Eric Hoefler's "Lovecraft Rising" Paper

Educator and writer Eric Hoefler, who previously compiled some excellent bibliographic and End Note resources for H.P. Lovecraft scholarship, has uploaded an intriguing essay on the subject of Lovecraft scholarship. The twenty two page paper is entitled "Lovecraft Rising." It focuses on the growth of scholarship within and outside academia on the Providence author from 1990-2004. This essay contains a number of interesting tidbits from prominent Lovecraft scholars like S.T. Joshi and Peter Cannon. Not only do we gaze at Lovecraft scholarship's trajectory, but we learn interesting facts about predictions on Lovecraft as a serious object of study from early on, the overwhelming role of S.T. Joshi in setting the tone for modern study of HPL, and detailed summaries of prominent scholarly works from 1990-2004. What Hoefler says his essay is not about is equally enticing. For instance, he briefly touches on the failure of the much lauded "Lovecraft Studies" journal of the 1980s.

All in all, anyone with even a passing interest in Lovecraft scholarship ought to take a look at this essay at the author's blog (linked above). Scholarship of all things Lovecraftian has grown truly massive and almost overwhelming, particularly in the period Hoefler discusses. What hasn't been charted very often is the historical development of Lovecraft scholarship itself. This is where essays like Hoefler's work fits in perfectly. Scholarly writing on scholarship is invaluable to navigating the vast intellectual resources on nearly every subject in history, the sciences, and major literary figures and genres. The fact that serious study of Howard Phillips Lovecraft has reached this point is really telling. And should cause any Lovecraft fan to rejoice.

In just a few more decades, with Lovecraft filtering ever more into mainstream horror and beyond, every weird reader will occasionally pause and wonder how H.P. Lovecraft rose up from
terrible obscurity a century after his death. Clearly, it's scholarship that has worked wonders at least as important as humorous memes about Cthulhu online. And thanks to pieces like Hoefler's tagging the wild sampling of Lovecraft scholarship, we will have an answer to Lovecraft's rising.

-Grim Blogger