Le mythe de cthulhu

by H.P. Lovecraft

A prot g of H.P. Lovecraft, August Derleth patterned his own eerie fiction after images and themes taken from the horror stories written by Lovecraft for the pulp magazine Weird Tales. It was Derleth who formally named the myth pattern permeating his mentor's works after a fearsome alien being called Cthulhu who made but a single appearance in Lovecraft's ouevre. Derleth continued Lovecraft's legacy with his own series of highly original tales, set in a similar dark universe where chaos and evil vie with humanity for control of the world. This anthology collects the best of Derleth's horror cycle.

Genres: Horror

Paperback

About the author

Howard Phillips Lovecraft, of Providence, Rhode Island, was an American author of horror, fantasy and science fiction.

Lovecraft's major inspiration and invention was cosmic horror: life is incomprehensible to human minds and the universe is fundamentally alien. Those who genuinely reason, like his protagonists, gamble with sanity. Lovecraft has developed a cult following for his Cthulhu Mythos, a series of loosely interconnected fictions featuring a pantheon of human-nullifying entities, as well as the Necronomicon, a fictional grimoire of magical rites and forbidden lore. His works were deeply pessimistic and cynical, challenging the values of the Enlightenment, Romanticism and Christianity. Lovecraft's protagonists usually achieve the mirror-opposite of traditional gnosis and mysticism by momentarily glimpsing the horror of ultimate reality.

Although Lovecraft's readership was limited during his life, his reputation has grown over the decades. He is now commonly regarded as one of the most influential horror writers of the 20th Century, exerting widespread and indirect influence, and frequently compared to Edgar Allan Poe.
See also Howard Phillips Lovecraft.

— Wikipedia

Reviews

[Mathieu Martin]

Une anthologie de grande qualité qui témoigne de l’expertise de Lovecraft dans l’horreur subjective, les traumatismes et la peur de l’inconnue. L’atout principal de cette anthologie réside dans le mélange d'un contexte réaliste (narré à la première personne sans dialogue) et de détails démoniaques, pour la plupart indescriptibles, laissés à l'imagination la plus fertile du lecteur. Puisant son inspiration dans la mythologie grecque, les écrits de Edgar Allan Poe, Herman Melville et Arthur Machen, Lovecraft aborde plusieurs questionnements de l’humanité à sa façon, avec un vague malaise moral exacerbé par un besoin coupable de fouiller dans les entrailles de l'étrangeté et les événements paranormaux qui subsistent. Grand visionnaire de l’horreur cosmique, Lovecraft introduit des monstres et des lieux qui ont fait sa renommée, tous liés au Necronomicon. Avec une écriture élégante, avec une narration percutante et des descriptions apocalyptiques à nul autre pareil, les nouvelles de H.P. Lovecraft allaient faire de lui un des auteurs d’horreur et d’imaginaire les plus influents de notre ère.

[Neil]

Some of Lovecraft's stories are excellent, some drag. I generally preferred the shorter pieces (although the longest the novel length The Case of Charles Dexter Ward was also very good.) The Colour Out of Space was probably the best. Lovecraft in many ways took over where Poe left off and was at least equally unappreciated during his lifetime.