ENG 3407, Gothic Lit, Fall 2019

Group 3. Post a Create, Clue, or Connect critical response by 11 am Tuesday. 250 word minimum. Try to do a different type of response than your last post.

CREATE: Draw a visual representation of either a) the scene where Dyer + Danforth are being chased by a Shoggoth, b) the “degenerate” murals depicting the end of the Elder civilization, or c) the final “nameless evil” that lurks beyond the tallest mountains and overshadows the protagonists’ escape.

Include a quote and a brief (2-3 sentence) explanation of the details in your drawing. Upload as a JPG.

CLUE: Pick one of the passages that answers one of the reading questions.  Comment on the literary elements (setting description, point of view shifts, character development, style, etc) present in the passage. How might they provide a clue to understanding any of the following themes?

-Encountering “the sublime,” either in nature or in architectural space

-Political radicalism + colonialism

-Nature as a “gothic space”

-Scientific attempts to understand abjection

-Religious experience without organized religion (e.g. Catholicism)

CONNECT. 

Pick one of the passages that answers one of the reading questions.  Comment on the literary elements (setting description, point of view shifts, character development, style, etc) present in the passage. Connect it to one of the texts we have read so far, either noting parallels or contrasts between its Gothic elements and those of the text you’ve chosen.

Lovecraft’s idea of horror and terror is defined as psychological manipulation. In chapter 6 the story starts off with the narrator and his team inside the unknown creatures’ territory. Finding themselves in this situation the narrator points out how he feels somewhat obsolete in this town they made. “The Cyclopean massiveness and giganticism of everything about us became curiously oppressive, and there was something vaguely but deeply unhuman in all the contours, dimensions, proportions, decorations, and constructional nuances of the blasphemously archaic stonework. We soon realized from what the carvings revealed that this monstrous city was many million years old.” Now how this connects with his idea of history and science is that what I believe is his interpretation of how much history has done and how much time has changed with the representation of the city that the creatures made. Even with today how we question things such as the pyramids or landmarks and how they got there. So I believe H.P Lovecraft’s idea of history and science is sort of questioning the proof.

The walls were—in available spaces—boldly sculptured into a spiral
band of heroic proportions; and displayed, despite the destructive weathering caused by the
openness of the spot, an artistic splendour far beyond anything we had encountered before. The
littered floor was quite heavily glaciated, and we fancied that the true bottom lay at a
considerably lower depth.page 60

This para can be compared to the fantastic hesitation as the author could not understand what this maybe. It can also be related to the uncanny as they know it is Ice but the way it is sculptured and presented is hard to tell if it really is or not. This can be related to the scene of The Falling House of Usher where the narrator sees the house and he knows it is the house but it seemed so off that he compared it with a human and their features. It’s like they know what it is but they could not exactly give it an explanation of why this might be that way. Obviously we know the house was haunted in the Falling House of Usher and so the narrator felt that way. When we think about this story we can also say the mountains maybe haunted but not by spirits or ghosts but by unknown mysteries creatures which can be related.

“The Cyclopean massiveness and giganticism of everything about us became curiously oppressive; and there was something vaguely but deeply unhuman in all the contours, dimensions, proportions, decorations, and constructional nuances of the blasphemously archaic stonework. We soon realised from what the carvings revealed that this monstrous city was many
million years old” (40)I wanted to show how massive this ice kingdom is compared to the scientists. As they continue on with their expediton, they see how technology advanced these creatures are. The creatures are capable of creating gigantic and eye catching archaic stonework, driving the scientists to discover more. It is questionable how these creatures can survive and thrive for so long without being discovered by humans all this time.

In the Mountains of Madness, I feel like there is abjection. When members of the group are killed/go missing, William and his fellow crew member are more concerned over new discoveries rather than people dying. Maybe they were so shocked, they didn’t know how to react. There is also the sublime. When the pair discovered that the mountains were actually walls surrounding a city of some sort, that makes us wonder. Who could’ve made all this? The missing creatures that they found earlier? Who knows. As far as the uncovering of secret revelations destabilize identity, I’m not too sure, as I’ll have to look more into the story. I feel like there definitely are gender norms in Mountains of Madness. All of the crew members seem to be men and not a single women. This makes me wonder if Lovecraft thinks of women as inferior and incapable of thinking or enduring weather conditions. The ruins/city are symbolic as they represent the past, a civilization that once flourished, and human curiosity to expand the understanding of their world. The passage gives a clue to Lovecraft’s outlook on science by showing that everything may not be what they seem, such as the mountains actually being walls of a city. This also hints that Lovecraft believes there is a lot of mysteries out there that we may not know. Not only that, but could abnormal creatures like the ones in this story exist? After all, we haven’t even explored the all the oceans entirely. Maybe we’ll find something as bizarre as what Lovecraft describes or even more.

Group 2: Post a Create, Clue, or Connect critical response by 11 am Tuesday.

The post should focus on the contents of 1 particular paragraph.

The Create post should involve either a visual representation (in the form of an uploaded JPG) or a creative writing elaboration (fiction or poetry).

The Clue and Connect posts should both go beyond summary and analyze how specific literary elements (e.g. plot development, setting details, character choices) might articulate broader themes. Some of these may include:

-Abjection

-The sublime

-The uncovering of secret revelations that destabilize identity

-The subversion/challenging of race, class, or gender norms

-The symbolic significance of “ruins” or abandoned architectural spaces.

Clue posts should speculate how the passage might provide a clue as to Lovecraft’s philosophy or outlook on history + science.

Connect posts should try to compare/contrast the paragraph with another text we’ve read this semester.

The narrator of “At the mountains of madness” describes the large city that the explorers find at over the foothills with an awe inspired voice of amazement and fascination. He describes the city by saying “ for above all my bewilderment and sense of menace there burned a dominant curiosity to fathom more of this age-old secret—to know what sort of beings had built and lived in this incalculably gigantic place, and what relation to the general world of its time or of other times so unique a concentration of life could have had” . The narrator experiences a sense of awe from being in a seemingly endlessly large space and wonders just how life was like long ago when these creatures used to live there. The narrator has just experienced the sublime in the way he talks about the city that is very similar to how we look at the cathedral found in the Castle of Otranto. When we think about the churches founded in the Gothic times, we try to imagine being inside the church. The size of us compared to the size of the church creates a dynamic that creates an awe inspiring feeling of being in such a gigantic space. The narrator looks back at a time in history when some sort of beings lived in such a vastly humongous civilization in the same we as we look back to Gothic times to understand how Manfred and all the other characters were living in such a large space as well.