Poe's Influence On Lovecraft

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Table of contents Abstract. 1. Introduction 1.1 Research Questions 1.2 Hypothesis 1.3 Methodology 2. Theoretical Background 2.1 Style and stylistics 2.2 Stylometry 2.3 Authors 2.3.1 E.A. Poe 2.3.2 H.P. Lovecraft 2.3.3 Poe’s influence on Lovecraft 3. Method 3.1 How was the data collected 3.2 How was the data analysed 4. Results and analysis 4.1 Analysis 4.2 Results 5. Conclusion 6. References 7. Appendices 1. INTRODUCTION Horror stories have always been popular throughout our history. Perhaps it is the morbidity or just perhaps that we humans like to experience evil at least in fiction. “The genre of horror fiction can also be said to harbour an increasing amount of popular material which thrives on cloche and which projects…show more content…
Epstein (2003) describes style as: The how of human behaviour, the style, is felt at many levels, from the primitive distinguishing of yourself from everybody – and everything – else, to the identifying of groups of friends and foes, and of men and women. It is perceived in the style of arts and games, in fashions, and in literature. The basic act of making sense out of the what which nature presents to our sense necessarily involves the how of the style. (p.1) Literary authors, as well, create their own identity and signature through style. Epstein’s description of style is more general, but if we were to apply it to literature, the how that he describes would be the way in which an author writes and the what would be the texts or piece of work an author writes. According to Dr. Harold Somers (2003) “Style can also be described as a choice” (p.2). It could be the choice of using a certain way or another to describe the same thing or the choice of writing something in an appropriate or in an inappropriate way. Regardless of which kind of choice, there is always an intention in this choice. Be it creating a personal style or be it following certain patterns to belong with a movement, there is always a purpose in this…show more content…
1.1 Research Questions In our research we aim to enquire whether stylometry can be used to characterise the style of an author and determine the authorship a piece of work or not. We will find out if the results from a stylometric analysis are enough to prove that a piece of work has been written by one author or another. In stylometric analysis, we will focus primarily on the vocabulary used and also on features like word length and sentence lengths in order to determine to what extent these features contribute to an author’s personal style, especially for authors in the same genre. In other words, the main aim of this research is to investigate whether the application of stylometry can be used to define an author’s style and if so, how accurate these methods are. We also aim to check if the choice of vocabulary and sentence lengths are relevant in the creation of a horror atmosphere and, in case they are, how these vary in horror stories and non-horror stories. With these questions in mind we will try to find out if the use of certain words and sentences can help and be determining in the creation of a horror
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