Peter Penzoldt (essay date 1952)
SOURCE: Penzoldt, Peter. “The Pure Tale of Horror.” In The Supernatural in Fiction, pp. 146–90. New York: Humanities Press, 1965.
[In the following excerpt, originally published in a 1952 edition, Penzoldt offers a psychological analysis of Lovecraft's horror tales.]
It is not the highest, but only the pedant and the prig will deny that he enjoys being thrilled, and our superior attitude towards sensational fiction is adopted largely because the blatant and crude fail to produce this...
Source: Short Story Criticism, ©2002 Gale Cengage. All Rights Reserved. Full copyright.
(The entire page is 9459 words.)
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