COSMIC HORROR, GOTHIC BODY AND THE TEXT: H. P. LOVECRAFT’S “THE SHADOW OVER INNSMOUTH”

Abstract

“The Shadow over Innsmouth”, a tale in which the atmosphere of fateful dread figures as the motor that drives the readers further, stands as one of Lovecraft’s greatest tales of degeneration, since horrible things afflict the Innsmouth citizens, as well as the narrator, all in accordance with the theory of gothic body drawn mostly from Mikhail Bakhtin and Julia Kristeva. The town of Innsmouth, historically grounded, decayed and in ruins and, in Freud’s terms, uncanny, presents itself as a perfect dwelling place for the monstrous occurrences happening in it, thus creating a bleak and sinister vision of the world in which the insignificance and redundancy of human beings goes along with Lovecraft’s concept and philosophy of cosmic horror.