The postwar nihilism in H. P. Lovecraft: a historical-philosophical analysis of Dagon (1919)

Abstract

Through this paper, it is our intent to point out the characteristics surrounding the short story Dagon, from Howard Phillips Lovecraft, and its historical belonging. As a short story, Dagon provides countless useful elements to our understanding of ways of thinking historical reality in the beginning of the twentieth century and its existencial inheritances by the end of the nineteenth century. It approaches psychological, philosophical and allegorical issues that built the gothic narrative from 1919. As theoretical ground, the concepts of Representation and Nihilism, born from Roger Chartier and Friedrich Nietzsche, respectively, it gives us ways to analyze the fictional source while interpreting historical reality. Through this historical-philosophical analysis, we look upon Dagon to understand its constructives aspectos of its likelihood landscape and recognizable from war times and such interpersonal and desperate narrative.