Introduction
Part One: The Bad Seed
1. Weird Antecedents
2. Weird Decadence
3. Weird Ontology
Part Two: Crops
4. Weird Dwellings
5. Weird Ecology
6. Weird Sensations
Part Three: Excrescence
7. Weird Posthuman/Prehuman
8. Weird Postsecular
9. Weird Dreamscape
Closure: Minding the Gap
Biography
Christian Wilken is a research associate at the University of Koblenz and a lecturer at the University of Düsseldorf.
"Wilken’s book encapsulates the best of Lovecraftian Studies and speculative criticism, encountering Lovecraft on his own terms, on the dark theodicean landscape of a cosmic horror that both captivates and exacerbates the unwary traveller."
--Marcello Ricciardi, Associate Professor, English Dept. St. Joseph’s University, Patchogue, NY
"Reading Lovecraft in the Anthropocene: A New Dark Age offers valuable insights and methods for both Lovecraft enthusiasts and academic readers. It provides a fresh, scholarly, and liberating perspective on the weird genre, tracing its foundational connections, particularly in Lovecraft’s narratives, and challenging the taxonomical strictures of traditional criticism."
--Büke Sağlam, Gothic Studies
"The central driving force behind Wilken’s ambitious project lies in projecting the Anthropocene as ‘a new dark age’ that requires a radical epistemological humility, something that Lovecraft and the weird tradition he worked in can arguably help us achieve. . . . The prime strength of Wilken’s book consists in its coherent and theoretically informed account that forges a single eco-ontological framework (OOO, new/vibrant materialism, dark ecology), applying it systematically across Lovecraft’s corpus and other associated weird traditions. It explicitly synthesises Anthropocene Studies with Speculative Realism/OOO and close literary analysis to produce an integrated philosophical reading of weird fiction."
--Subhasis Pal, Textual Practice
