The word ‘Gothic’ has many definitions, all conflicting. First, it means the Germanic people who, amongst other tribes, sacked Rome in 410 AD. Because of this, it can mean anyone barbaric and uncouth. ‘Gothic’ is also a style of non-Grecian architecture popular in medieval times. During the 18th century, it came to mean, politically, “Englishness.” Lastly, it can be used to describe a branch of fiction popularized in 1764 by Horace Walpole when he wrote The Castle of Otranto. Developed from the 1790s until 1820 by writers like Ann Radcliffe, M.G. Lewis and Charles Maturin, it expanded into the genres of ghost stories, detective fiction and melodramatic romance, including everyone from Robert Louis Stevenson to Edgar Allan Poe
That last name is significant. Edgar Allan Poe was H.P. Lovecraft’s biggest influence. Which never really made much sense to me, except in terms of diction and style, perhaps. Poe is preoccupied with psychological terror, while Lovecraft is about cosmic horror and gigantic monsters. Poe was never much of a monster writer. He gave us a demon horse in “Metzergerstein” and a monkey with a razor in “The Murders in the Rue Morgue.” That’s about all. Lovecraft, on the other hand, is a monster master of a kind not seen since H.G. Wells, with Cthulhu, Nyarlathotep, Azathoth, the Deep Ones, the Mi-Go, etc. etc. They seemed miles apart until I began to understand the concepts behind the Gothic better. It is in the Gothic concerns and themes that they are truly father and son.
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