Masters Thesis

Slumming in the horror-fantasy ghetto: utopian ideals in the work of H.P. Lovecraft

Of those who take the time to lend a more critical eye to the fictional and non fictional works of Howard Phillips Lovecraft, few will debate his atheistic leanings and blatant racism. Though Lovecraft dismissed any and all belief in organized religion in late life, his brief childhood affinity for the Greek pantheon reveals a preference for paganism that predates his absence of faith. The assigning of specific deities of Lovecraft' s fictional pantheon to represent these two extremes of belief allow them to share common ground in that they both represent ideals that Lovecraft wishes the human race to adopt. These "Lovecraftian Utopias", as I term them, encompass my first chapter and connect the aforementioned deities with Lovecraft' s early paganism and later atheism. Lovecraft' s racism shares a similar role in my second chapter in that it is used as a basis for an ideal extraterrestrial society perpetuated by Lovecraft in select works that is based on both racial and cultural purity through a hierarchy of slavery. I incorporate the criteria of Friedrich Nietzsche's "Master Race" set forth in On the Genealogy of Morals to provide a theoretical background for Lovecraft' s societal utopia. Keywords: H.P. Lovecraft, Utopia, Nietzsche, Religion, Race, Cthulhu Mythos

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