H. P. Lovecraft
Being a geek, I've been reading stories and playing games and watching movies and tv shows inspired by H. P. Lovecraft's writings all my life. Recently we've been playing "Arkham Horror" rather a lot, and so I decided it was time I got off my duff and actually read the man's works. Thankfully, a friend of geoffimusprime posted a link to The Online Lovecraft Library.
I had always thought Lovecraft was Victorian - it was the jive I got off of him. He isn't, he's from the twenties. BUT, as I read his stuff, I find he is inordinately fond of archaic turns of phrase, especially certain words which enjoyed their highest popularity around 1880.
For example, take "anent" - at first I thought this was a typo for "against" considering how he used it "she produced evidence anent his madness". But I find that it was an archaic word meaning similar to 'against' or 'along, beside' that enjoyed victorian popularity in legal matters, especially scottish legal matters, and became an affectation of English writers. (Similarly he uses a spelling of "icon", "eikon" that the OED could not find in use since before Chaucer's time.) His medievalism is singularly Victorian, and "eikon" was the only medievalish spelling/ archaic word I found in his works that was NOT popular around 1880.
(An interesting note, one of the words he is perhaps over-fond of, "eldritch" is quite eldritch in meaning... the OED had no guess on its etymology, save that it perhaps derived from "elf" or "elfish". It, too, was used in medieval times and then dusted off and added back into the vocabulary by those romantical backward-looking Victorians.)
In his attitudes and story format he is also rather victorian. His preoccupation with the usurption of "breeding" by the nuevo riche is quiant in a man of the roaring twenties, but understandable given his personal history, coming from a wealthy old family fallen on hard times. I will say his racism and xenophobic tendencies are NOT typical of the 20s, but again are behind his times. (Could this man honestly be writing at the same time as Langston Hughes and F. Scott Fitzgerald?)
At first I thought it was the old curse of genre fiction running behind the times, (the argument being that experimental subjects require un-experimental structure), but no, the more I think on it, the more I suspect he was, in fact, unique in his "Lovecraftian" historiating.
I had always thought Lovecraft was Victorian - it was the jive I got off of him. He isn't, he's from the twenties. BUT, as I read his stuff, I find he is inordinately fond of archaic turns of phrase, especially certain words which enjoyed their highest popularity around 1880.
For example, take "anent" - at first I thought this was a typo for "against" considering how he used it "she produced evidence anent his madness". But I find that it was an archaic word meaning similar to 'against' or 'along, beside' that enjoyed victorian popularity in legal matters, especially scottish legal matters, and became an affectation of English writers. (Similarly he uses a spelling of "icon", "eikon" that the OED could not find in use since before Chaucer's time.) His medievalism is singularly Victorian, and "eikon" was the only medievalish spelling/ archaic word I found in his works that was NOT popular around 1880.
(An interesting note, one of the words he is perhaps over-fond of, "eldritch" is quite eldritch in meaning... the OED had no guess on its etymology, save that it perhaps derived from "elf" or "elfish". It, too, was used in medieval times and then dusted off and added back into the vocabulary by those romantical backward-looking Victorians.)
In his attitudes and story format he is also rather victorian. His preoccupation with the usurption of "breeding" by the nuevo riche is quiant in a man of the roaring twenties, but understandable given his personal history, coming from a wealthy old family fallen on hard times. I will say his racism and xenophobic tendencies are NOT typical of the 20s, but again are behind his times. (Could this man honestly be writing at the same time as Langston Hughes and F. Scott Fitzgerald?)
At first I thought it was the old curse of genre fiction running behind the times, (the argument being that experimental subjects require un-experimental structure), but no, the more I think on it, the more I suspect he was, in fact, unique in his "Lovecraftian" historiating.