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Hypothetical floor plan for a setting in The Case of Charles Dexter Ward. Image credit: Victoria Szabo & Cosimo Monteleone
Hypothetical floor plan for a setting in The Case of Charles Dexter Ward. Image credit: Victoria Szabo & Cosimo Monteleone

Visualizing Lovecraft’s Providence

Project Lead(s): Cosimo Monteleone, Victoria Szabo

2019 – present

This project explores the use of historical and cultural visualization techniques to instantiate the imagined Providence, Rhode Island of author H.P. Lovecraft. H.P. Lovecraft famously declared, “I am Providence,” an epitaph inscribed on his tombstone. Drawing from detailed descriptions of city streets, vanished and current architectures, spooky interiors, urban denizens, and otherworldly intruders, Lovecraft creates a multi-layered, evocative, and at times disturbing imagined world of the city. By highlighting the spatial features of his writing, and the ways in which expressionist landscapes evoke an apprehensive appreciation of his world view, we are examining the potential of spatial media for a new kind of literary criticism and interpretive adaptation. Our first example will focus on The Case of Charles Dexter Ward, which combines early 18th-century action with early 20th-century scenes closer to Lovecraft’s own experience of the city.

Banner Image: Hypothetical floor plan for a setting in The Case of Charles Dexter Ward. Image credit: Victoria Szabo & Cosimo Monteleone