Dread lessons: Cosmic horror and/as weird intertextual pedagogy

As a method of inculcating authors, their peers and their readers in a unique matrix of referential rhetoric, the use of intertextuality functions as an integral convention of cosmic horror. This practice is traced back to H. P. Lovecraft and his circle who deployed literary cross-referencing as a tactic to hint at a more elusive horror transcending a single text or mythology. Intertextual play became a mode of communication amongst authors and readers in this genre, enriching fictional worlds while also advancing a pessimistic view about humanity’s place in the cosmos. This article examines how this historical practice continues in the work of two contemporary authors of weird fiction: Thomas Ligotti and Richard Gavin. Using two of their linked stories as a running example, I recommend that we see the use of intertextuality in cosmic horror as a form of weird pedagogy. From this perspective the inclination to pass on occult knowledge is woven into the very fabric of writing such texts that seek to upend our understanding of the world and our place in it.