/lit/ - Literature

>>12932782
>Before Poe the bulk of weird writers had worked largely in the dark; without an understanding of the psychological basis of the horror appeal, and hampered by more or less of conformity to certain empty literary conventions such as the happy ending, virtue rewarded, and in general a hollow moral didacticism, acceptance of popular standards and values, and striving of the author to obtrude his own emotions into the story and take sides with the partisans of the majority’s artificial ideas. Poe, on the other hand, perceived the essential impersonality of the real artist; and knew that the function of creative fiction is merely to express and interpret events and sensations as they are, regardless of how they tend or what they prove—good or evil, attractive or repulsive, stimulating or depressing—with the author always acting as a vivid and detached chronicler rather than as a teacher, sympathiser, or vendor of opinion. He saw clearly that all phases of life and thought are equally eligible as subject-matter for the artist, and being inclined by temperament to strangeness and gloom, decided to be the interpreter of those powerful feeling, and frequent happenings which attend pain rather than pleasure, decay rather than growth, terror rather than tranquillity, and which are fundamentally either adverse or indifferent to the tastes and traditional outward sentiments of mankind, and to the health, sanity, and normal expansive welfare of the species.

>Poe’s spectres thus acquired a convincing malignity possessed by none of their predecessors, and established a new standard of realism in the annals of literary horror.

>>12431622
Shut up, nigger.

>>11390411
If you think H.P. Lovecraft was the Master then you should be on your knees sucking S.T. Joshi's cock. He has spearheaded discussion of Lovecraft for decades, written the definitive Lovecraft biography, released tons and tons of Lovecraft's poems and letters that were previously unreleased, published authoritative texts of Lovecraft's stories that are 100% true to Lovecraft's manuscripts, brought exposure to Algernon Blackwood, Lord Dunsany and other obscure horror writers who influenced Lovecraft, and more. He's the ultimate Lovecraft expert.

Someone please do a Lovecraft version.

DUDE IT WAS IMPOSSIBLE TO DESCRIBE