The Great God Pan

Last updated

The Great God Pan
Title page--The great god Pan.jpg
Title page
Author Arthur Machen
Cover artist Aubrey Beardsley
LanguageEnglish
Genre
Publisher John Lane
Publication date
1894
Publication placeUnited Kingdom
Media typePrint (hardcover)

The Great God Pan is an 1894 horror and fantasy novella by Welsh writer Arthur Machen. Machen was inspired to write The Great God Pan by his experiences at the ruins of a pagan temple in Wales. What would become the first chapter of the novella was published in the magazine The Whirlwind in 1890. Machen later extended The Great God Pan and it was published as a book alongside another story, "The Inmost Light", in 1894. The novella begins with an experiment to allow a woman named Mary to see the supernatural world. This is followed by an account of a series of mysterious happenings and deaths over many years surrounding a woman named Helen Vaughan.

Contents

On publication, it was widely denounced by the press as degenerate and horrific because of its implied sexual content, and the novella hurt Machen's reputation as an author. Beginning in the 1920s, Machen's work was critically re-evaluated and The Great God Pan has since garnered a reputation as a classic of horror. Literary critics have noted the influence of other nineteenth-century authors on The Great God Pan and offered differing opinions on whether or not it can be considered an example of Gothic fiction or science fiction. The novella influenced the work of horror writers such as Bram Stoker, H. P. Lovecraft, and Stephen King, and has been adapted for the stage twice.

Plot

Clarke agrees, somewhat unwillingly, to bear witness to a strange experiment performed by his friend, Dr. Raymond. The ultimate goal of the doctor is to open the mind of a patient so that she may experience the spiritual world, an experience he notes the ancients called "seeing the great god Pan". He performs the experiment, which involves minor brain surgery, on a young woman named Mary. She awakens from the operation awed and terrified but quickly becomes "a hopeless idiot".

Years later, Clarke learns of a beautiful but sinister girl named Helen Vaughan, reportedly an orphan who has been sent by a distant relative to live with a family in a small Welsh town, where she is reported to have caused a series of mysterious happenings. She spends much of her time in the woods near her house, and takes other children on prolonged twilight rambles in the countryside that disturb their parents. One day, a young boy stumbles across Helen "playing on the grass with a 'strange naked man'"; the boy becomes hysterical and later, after seeing a Roman statue of a satyr's head, is left with a permanent intellectual disability. Helen also forms an unusually close friendship with a neighbour, Rachel, whom she leads several times into the woods. On one occasion Rachel returns home distraught, half-naked and rambling. Shortly after an explanation to her mother that is unrevealed to the reader but instills great revulsion in Clarke, Rachel returns to the woods and disappears forever. Clarke relates these events in a book he is writing entitled Memoirs to Prove the Existence of the Devil .

Years later, Villiers happens across his old friend Herbert, who has become a vagrant since they last met. When asked how he has fallen so low, Herbert replies that he has been "corrupted body and soul" by his wife. After some investigation with Clarke and another character, Austin, it is revealed that Helen was Herbert's wife, and that a well-to-do man died "of fright, of sheer, awful terror" after seeing something in Herbert and Helen's home. Herbert is later found dead.

Helen disappears for some time; according to rumour, she spent the time taking part in disturbing orgies somewhere in the Americas. She eventually returns to London under the pseudonym Mrs. Beaumont. Soon afterwards, a series of stable, happy men in the city commit suicide; the last person known to have been in the presence of each of them was Mrs. Beaumont, whom they are implied to have slept with. Villiers and Clarke, each learning of Mrs. Beaumont's true identity, band together and confront Helen in her house with a noose. They tell her that she must kill herself, or they will expose her. Helen has a very abnormal death, transforming between human and beast, male and female, and dividing and reuniting, before turning into a jelly-like substance and finally dying.

A fragment of a document covers the remains of a pillar honouring the Celtic god Nodens. The Latin inscription on the column reads, "To the great god Nodens (the god of the Great Deep or Abyss), Flavius Senilis has erected this pillar on account of the marriage which he saw beneath the shade." The document says that historians are puzzled as to what the inscription refers to. A letter from Dr. Raymond to Clarke reveals that Helen was the child of Mary, who died shortly after her daughter's birth. In the letter, Raymond informs Clarke that Mary became pregnant after his experiment caused her to see the god Pan, implying that Pan fathered Helen.

Background

Arthur Machen credited his childhood visits to the ruined Roman temple at Caerwent (pictured), which he believed was dedicated to the god Nodens, as his inspiration for The Great God Pan. Caerwent Roman Temple - geograph.org.uk - 486475.jpg
Arthur Machen credited his childhood visits to the ruined Roman temple at Caerwent (pictured), which he believed was dedicated to the god Nodens, as his inspiration for The Great God Pan.

Machen's lifelong fascination with occultism began after he read an article on alchemy in an edition of Charles Dickens's periodical Household Words belonging to his father, a clergyman. [2] [3] In his 1922 autobiography, Far Off Things, Machen wrote that The Great God Pan was inspired by the times he visited the Usk, a Welsh river, and the Welsh towns of Caerleon on the Usk and Caerwent as a boy; all of these places had been settled by the Romans. [4] He wrote that "strange relics" were frequently found at Caerwent from the ruined temple of "Nodens, god of the depths". [4]

In writing the novella, he tried to "pass on the vague, indefinable sense of awe and mystery and terror that [he] had received" while visiting those ruins. [1] Machen felt that he had "transliterated [the feeling] clumsily" in The Great God Pan, elaborating: "I translated awe, at worst awfulness, into evil; again, I say, one dreams with fire and works in clay." [5] Dennis Denisoff said that Machen's decision to make Helen Vaughan the child of a Welsh woman and a pagan figure "parallels Machen's own authorial self-identity as one arising from not only his Welsh ancestry but also pagan myth." [6]

What is now the first chapter of the novella was published in 1890 in a magazine called The Whirlwind , while what is now the third chapter of the book was published in the same magazine the following year as a standalone short story called "The City of Resurrections". Machen only viewed the two works as connected after they were finished. Once he decided the two stories were connected, Machen wrote the rest of The Great God Pan in a single evening save for its final chapter. Machen did not think of an ending for the tale for months, and in that time believed that the novella would remain unfinished forever. The last chapter was completed in June 1891. Machen sent the novella to the publisher Blackwood, who rejected it, deeming it a clever story that "shrink[s]...from the central idea." It was accepted by John Lane and published in 1894. [7] When published as a book, The Great God Pan was accompanied by another Machen tale called "The Inmost Light" [8] which also features a mad scientist and elements of science fiction. [9] The book's cover was illustrated by Aubrey Beardsley. [3]

Analysis

Genre

Joe Sommerlad of The Independent views The Great God Pan as a work of Gothic horror. [3] According to The Encyclopedia of Science Fiction , the story is "typical of Victorian [science fiction] horror at about the time [science fiction] was beginning to shed its Gothic elements into a separate Horror/fantasy genre." [10] Aaron Worth writes that The Great God Pan superficially resembles science fiction due to its depiction of Dr. Raymond as a mad scientist, but it cannot be seen as an example of the genre as it posits that occultism is superior to science. [11] The novella has been classified as Decadent literature as well, [8] as it features hallmarks of the genre such as "occultism, paganism, non-mainstream eroticism, sexual diversity, the femme fatale , violent and strange deaths, and the simultaneous investment in and disavowal of bourgeois identities." [12] Pan has also been described as fantasy literature [2] and as a cautionary tale against men mistreating women the way that Raymond mistreated Mary. [13]

Influences

Third-century relief carving from a Roman sarcophagus showing Pan dancing with a maenad ("mad woman") playing a tambourine Sarcophagus Triumph of Bacchus-IMG 9721.JPG
Third-century relief carving from a Roman sarcophagus showing Pan dancing with a maenad ("mad woman") playing a tambourine

Pan was an ancient Greek god, primarily worshipped in Arcadia, who was associated with shepherds and their flocks and with nature. [14] He was believed to lurk in caves, mountains, and other lonely, isolated locations. [14] In some stories, he inflicted his enemies with sudden terror (i.e., panic ). [14] The phrase, "the great God Pan" comes from an ancient Greek folktale recorded in Plutarch's De defectu oraculorum (On the Decline of Oracles), [14] which claims that a Greek sailor near the island of Paxi during the reign of Emperor Tiberius (ruled 14–37 AD) heard a voice cry out, "When you are arrived at Palodes, take care to make it known that the great God Pan is dead." [15] [14] Early Christian commentaries suggested that this event occurred at the same time as the death of Christ and that the "death" of Pan represented the transition from a pagan to a Christian world. [14]

This story had particular resonance with Victorian literary audiences. [14] In 1844, Elizabeth Barrett Browning wrote her poem "The Dead Pan", an adaption of Plutarch's story which insisted that proper Christian literature should abandon Greek mythology, with each stanza ending in the words "Pan, Pan is dead." [14] As a member of the Decadent movement, Machen sought to subvert traditional themes and transgress literary boundaries, [14] an agenda which made Pan a particularly appealing figure. [14] The title of The Great God Pan appears to have been specifically derived from Browning's later poem "A Musical Instrument" (1862), in which the first line of every stanza ends with the words "the great god Pan". [16] Machen's use of Pan in the novella may have also been influenced by Robert Louis Stevenson's essay "Pan's Pipes" (1878) and Algernon Charles Swinburne's poem "A Nympholept" (1894), [17] in which Pan is portrayed as the "emblem of the delicious combination of ecstasy and terror." [18]

In a review of the novella for Black Gate , Matthew David Surridge hypothesized that Machen took inspiration from Mary Shelley's Frankenstein (1818) in his portrayal of Dr. Raymond as a mad scientist akin to Victor Frankenstein. [2] The works of Robert Louis Stevenson, especially his 1886 novella Strange Case of Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde , were among Machen's most significant influences when writing The Great God Pan. [3] [18] John Gawsworth saw Machen's novella as reminiscent of the horror stories of Edgar Allan Poe and Sheridan Le Fanu. [19] Aaron Worth noted similitude between the death of Helen Vaughan and the theories of alchemist Thomas Vaughan, who is the character's namesake [20] and Helen's disintegration recalls the alchemical concept of the prima materia. [21] John C. Tibbetts observes similarities between Helen Vaughan and Ayesha, the sexually liberated demonic priestess from H. Rider Haggard's She: A History of Adventure (1886). [22] Machen wrote that several critics felt that Joris-Karl Huysmans's novels À rebours (1884) and Là-bas (1891) had inspired The Great God Pan, though he did not read either book until after Pan was published. Upon reading the two novels, Machen concluded that "my critics had not read them either." [23]

Religious themes

Helen Vaughan and Pan have respectively been compared to the Antichrist (left) and Lucifer (right). Deedsoftheantichrist2580-detail.jpg
Helen Vaughan and Pan have respectively been compared to the Antichrist (left) and Lucifer (right).

The novella is characteristic of a late nineteenth-century interest in paganism in general and Pan in particular that is found in the works of Florence Farr and Kenneth Grahame. [25] According to the British scholar of modern literature Roger Luckhurst, Raymond expresses a typical Neoplatonist view of reality in which the true object of study is the revelation of a "higher, hidden spiritual world". [18] He is therefore "an occultist rather than a materialist scientist." [18] Neoplatonism is also commonly regarded as the last school of pagan philosophy [18] and Raymond's views therefore relate back to the recurring theme of the death of Pan. [18]

Author Theodora Goss sees The Great God Pan as equating paganism with irrationality and what Carl Jung would call the collective unconscious. [26] Literary critic Kostas Boyiopoulos reads the story from a Judeo-Christian perspective, arguing that Helen Vaughan embodies a "female version of an antichrist", a perversion of Jesus, as well as the figure of Lilith from Judaic myth, with Helen's mother Mary being a "direct analogy of the biblical Virgin Mary". [27] Black Gates's Matthew David Surridge believes that the story associates paganism with sex and femininity, while portraying Helen as a female Antichrist, [2] a view shared by James Goho in Journeys into Darkness: Critical Essays on Gothic Horror (2014). [24] Surridge adds "from another perspective: [Helen] is the undoing of progress. Rather than proceeding from paganism to Christianity, as orthodox Victorian belief imagined the progress of history, she is a reversal of time, the revenge of the atavistic." In keeping with this idea, Surridge sees Mary's name as a reference to Mary, mother of Jesus and Helen's name as a reference to the pagan figure Helen of Troy. [2] Goho interprets the story as Machen's warning against the abandonment of "true religion" and the embrace of paganism. [13]

At one point in the novella, a Latin creed is recited: "Et Diabolus Incarnatus Est. Et Homo Factus Est." ("And the Devil was made incarnate. And was made man.") [18] Luckhurst identifies this as a blasphemous rewriting of the Nicene Creed, an early Christian creed which includes the line: "By the power of the Holy Spirit he [Jesus] became incarnate from the Virgin Mary, and was made man." [18] Goho writes that the portrayal of Pan in the novella draws on the mythology of Lucifer and depictions of Pan as "the fetish for evil and suffering and the danger and dread of the wilderness," rather than depictions of Pan as a playful and harmless god. [24] Surridge sees the book's references to Satan and Nodens as implying that Satan, Nodens and Pan are the same being, [2] while Goho connects the novella to the fact that early Christians associated Pan with the devil. [28]

Critical reception

Oscar Wilde praised the novella. Oscar Wilde by Sarony 1882 01.jpg
Oscar Wilde praised the novella.

The Great God Pan's implied sexuality caused a scandal upon its original release and hurt Machen's reputation as an author. [2] Reviewing the novella for the magazine Literary News, Richard Henry Stoddard criticised the story as "too morbid to be the production of a healthy mind". [29] The art critic Harry Quilter's review of the book, titled "The Gospel of Intensity", and published in The Contemporary Review in June 1895, was even more harsh. [30] Quilter declared: "'The Great God Pan' is, I have no hesitation in saying, a perfectly abominable story, in which the author has spared no endeavour to suggest loathsomeness and horror which he describes as beyond the reach of words." [31] [32] Quilter warned that Machen's books were a dangerous threat to the entire British public and that they would destroy readers' sanities and senses of morality. [33] [31] Quilter went on to attack the story's publisher, John Lane, as well as Machen himself: "Why should he be allowed, for the sake of a few miserable pounds, to cast into our midst these monstrous creations of his diseased brain?" [31] [34] Quilter added that works of fiction like Machen's should be unanimously condemned by literary critics and newspapers: "If the Press was so disposed it could stamp out such art and fiction in a few months: And that disposition must be acquired, must even be enforced." [31] He was particularly harsh in his denunciation of sexual ambiguity and polymorphous androgyny in the book. [34] He expressed revulsion at Machen's description of Helen's sex changing immediately before her death [34] and concluded his review with a comment of distaste regarding the "nasty little naked figure of dubious sex and humanity with which Mr. Aubrey Beardsley has prefaced the story". [34] A positive appraisal of the novella came from Oscar Wilde, who called it "un succès fou." [20]

Machen's literary reputation was re-evaluated in the 1920s [2] and The Great God Pan has since attained the reputation of a horror masterpiece. [8] In "Supernatural Horror in Literature" (1926; revised 1933), H. P. Lovecraft praised the story, saying: "No one could begin to describe the cumulative suspense and ultimate horror with which every paragraph abounds"; he added that "the sensitive reader" reaches the end with "an appreciative shudder". Lovecraft also noted, however, that "melodrama is undeniably present, and coincidence is stretched to a length which appears absurd upon analysis". Bennett Cerf described the story as a "masterpiece". [35] Brian Stableford stated that The Great God Pan is "the archetypal Decadent horror story" and described the story as "highly original". [8] Stephen King referred to it as "one of the best horror stories ever written. Maybe the best in the English language." [36] The Washington Post 's Elizabeth Hand deemed it "one of the greatest supernatural tales ever written". [37] Black Gate's Matthew David Surridge said that The Great God Pan is "a fascinating, troubling story, and, for all its influence, not like much else than I can think of. It's not simple, and yet it's effective, more so than can easily be explained." [2]

Some commentary on The Great God Pan has focused on its portrayal of women. Surridge sees the novella as expressing a fear of women even though the ultimate source of horror in the story is a male deity. [2] The Encyclopedia of Science Fiction says that Helen's "metamorphosis...remains one of the most dramatically horrible and misogynistic in fiction". [10] Helen never speaks in the book; according to Victoria Margree and Bryony Randall in Victorian Gothic: An Edinburgh Companion, "The silence of the central female character is part of the text's misogyny, but also part of its narrative effect." Margree and Randall also view Helen's fate as a punishment for her sexual impropriety. [38] Dennis Denisoff connects Machen's tendency to make his empowered female characters "sexually monstrous" to his criticisms of authors who discussed the subject of women's rights. [6] James Machin defends Machen and The Great God Pan from charges from misogyny on the grounds that the male protagonist of Machen's story "The Novel of the White Powder" (1895) disintegrates in a manner reminiscent of Helen Vaughan [21] and on the grounds that Machen married Amy Hogg, a woman who defied the sexual boundaries of her time. [39]

Adaptations

A pair of parodies of Pan were published in 1895 – Arthur Rickett's "A Yellow Creeper" and Arthur Sykes's "The Great Pan-Demon". Both suggest that Machen is an author of "limited imagination," with the latter depicting him as a mad scientist unleashing degenerate literature on an unsuspecting public. [40] The Great God Pan was brought to the stage in 2008 by the WildClaw Theatre Company in Chicago. It was adapted and directed by WildClaw artistic director Charley Sherman. [41] The novella Helen's Story (2013) by Rosanne Rabinowitz retells the story of The Great God Pan from Helen Vaughan's point of view. Helen's Story was written from a feminist perspective and nominated for a Shirley Jackson Award. [42] The Great God Pan was adapted into a chamber opera by composer Ross Crean. Unusually for a composer, Crean wrote the opera's libretto himself. A recording of the work was released in 2017. [43] The production saw its world premiere by Chicago Fringe Opera in 2018. According to the Chicago Tribune 's John von Rhein, Chicago Fringe Opera's staging of The Great God Pan portrays Helen Vaughan as both a symbol of gender equality and an evil femme fatale. [44]

Legacy

The Great God Pan influenced later works of horror fiction, including "The Dunwich Horror" (1929) by H. P. Lovecraft. Hugh Rankin - The Dunwich Horror.jpg
The Great God Pan influenced later works of horror fiction, including "The Dunwich Horror" (1929) by H. P. Lovecraft.

Black Gate's Matthew David Surridge said that The Great God Pan influenced Bram Stoker's Dracula (1897) as both works feature "an introductory sequence featuring a horrified Englishman in a non-English setting; then a variety of seemingly-unconnected events in London, the metropole at the heart of Empire; then the discovery that all those events are in fact inspired by one malign and supernatural intelligence, that the rational contemporary capital is threatened by the irrational and archaic; then an equivocal conclusion. The fear of sex, women, foreignness." [2] John C. Tibbetts notes that both Helen Vaughan in The Great God Pan and Lucy Westenra in Dracula are "demon women of voracious and malignant sexuality". [22] Theodora Goss also notes similarities between the death of Helen Vaughan in Machen's novella and Lucy's death in Dracula. [26] Tibbetts also notes that Machen's portrayal of Helen Vaughan as demonic and hyper-sexual may have influenced a similar character, The Woman of Songs, in Richard Marsh's The Beetle (1897). [22]

The Great God Pan was highly influential on the circle of writers around H. P. Lovecraft. [8] The structure of Machen's story influenced the structure of Lovecraft's "The Call of Cthulhu" (1928). [46] Pan's depiction of a monstrous half-human hybrid inspired the plot of Lovecraft's "The Dunwich Horror" (1929), which refers to Machen's novella by name. According to Lovecraft scholar Robert M. Price, "'The Dunwich Horror' is in every sense an homage to Machen and even a pastiche. There is little in Lovecraft's wonderful story that does not come directly out of Machen's fiction." [45] Pan also inspired Lovecraft to create his character Nodens [2] who appears most prominently in The Dream-Quest of Unknown Kadath (1943). [47]

Clark Ashton Smith was inspired by The Great God Pan to write his story "The Nameless Offspring" (1931), which also features a monstrous child born of a human and a supernatural entity. [48] It has been suggested that Michael Arlen's novel Hell! Said the Duchess (1934) is a parody of The Great God Pan, as Arlen was influenced by Machen's work. [49] [50] The Great God Pan influenced Peter Straub's novel Ghost Story (1979) in its depiction of a shapeshifting monster who terrifies those it encounters. [51] Straub himself frequently credited The Great God Pan as having been a major influence on his work. [22]

According to film historians Keith McDonald and Roger Clark, Mexican film director Guillermo del Toro's portrayal of the faun in his 2006 dark fantasy film Pan's Labyrinth was inspired by the "ambivalent and possibly dangerous" portrayals of Pan in late Victorian and early Edwardian novels, including Machen's The Great God Pan and Pan's Garden (1912) by Algernon Blackwood. [52] Del Toro deliberately chose to imitate the darker, more sinister fauns of Machen and Blackwood rather than the "sweetly domesticated figure" of Mr. Tumnus from C. S. Lewis's The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe (1950). [53] The original title of the film in Spanish is El Laberinto del Fauno (The Labyrinth of the Faun), [54] but the English title Pan's Labyrinth emphasizes the connection between del Toro's film and the body of late nineteenth-century writings about Pan, including The Great God Pan. [53]

Stephen King wrote that his novella N. from his story collection Just After Sunset (2008) is "a riff on Arthur Machen's The Great God Pan.... Mine isn't anywhere near [as] good [as the original], but I loved the chance to put neurotic behavior—obsessive/compulsive disorder—together with the idea of a monster-filled macroverse." [36] King has also cited Machen's novella as an influence on his novel Revival (2014). [37] Similar to Pan, Revival features an experiment on a young woman's brain which allows her to see into another world. [37] Josh Malerman said The Great God Pan partly inspired his novel Bird Box (2014). [55]

See also

Related Research Articles

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Arthur Machen</span> Welsh author and mystic (1863–1947)

Arthur Machen was the pen-name of Arthur Llewellyn Jones, a Welsh author and mystic of the late 19th and early 20th centuries. He is best known for his influential supernatural, fantasy, and horror fiction. His novella The Great God Pan has garnered a reputation as a classic of horror, with Stephen King describing it as "Maybe the best [horror story] in the English language." He is also well known for "The Bowmen", a short story that was widely read as fact, creating the legend of the Angels of Mons.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Shub-Niggurath</span> Fictional deity in the Cthulhu Mythos

Shub-Niggurath is a deity created by H. P. Lovecraft. She is often associated with the phrase "The Black Goat of the Woods with a Thousand Young". The only other name by which Lovecraft referred to her was "Lord of the Wood" in his story The Whisperer in Darkness.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Nodens</span> Celtic deity

*Nodens or *Nodons is a Celtic healing god worshipped in Ancient Britain. Although no physical depiction of him has survived, votive plaques found in a shrine at Lydney Park (Gloucestershire) indicate his connection with dogs, a beast associated with healing symbolism in antiquity. The deity is known in only one other location, in Cockersand Moss (Lancashire). He was equated on most inscriptions with the Roman god Mars and associated in a curse with Silvanus. His name is cognate with that of later Celtic mythological figures, such as the Irish Nuada and the Welsh Nudd.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">The Call of Cthulhu</span> 1928 short story by H. P. Lovecraft

"The Call of Cthulhu" is a short story by American writer H. P. Lovecraft. Written in the summer of 1926, it was first published in the pulp magazine Weird Tales in February 1928.

"Supernatural Horror in Literature" is a 28,000-word essay by American writer H. P. Lovecraft, surveying the development and achievements of horror fiction as the field stood in the 1920s and 30s. The essay was researched and written between November 1925 and May 1927, first published in August 1927, and then revised and expanded during 1933–1934.

Weird fiction is a subgenre of speculative fiction originating in the late 19th and early 20th centuries. Weird fiction either eschews or radically reinterprets traditional antagonists of supernatural horror fiction, such as ghosts, vampires, and werewolves. Writers on the subject of weird fiction, such as China Miéville, sometimes use "the tentacle" to represent this type of writing. The tentacle is a limb-type absent from most of the monsters of European gothic fiction, but often attached to the monstrous creatures created by weird fiction writers, such as William Hope Hodgson, M. R. James, Clark Ashton Smith, and H. P. Lovecraft.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Frank Belknap Long</span> American novelist, short story writer, and poet

Frank Belknap Long Jr. was an American writer of horror fiction, fantasy, science fiction, poetry, gothic romance, comic books, and non-fiction. Though his writing career spanned seven decades, he is best known for his horror and science fiction short stories, including contributions to the Cthulhu Mythos alongside his friend, H. P. Lovecraft. During his life, Long received the World Fantasy Award for Life Achievement, the Bram Stoker Award for Lifetime Achievement, and the First Fandom Hall of Fame Award (1977).

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Oliver Onions</span> English writer (1873–1961)

George Oliver Onions, who published under the name Oliver Onions, was an English writer of short stories and novels. He wrote in various genres, but is perhaps best remembered for his ghost stories, notably the collection Widdershins and the widely anthologized novella "The Beckoning Fair One". He was married to the novelist Berta Ruck.

<i>The Dream-Quest of Unknown Kadath</i> Novella by H. P. Lovecraft

The Dream-Quest of Unknown Kadath is a novella by American writer H. P. Lovecraft. Begun probably in the autumn of 1926, the draft was completed on January 22, 1927 and it remained unrevised and unpublished in his lifetime. It is both the longest of the stories that make up his Dream Cycle and the longest Lovecraft work to feature protagonist Randolph Carter. Along with his 1927 novel The Case of Charles Dexter Ward, it can be considered one of the significant achievements of that period of Lovecraft's writing. The Dream-Quest combines elements of horror and fantasy into an epic tale that illustrates the scope and wonder of humankind's ability to dream.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">The Dunwich Horror</span> 1928 short story by H. P. Lovecraft

"The Dunwich Horror" is a horror novella by American writer H. P. Lovecraft. Written in 1928, it was first published in the April 1929 issue of Weird Tales (pp. 481–508). It takes place in Dunwich, a fictional town in Massachusetts. It is considered one of the core stories of the Cthulhu Mythos.

Theodore "Eibon" Donald Klein is an American horror writer and editor.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Lovecraftian horror</span> Subgenre of horror

Lovecraftian horror, also called cosmic horror or eldritch horror, is a subgenre of horror, fantasy fiction and weird fiction that emphasizes the horror of the unknowable and incomprehensible more than gore or other elements of shock. It is named after American author H. P. Lovecraft (1890–1937). His work emphasizes themes of cosmic dread, forbidden and dangerous knowledge, madness, non-human influences on humanity, religion and superstition, fate and inevitability, and the risks associated with scientific discoveries, which are now associated with Lovecraftian horror as a subgenre. The cosmic themes of Lovecraftian horror can also be found in other media, notably horror films, horror games, and comics.

<i>The Whisperer in Darkness</i> Novella by H. P. Lovecraft

The Whisperer in Darkness is a 26,000-word novella by American writer H. P. Lovecraft. Written February–September 1930, it was first published in Weird Tales, August 1931. Similar to The Colour Out of Space (1927), it is a blend of horror and science fiction. Although it makes numerous references to the Cthulhu Mythos, the story is not a central part of the mythos, but reflects a shift in Lovecraft's writing at this time towards science fiction. The story also introduces the Mi-Go, an extraterrestrial race of fungoid creatures.

<i>The Three Impostors</i> 1895 novel by Arthur Machen

The Three Impostors; or, The Transmutations is an episodic horror novel by Welsh writer Arthur Machen, first published in 1895 in The Bodley Head's Keynotes Series. It was revived in paperback by Ballantine Books as the forty-eighth volume of the Ballantine Adult Fantasy series in June 1972.

Reggie Oliver is an English playwright, biographer and writer of ghost stories.

"The White People" is a horror short story by Welsh author Arthur Machen. Written in the late 1890s, it was first published in 1904 in Horlick's Magazine, edited by Machen's friend A. E. Waite, then reprinted in Machen's collection The House of Souls (1906).

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Lot No. 249</span> 1892 short story by Arthur Conan Doyle

"Lot No. 249" is a Gothic horror short story by British writer Arthur Conan Doyle, first published in Harper's Magazine in 1892. The story tells of a University of Oxford athlete named Abercrombie Smith who notices a strange series of events surrounding Edward Bellingham, an Egyptology student who owns many ancient Egyptian artefacts, including a mummy. After seeing his mummy disappear and reappear, and two instances of Bellingham's enemies being attacked, Smith concludes that Bellingham is re-animating his mummy.

American author H. P. Lovecraft (1890–1937) created a number of fictional deities throughout the course of his literary career. These entities are usually depicted as immensely powerful and utterly indifferent to humans. Humans can barely begin to comprehend them; however, some entities are worshipped by humans. These deities include the "Great Old Ones" and extraterrestrials, such as the "Elder Things", with sporadic references to other miscellaneous deities. The "Elder Gods" are a later creation of other prolific writers who expanded on Lovecraft's concepts, such as August Derleth, who was credited with formalizing the Cthulhu Mythos. Most of these deities were Lovecraft's original creations, but he also adapted words or concepts from earlier writers such as Ambrose Bierce, and later writers in turn used Lovecraft's concepts and expanded his fictional universe.

"The Man Who Went Too Far" is a short work of supernatural fiction by E. F. Benson, collected in his The Room in the Tower, and Other Stories (1912).

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Folk horror</span> Subgenre of horror film

Folk horror is a subgenre of horror film and horror fiction that uses elements of folklore to invoke fear and foreboding. Typical elements include a rural setting, isolation, and themes of superstition, folk religion, paganism, sacrifice and the dark aspects of nature. Although related to supernatural horror film, folk horror usually focuses on the beliefs and actions of people rather than the supernatural, and often deals with naïve outsiders coming up against these. The British films Blood on Satan's Claw (1971), The Wicker Man (1973) and Witchfinder General (1968) are regarded as pioneers of the genre, while The Witch (2015) and Midsommar (2019) sparked renewed interest in folk horror. Southeast Asian cinema also commonly features folk horror.

References

  1. 1 2 Machen 1922, pp. 19–20.
  2. 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 Surridge, Matthew David (30 October 2012). "Arthur Machen and 'The Great God Pan'". Black Gate . Archived from the original on 29 July 2018. Retrieved 28 July 2018.
  3. 1 2 3 4 Sommerlad, Joe (2 March 2018). "St. David's Day: Celebrating Arthur Machen, the forgotten Welsh horror writer admired by Stephen King". The Independent . Archived from the original on 29 July 2018. Retrieved 29 July 2018.
  4. 1 2 Machen 1922, p. 19.
  5. ↑ Machen 1922, p. 123.
  6. 1 2 Denisoff 2018, p. 6.
  7. ↑ Machen 2006, pp. 5–6.
  8. 1 2 3 4 5 Stableford, Brian, (1998). "Machen, Arthur (Llewellyn)". St. James Guide to Horror, Ghost and Gothic Writers, ed. David Pringle. London: St. James Press. ISBN   1558622063.
  9. ↑ Machen 2018, p. xiii.
  10. 1 2 "Machen, Arthur". The Encyclopedia of Science Fiction . 27 April 2018. Archived from the original on 29 July 2018. Retrieved 29 July 2018.
  11. ↑ Machen 2018, pp. xiii–xiv.
  12. ↑ Denisoff 2018, p. 4.
  13. 1 2 Goho 2014, p. 61.
  14. 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 Luckhurst 2005, p. 278.
  15. ↑ Plutarch, Moralia , De defectu oraculorum 17
  16. ↑ Claveria, Alesha (2015). "The Great God Pan/Brown: Shared Origins and Theme of a Victorian Horror Classic and Eugene O'Neill's Masked Play". The Eugene O'Neill Review. 36 (2): 212–225. doi:10.5325/eugeoneirevi.36.2.0212. JSTOR   10.5325/eugeoneirevi.36.2.0212. S2CID   170541344.
  17. ↑ Luckhurst 2005, pp. 278–279.
  18. 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 Luckhurst 2005, p. 279.
  19. ↑ Machen 2018, p. ix.
  20. 1 2 Machen 2018, p. xiv.
  21. 1 2 Machin 2018, p. 148.
  22. 1 2 3 4 Tibbetts 2016, p. 214.
  23. ↑ Denisoff 2018, p. 2.
  24. 1 2 3 Goho 2014, p. 62.
  25. ↑ Machen 2018, p. xvii.
  26. 1 2 Myman, Francesca (18 June 2018). "Theodora Goss: Monstrous Voices". Locus . Archived from the original on 10 August 2018. Retrieved 10 August 2018.
  27. ↑ Boyiopoulos 2010, p. 364.
  28. ↑ Goho 2014, p. 63.
  29. ↑ Richard Henry Stoddard, "Review of "The Great God Pan"", in: Colavito, Jason, ed. A Hideous Bit of Morbidity: An Anthology of Horror Criticism from the Enlightenment to World War I. Jefferson, NC: McFarland, 2008. pp. 228–230) ISBN   978-0-7864-3968-3
  30. ↑ Machin 2018, pp. 140–141.
  31. 1 2 3 4 Harry Quilter, "The Gospel of Intensity", in Colavito, ed. A Hideous Bit of Morbidity: An Anthology of Horror Criticism from the Enlightenment to World War I. Jefferson, NC: McFarland, 2008. (pp. 230–254). ISBN   978-0-7864-3968-3
  32. ↑ Machin 2018, pp. 141–142.
  33. ↑ Machin 2018, p. 141.
  34. 1 2 3 4 Machin 2018, p. 142.
  35. ↑ "Arthur Machen, celebrated English author of such masterpieces as "The Great God Pan" and "The Hill of Dreams"..." Bennett Cerf, "Trade Winds", The Saturday Review of Literature, March 20, 1943, (p. 26).
  36. 1 2 King, Stephen, "Self-Interview Archived 2009-02-01 at the Wayback Machine ", 10:50 am, September 4, 2008. StephenKing.com. Retrieved April 24, 2017.]
  37. 1 2 3 Hand, Elizabeth (10 November 2014). "Book review: 'Revival,' by Stephen King". The Washington Post . Archived from the original on 29 July 2018. Retrieved 28 July 2018.
  38. ↑ Smith & Hughes 2012, p. 225.
  39. ↑ Machin 2018, p. 150.
  40. ↑ Denisoff 2018, p. 7.
  41. ↑ The Great God Pan . WildClaw Theatre. Retrieved October 18, 2016.
  42. ↑ "Rosanne Rabinowitz ... in her Shirley Jackson award nominated novella Helen's Story, which examined the decidedly problematic story of Helen Vaughan and The Great God Pan from a feminist viewpoint ..." Rucker, Lynda E.(Nov.–Dec. 2014). Black Static Magazine. p. 7.
  43. ↑ "Ross Crean The Great God Pan: An Opera in Two Acts". rosscrean.com. Archived from the original on 29 July 2018. Retrieved 30 July 2018.
  44. ↑ von Rhein, John (14 March 2018). "Chicago Fringe Opera's bare-bones staging of 'Great God Pan' brings more spills than chills". Chicago Tribune . Archived from the original on 31 July 2018. Retrieved 30 July 2018.
  45. 1 2 Price, Robert M. (1996). The Dunwich Cycle: Where the Old Gods Wait. Hayward, CA: Chaosium. pp. ix–x.
  46. ↑ Cardin 2017, p. 401.
  47. ↑ Tyson 2016, p. 129.
  48. ↑ "'Pan' ... has suggested to me an idea so hellish that I am almost afraid to work it out in story form ...[a woman] gives birth to a child and dies. The child is so monstrous that no one is permitted to see it." Clark Ashton Smith, Letter to H.P. Lovecraft, c. January 27, 1931. In Selected Letters of Clark Ashton Smith, edited by Scott Connors and David E. Schultz. Sauk City, Wis.: Arkham House, 2003. pp. 145–146. ISBN   978-0870541827.
  49. ↑ "Hell! Said the Duchess ... was probably conceived as a parodic version of Arthur Machen's classic Decadent fantasy 'The Great God Pan'." Stableford, Brian (1998). "Arlen, Michael". St. James Guide to Horror, Ghost and Gothic Writers, ed. David Pringle. Detroit: St. James Press. ISBN   1558622063.
  50. ↑ Wilson, Neil (2000). Shadows in the Attic: A Guide to British Supernatural Fiction, 1820–1950. London: British Library. pp. 35–36. ISBN   0712310746.
  51. ↑ Bosky, Bernadette (1988). "Peter Straub: From Academe to Shadowland". In Schweitzer, Darrell (ed.). Discovering Modern Horror Fiction II. San Bernardino: Borgo Press. p. 8. ISBN   978-1587150081 . Retrieved 8 April 2013.
  52. ↑ McDonald & Clark 2014, p. 45.
  53. 1 2 McDonald & Clark 2014, pp. 44–45.
  54. ↑ McDonald & Clark 2014, p. 44.
  55. ↑ Weiss, Josh (30 June 2020). "Bird Box's Netflix Success Inspired Author Josh Malerman to Write 'Pee-Your-Pants'-Scary Sequel, Malorie". Syfy . Retrieved 28 July 2020.

Bibliography

This page is based on this Wikipedia article
Text is available under the CC BY-SA 4.0 license; additional terms may apply.
Images, videos and audio are available under their respective licenses.