AS Coursework Commentary: The Woods Mark 2.0

This piece is based on the literary style of Howard Phillips Lovecraft, a renown American writer, known for his short horror stories and novellas in his own created "Cthulhu Mythos", a fictional universe that was based within New England (called Lovecraft Country), using extraterrestrial creatures and forbidden texts. Many other writers, most famously Robert E. Howard, creator of Conan the Barbarian, used and contributed to the Mythos. In this vein, I have referenced some of Lovecrafts stories and creations, possibly the most apparent and famous of his fictional creations is an important plot device within the piece, is the Necronomicon, called "the Book" in the story. This makes the story inclusive to the "Cthulhu Mythos", and also as mentioned, and if the reader is familiar with Lovecraft's works, then is evident to the reader.
A noticeable literary feature that appears almost constantly within my story, and Lovecraft's is a very heavy use of adjectives, which I have tried to use as much as possible. Examples include "twilit bush", "unsuspecting swimmer", "cyclopean masonry" (a common feature in Lovecraft's work when describing the architecture of alien creatures), "baleful grove" and "brick-lined basement". These adjectives perform their function as descriptors, providing plenty of information for the reader to pick up upon, thus painting a finer, clearer mental image, and to further clarify the scenery. As with most Lovecraft stories, my piece, it is not about an extensive plot, or character development, but about atmosphere and creating well-described scene, in the case of my piece, it is the "Woods", of the titles.
Archaic words or wording also feature in Lovecraft's writing, and so it also makes an appearance in my work. Examples of this include; "unhallowed","jaunt", "ill-repute", and "sunken veil". "Sunken veil" is used to describe the shadows within the tumulus, but the term veil itself, is to denote death, as veils are often worn by the deceased in many cultures during religious ceremonies, so it would be apt that an ancient tomb containing a body should be compared to such. Why I used archaic terms as Lovecraft did comes from his longing to become an eighteenth-century gentleman, but due his wish unable to come true, he opted to use spellings from the eighteen-century. Often this was Anglicised, due to the author being a self-proclaimed Anglophile, but unfortunately, I did not adhere to this structure, as I write in a mixture of both Anglicised and Americanised spellings.
Area-specific lexis is also evident, for example, scientific lexis is shown through "Pareidolia", which is when a person sees faces or people in objects or patterns. I have used this example of scientific lexis because it was also a common feature in Lovecrafts own work, including in an example of which I had analysed previously, "The Colour Out of Space" (note the Anglicised spelling of colour, instead of the Americanised color), where he details different scientific tests used to trying to classify a meteor. Lovecraft wrote these lengthy passages because of his own passion for the sciences, most notably chemistry and astronomy, but also archeology, anthropology, and the exploration of the continent of Antarctica. I kept the science to a bare minimum in the story, because as stated earlier, the story is about atmosphere.