Arthur Machen: Critical Essays offers a study of the works by Arthur Machen (1863-1947), the Welsh writer who has attracted a cult following for decades, especially among fans and scholars of weird fiction and Gothic studies. These essays take readers into different areas and address several topics in Machen's literary production: the literary, the artistic, the scientific, the religious, the socio-cultural, and the personal. The twelve chapters constituting the volume examine the representation of human beings in the writer's works and their relationship with the surrounding environment, whether it is the omnipresent London or the mysterious, menacing nature. The contributors also interpret Machen's writings through a series of disciplines and academic theories that were contemporary to the writer (such as paleontology and medicine) and demonstrate how he was influenced by the scientific discourses of his time and reproduced them in his works. The last section of the volume considers Machen's interest in the occult and mysticism and the religious themes present in many of his works.
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Introduction: Arthur Machen: His Life, His Works, and His Critics Antonio Sanna Part I: Human Beings and Their Environments Chapter 1: 'A London cognita and a London incognita': Contesting London in Arthur Machen's The London Adventure, or the Art of Wandering Amanda M. Caleb Chapter 2: The Problem of Agency in Arthur Machen's The Terror Francesco Corigliano Chapter 3: Heterotopic Spaces in Machen's Fiction Antonio Sanna Chapter 4: Dead Matter: Posthumanism and Stones Fernando Gabriel Pagnoni Berns and Emiliano Aguilar Part II: Darwinism and Degeneration Chapter 5: Fear and Fossils: The Legacy of Arthur Machen's 'Little People' Stories Justin Phillip Mullis Chapter 6: 'Dissolution and Change': Reading The Great God Pan as Monstrous Adaptation Jessica George Chapter 7: Lucian's Ornaments in Jade: Symbolist Decadence in Arthur Machen's Prose Poetry Kostas Boyiopoulos Chapter 8: 'A Substance as Jelly': Helen Vaughan as Infectious Pathogen in The Great God Pan Loredana Salis and Laura Mauro Part III: Spirituality Chapter 9: '[A] mystic, ineffable force and energy': Arthur Machen and Theories of New Materialism Adrian Tait Chapter 10: Occult Investigations in Arthur Machen's Detective Stories Deborah Bridle Chapter 11: Through the Ancient Wood: Envisioning Apophatic Mysticism in A Fragment of Life Geoffrey Reiter Chapter 12: A 'Miracle' In No Man's Land?: Arthur Machen and the Angels of Mons Andrew R. Lenoir
