The Call Of Consilience

The encyclopedic knowledge is the hallmark of tales written by the twentiethcentury horror writer H.P.Lovecraft.Drawing from the phenomenon of “the two cultures” in human knowledge addressed by C.P.Snow and their consilience promoted by Stephen J.Gould,this thesis explores the knowledge scope and its inner interactions involved in the process of humans' encounters with the unknown entities presented in his tales.The thesis is divided into four chapters.The first chapter mainly introduces Lovecraft and his works,briefly reviews previous studies on knowledge in Lovecraft's works,lays out the theoretical framework and finally proposes the research questions and significance of the research.In the second chapter,knowledge involved in his tales is classified into disciplines,and further into the paradigm of science and the humanities.It further reveals the existence of the two cultures in his tales.The third chapter explores the inner interaction between the two cultures in the human characters' encounter with the unknown entities.The two cultures reach Gould's consilience,which is embodied on human characters,the unknown entities and Lovecraft himself.The human beings are the practitioners of the consilience of two cultures,whereas the unknown alien entities guide humans to it;meanwhile,they are the ultimate incarnation of the consilience of two cultures.The rationale of the consilience lies in the author's career nurtured by the regional tradition of learning,the literary traditions of his genre,his own innovative writing philosophy resulted from his epistemic concerns in that turbulent modernist time.As the conclusion,the fourth chapter points out that despite the existence of two cultures,the call of the consilience from those unknown entities rules over human knowledge.This call ultimately comes from Lovecraft's concerns of the inner imbalance and chasm within human knowledge in modernist era.When this consilience destroys hierarchical order within the two cultures,it may generate horror;but it anticipates hope for the benefit of entire human knowledge.