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The Swamp as a Site for Evolutionary Horror

H. P. Lovecraft’s ‘Cthulhu’ as a Child of Haeckel and Freud

16.06.2023 um 18:00 Uhr

Öffentlicher Gastvortrag von und Diskussion mit Prof. Matt Ffytche (Essex)

Am Institut für Allgemeine und Vergleichende Literaturwissenschaft, LMU

 

As the Christian and deist worldview gradually transitioned to an evolutionary model during the long nineteenth century, an equivalent permutation within ‘weird’ and horror fiction became possible – one which, instead of being populated by spirits, vampires and demons drew its cursed objects from a primordial marine and amphibian past. This mode of cosmic evolutionary horror became central in the work of H. P. Lovecraft and his circle, giving rise from the 1920s onwards to the still evolving ‘Cthulhu’ mythos. This seminar will examine in the context of Lovecraftian writing – and ‘The Call of Cthulhu’ in particular – how the swamp begins to function in multiple ways as a medium for contact with that which is beyond, beneath and before the human – in both topographical and temporal terms – and also with a horror that, as a point of evolutionary origin, is both alien and already inside the human.

Matt Ffytche ist Professor am Department for Psychoanalytic and Psychosocial Studies in Essex. Zusammen mit Dagmar Herzog ist er leitender Redakteur der Zeitschrift Psychoanalysis and History. Er ist Autor der Monografie The Foundation of the Unconscious. Schelling, Freud and the Birth of the Modern Psyche, Cambridge UP 2011 sowie zusammen mit Daniel Pick Herausgeber von Psychoanalysis in the Age of Totalitarianism, Routledge 2016. Im Jahr 2022 erschien Ffytches Freud-Biografie in der Reihe Critical Lives bei Redaktion Books.

HaeckelCthulhu-min


Freitag, 16. Juni, 18 Uhr c.t.
Geschwister-Scholl-Platz 1
(LMU Hauptgebäude)
Raum 125 A
Keine Anmeldung erforderlich


Der Gastvortrag findet im Rahmen des Seminars „Der Sumpf“ statt, Leitung: Dr. Jenny Willner