 1994.
Pavese Cesare, “Prefazione”, Melville, Herman, Moby Dick o la Balena (Moby Dick or the Whale, 1851), trad. it. di Cesare Pavese, Milano, Adelphi, 2000.
Poe, Edgar Allan, The Complete Tales and Poems of Edgar Allan Poe, London, Penguin, 1982.
Shakespeare, William, Macbeth (rappr. 1606, pubbl. 1623), edited by Kenneth Muir, London-New York, Routledge, 1992.
Todorov, Tzvetan, Introduction à la littérature fantastique, Paris, Seuil, 1970.
Todorov, Tzvetan, Les genres du discours, Paris, Seuil, 1978.
Truchaud, François, “H. P. Lovecraft ou: dire l’indicible”, Lovecraft, Howard Phillips, Dagon et autres nouvelles de terreur, Paris, Belfond, 1969: 7-14.
Wilson, Edmund, Classics and Commercials, New York, Vintage Books, 1962.
Copyright Notice
You are free to copy, distribute and transmit the work, and to adapt the work. You must attribute the work in the manner specified by the author or licensor (but not in any way that suggests that they endorse you or your use of the work).
