Latour Litanies in Lovecraft

Just about to board the flight, so I can’t go into too much detail, nor do I have time to do an exhaustive check.

But as for the use of so-called “Latour Litanies” by H.P Lovecraft (Ian Bogost’s term for lists of assorted objects), I notice the following pattern, at least in the major tales.

Initially, the only Latour Litanies in Lovecraft seem to be the long lists of “horrific forbidden texts” that he likes to throw into his stories as a spice: the Necronomicon of the mad Arab Abdul Alhazred (which is bad Arabic by Lovecraft, by the way: the -“ul” at the end of Abdul shouldn’t be duplicated by the “al-” at the beginning of Alhazred, since both are the same definite article repeated twice; should be either Abdul Hazred or Abd al-Hazred); Unaussprechliche Kulten by von Juntzt; and other real and imaginary texts.

But in “At the Mountains of Madness,” Lovecraft really seems to fall in love with Latour Litanies, and uses them extensively. It begins with his description of Pabodie’s ingenious ice-drill, when Lovecraft summarizes its numerous clever components. It continues with lists of various Antarctic creatures and geographical formations.