Wednesday, January 29, 2014

10 Biddings of the Thedish Folks



The Ten Biddings of the Thedish Folks
An Excercise in the use of Germanic Roots in English
 
1.       Thou shalt only God alone fear, else naught in this world.
2.       Thou shalt not fere rede lightly – thine Word be true – thine Hand an oath.
3.       Thou shalt festly bego the days of wighty events for the Thedish folk and thankfully remember their Orheavers.
4.       Thou shalt hold thine progenitors in respect and love them, their ownart do nigh, their douths play.
5.       Thou shalt hold thine neck stiff, not stagger nor weaken from the right of thine folks.
6.       Thou shalt hold thine self, thine house, and thine kin rine of fremdlings and hold no mene bailships with them.
7.       Thou shalt mimic no fremdlandish sides nor customs, whether in script, in speech, or in deeds.
8.       Thou shalt be stout on thine Thedish birth and at any time articulate this to the glory and to the honor of thine stem.
9.       Thou shalt lust not for goods, honors and tokens at the cost of Thedish ownart and the freedom of thine folks.
10.    Thou shalt be offer-willing and eager to work for the wellness of thine ancestral folks, their greatness and indomitability.

Tabula of Thedish English Words and their Latin Brothers

to rede – to advise, counsel
to fere – to guide
to bego – to celebrate, or take part in
to do nigh – to emulate
to play – to cultivate, engage oneself with
festly – solemnly, festively
fremd – foreign, distant
rine – pure, plain
wighty – important
bailship – surety, promise of bail, voucher
douth – virtue, deed, benefit, excellence, retinue
orheaver – originator, perpetrator, committer, instigator, author
ownart – nature, character, individuality

Wednesday, January 22, 2014

Lovecraft's Treatment of Robert Browning

He called Browning's Childe Roland to the Dark Tower Came, written in 1855, his "hideous poem". Furthermore he says,

Naturally it is impossible in a brief sketch to trace out all the classic modern uses of the terror element. The ingredient must of necessity enter into all work both prose and verse treating broadly of life; and we are therefore not surprised to find a share in such writers as the poet Browning, whose “Childe Roland to the Dark Tower Came ” is instinct with hideous menace.

In contrast is Joseph Conrad, mentioned right after,

who often wrote of the dark secrets within the sea, and of the daemoniac driving power of Fate as influencing the lives of lonely and maniacally resolute men. Its trail is one of infinite ramifications; but we must here confine ourselves to its appearance in a relatively unmixed state, where it determines and dominates the work of art containing it.

Remember that Robert Browning, 1812 to 1889, was a poet famous of the Victorian era. 

Taken from Supernatural Horror in Literature

Sunday, January 19, 2014

An Omnibus of Gothic Literature


Adapted from the tour de force of H. P. Lovecraft in his essay Supernatural Horror in Literature

All of the entries in this article are listed in their order of presentation in Supernatural Horror in Literature. Wherever multiple works are listed which share the same author, the author is mentioned after the last member of the works. From this index, we can have a better idea of the literary world that H. P. Lovecraft lived in and in which his Gothic imagination lived.

I. Introduction

Childe Roland by Browning
The Turn of the Screw by Henry James
Elsie Venner by Oliver Wendell Holmes
Wandering Ghosts (a collection, may contain these other tales)
The Upper Berth by Marion Crawford
The Yellow Wallpaper by Charlotte Perkins Gilman
The Monkey’s Paw by W. W. Jacobs

II. The Dawn of the Horror Tale

A book of folklore from the middle ages assembled by Sabine Baring-Gould
Satyricon by Petronius
ApuleiusPliny the Younger to Sura
On Wonderful Events by Phlegon
Proclus relates Phlegon’s work
Bride of Corinth by Goethe
German Student by Irving
Adventures of Ferdinand Count Fathom by Smollett

III. The Early Gothic Novel

Tam O’Shanter by Burns for witchcraft
Christabel
Ancient Mariner by Coleridge
Lamia by Keats
Lenore
Wild Huntsman by Bürger
The Ring by Thomas Moore was inspired by German lyric
Faust by Goethe

The Castle of Otranto by Horace Walpole, while mediocre, exerted “an almost unparalleled influence on the literature of the weird.”

Works of Mrs. Barbauld
Sir Bertrand by Ms. Aikin in 1773
The Old English Baron by Clara Reeve, inspired by Otranto
The Recess by Sophia Lee charactarizes the Walpole method
The Castles of Athlin and Dunbayne
A Sicilian Romance
The Romance of the Forest
The Mysteries of Udolpho
The Italian
Gaston de Blondeville by Ann Radcliffe
Edgar Huntly
Ormond
Arthur Marvyn
Wieland; or, The Transformation by Charles Brocken Down

IV. The Apex of Gothic Romance

The Monk in 1796
The Castle Spectre
Tales of Terror
Tales of Wonder by Matthew Gregory Lewis

Northanger Abbey by Miss Austen is “by no means an unmerited rebuke to a school which had sunk far towards absurdity.”

Fatal Revenge; or, The Family of Montorio in 1807
Melmoth the Wanderer by Charles Robert Maturin in1820
Manfred by Byron
Don Juan by Molier
Melmoth Reconciled by Balzac

V. The Aftermath of Gothic Fiction

“A dreary plethora of trash”:
Horrid Mysteries by Marquis von Grosse in 1796
Children of the Abbey by Mrs. Roche in 1796
Zofloya; or, The Moor by Miss Dacre in 1806
Zastrozzi in 1810
St. Irvyne by Shelley in 1811

[Some gems]:

History of the Caliph Vathek by William Beckford
Arabian Nights
Episodes of Vathek in Life and Letters of William Beckford by lewis Melville
Caleb Williams
St. Leon by William Godwin
The Iron Chest by George Colman
The Magus by Francis Barrett in 1801
Faust and the Demon
Wagner, the Wehr-wolf by George Reynolds
The Last Man
Frankenstein; or, The Modern Prometheus by Shelley in 1818
The Vampyre by Polidori
Redgauntlet
Letters on Demonology and Witchcraft by Sir Walter Scott in 1830
Tales of a Traveller by Washington Irving in 1824
The Epicurean by Thomas Moore in 1827
The Werwolf
The Phantom Ship by Marryat in 1839
The Signalman by Dickens
The House and the Brain
Zanoni in 1842
A Strange Story by Edward Bulwer-Lytton in 1862
Varney, the Vampyre by Thomas Preskett Prest in 1847
She by Rider Haggard
Markheim
The Body-Snatcher
Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde by Robert Luis Stevenson
Wuthering Heights by Emily Brontë

VI. Spectral Literature on the Continent

[German]:

Short stories by Ernst Theodor Wilhelm Hoffmann “convey the grotesque rather than the terrible.”
Undine by Friedrich Heinrich Karl, Baron de la Monte Fouque in 1811, “most artistic of all the Continental weird tales”.
Treatsie on Elementat Spirits by Paracelcus
Amber Witch by Wilhelm Meinhold
The Sorcerer’s Apprentice
Alraune
The Spider by Hanns Heinz Ewers

[French]:

Hans of Iceland by Victor Hugo
The Wild Ass’s Skin
Seraphita
Louis Lambert by Balzac
Avatar
The Foot of the Mummy
Clarimonde
One of Cleopatra’s Nights by Theophile Gautier
The Temptation of St. Anthony by Gustave Flaubert
Works by Baudelaire
Works by Joris-Karl Huysmans
Venus of Ille by Prosper Merimee
The Spectre
He?
Who Knows?
The Horla “is generally regarded as the masterpiece”
The Diary of a Madman
The White Wolf
On the River
Horror by Guy de Maupassant
The Man-Wolf
The Invisible Eye
The Owl’s Ear
The Waters of Death by Erckmann-Chatrian
Torture by Hope by Villiers de l’Isle-Adam

[Jewish]:
The Golem by Gustav Meyrink
The Dybbuk by Ansky

VII. Edgar Allan Poe

[you may consider this all of Poe’s works]

VIII. The Weird Tradition in America

A Wonder Book
Tanglewood Tales
Grimshawe’s Street
The Marble Faun
Septimius Felton and Dolliver Romance
Legends of the Province House
House of the Seven Gables by Nathaniel Hawthorne
What was it? “the prototype of de Maupassant’s ‘Horla’”
Diamond Lens by Fitz-James O’Brien
The Damned Thing
The Suitable Surroundings
The Middle Toe of the Right Foot
Can Such Things Be? (a collection, may contain these other tales)
In the Midst of Life (a collection, may contain these other tales)
The Death of Halpin Frayser and other stories by Ambrose Bierce
The King in Yellow
The Maker of Moons
In Search of the Unknown by Robert W. Chambers
The Dead Valley by Ralph Adams Cram
Fishhead and other tales by Irvin S. Cobb
The Dark Chamber by Leonard Cline in 1927
The Palace Called DagonHerbert S. Gorman
Sinister House by Leland Hall “has touches of magnificent atmosphere by is marred by a somewhat mediocre romanticism.”
The Song of the Sirens
Lukundoo
The Snout by Edward Lucas White
The Hashish-Eater
The Double Shadow by Clark Ashton Smith, wherin his “best work can be found”

IX. The Weird Tradition in the British Isles

The Phantom ‘Rickshaw’
The Finest Story in the World
The Recrudescence of Imray
The Mark of the Beast by Rudyard Kipling
Fantastics
Kwaidan by Lafcadio Hearn
Picture of Dorian Gray by Wilde
Xelucha
The House of Sounds, “Mr. Shiel’s undoubted masterpiece”
The Purple Cloud by Matthew Phipps Shiel
The Lair of the White Worm
The Jewel of the Seven Stars
Dracula by Bram Stoker
The Beetle by Richard Marsh
Brood of the Witch-Queen by “Sax Rohmer” Arthur Sarsfield Ward
The Door of the Unreal by Gerald Bliss
Cold Harbour by Francis Brett Young
Witch Wood
The Green Wildebeest
The Wind in the Portico
Skule Skerry by John Buchan
The Were-Wolf by Clemence Housman
The Elixir of Life by Arthur Ransome
The Shadowy Thing by H. B. Drake
Lilith by George Macdonald
The Return
Seaton’s Aunt
The Tree
Out of the Deep
A Recluse
Mr. Kempe
All-Hallows
The Listeners by Walter de la Mare
The Man Who Went Too Far
Visible and Invisible (a collection, may contain these other tales)
The Face
They Return at Evening
Others who Return by H. R. Wakefield “manages now and then to achieve great heights of horror despite a vitiating air of sophistication”
The Ghost of Fear
Thirty Strange Stories by H. G. Wells
The Captain of the ‘Pole-Star’
Lot No. 249 by A. Conan Doyle
Mrs. Lunt by Hugh Walpole
The Smoking Leg by John Metcalfe, especially “The Bad Lands”
The Celestial Ombinus by E. M. Forster, “inclined toward the amiable and innocuous phantasy”
The collection of short stories by H. D. Everett
A Visitor from Down Under by L. P. Hartley
Uncanny Stories by May Sinclair
The Boats of the ‘Glen Carrig’ in 1907
The House on the Borderland in 1908
The Ghost Pirates in 1909
The Night Land in 1912
Carnacki, the Ghost-Finder by William Hope Hodgson
Works of Joseph Conrad

X. The Modern Masters

Chronicle of Clemendy
The Hill of Dreams
The Great God Pan in 1894
The White People
The Three Impostors
The Red Hand
The Shining Pyramid
The Teror
The Great Return by Arthur Machen
The Willows
The Wendigo
An Episode in  Lodging House
Incredible Adventures
John Silence – Physician Extraordinary
Jimbo
The Centaur by Algernon Blackwood
The Book of Wonder
A Dreamer’s Tales
The Gods of the Mountain
The Laughter of the Gods
The Queen’s Enemies by Edward John Moreton Drax Plunkett, Eighteenth Baron Dunsany
Ghost-Stories of an Antiquary
More Ghost-Stories of an Antiquary
A Thin Ghost and Others
A Warning to the Curious
The Five Jars
Count Magnus, which may be contained in the above collections
The Treasure of Abbot Thomas, which may be contained in the above collections
Oh, Whistle, and I’ll Come to You, My Lad, which may be contained in the above collections
An Episode of Cathedral History, which may be contained in the above collections, by Montague Rhodes James, Provost of Eton College

It would do one good to have this list compiled in chronological order of publication, but such a prospect is far in the future. H. P. Lovecraft's essay reveals several views of his concerning literary works and authors across diverse time-periods, and it is my future hope to post these excerpts for the purpose of quick reference.