MAGIC AND POLITICS IN ALAN MOORE & JACEN BURROWS’ ADAPTATIONS OF LOVECRAFT (London)

Alan Moore reports that, through researching his latest adaptation of Lovecraft’s life and work, Providence, he “became more fully acquainted with academic literary criticism.” The extensive evidence of research throughout the series supports this claim. In this talk, scholar Matt Green argues that Providence uses the comics form to assert the value of humanities research, and of the arts more broadly. The comics series educates its audience in reading and research practices (some of which are more providential than others). Green’s focus– like Moore’s and, arguably, like Lovecraft’s — is on the relationships between imagination and the historical realities of readers; the discussion maps Moore’s reworking of Lovecraft onto current political turmoil in Britain and the US via Moore’s underlying premise that we can trace the origins of our contemporary moment through the societal anxieties encoded in Lovecraft’s fiction. The analysis combines key concepts from adaptation studies, comics studies and postmodern theory to help us understand the way in which Providence uses the comics medium to put into practice Moore’s hopes concerning the world-altering potential of art and scholarship. Put differently, Green will be discussing some of the less obvious ways in which Lovecraft has been deployed by one of Britain’s most prolific contemporary magicians.

Advance Recommended Reading: Providence by Alan Moore and Jacen Burrows