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“The Hesitation Principle in ‘The Rats in the Walls.’”
- Author(s):
- Dennis Wise (see profile)
- Date:
- 2020
- Subject(s):
- Lovecraft, H. P. (Howard Phillips), 1890-1937, Fantasy literature, Twentieth century, James, Henry, 1843-1916
- Item Type:
- Article
- Tag(s):
- H.P. Lovecraft, 20th-century fantastic literature, Weird fiction, Henry James
- Permanent URL:
- http://dx.doi.org/10.17613/zxs9-j254
- Abstract:
- Prior to 1926 when H. P. Lovecraft first published “The Call of Cthulhu,” his finest short story is generally considered to be “The Rats in the Walls.” Contradictory evidence, however, laces this short tale. Are Lovecraft’s eponymous rats supernatural entities, or are they simply the mad ravings of an unreliable narrator? Most commentators have preferred a realistic or naturalistic framework of explanation, but I argue that the rats’ ontological status remains inherently undecidable. Using Tzvetan Todorov’s theory of the fantastic as a starting point, this article suggests that when a reader hesitates over the rats’ reality, this hesitation raises questions about the shifting boundary between real and unreal, which in turn accentuates the precarity within what I have elsewhere called Lovecraft’s moment in the international weird.
- Metadata:
- xml
- Published as:
- Journal article
- Status:
- Published
- Last Updated:
- 3 years ago
- License:
- Attribution-NonCommercial
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