The palimpsests of cosmic horror: Space, mythicity, and rituality in the writings of H.P. Lovecraft and his Spanish successors

H. P. Lovecraft fused horror and science-fiction creating a new genre called Cosmic Horror. Lovecraft introduced several elements in the preceding horror literature such as a fantastic setting based on his native New England, a cosmogony of alien, god-like beings, and a well-developed rituality around them. His conceptualization of Cosmic Horror was comprised in a set of metaphors which embodied mechanistic materialism, Cosmicism, and the breaking with anthropocentrism. This research analyzes how Spanish palimpsests of Cosmic Horror of the twenty-first century have evolved due to their cultural environment and pastiche character.
General literary criticism, S. T. Joshi and Peter Canon (1999), China Miéville (2009), and Lin Carter (1972), have analyzed Lovecraft’s cosmogony, including religions and rituals, and his creation of a fantastic setting called the Miskatonic County. However, the recent Spanish literary production based on Cosmic Horror offers a new field of possibilities. This research examines how Spanish rural and urban spaces, and Lovecraft’s fantastic religions and rituals have been altered by the peculiarities of their new Spanish settings and cultural environment.
In this dissertation, it is proposed that Spanish culture and the influence of the modern society have modified the way Cosmic Horror was constructed, creating pastiches with their own features. Several elements, such as changes in space, the conception of Lovecraft’s mythicity, and the obsolescence of the philosophical and scientific bases of Cosmic Horror in pursue of amusement, characterize these tributes to the works of this author.

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