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Message: <blockquote data-quote="pemerton" data-source="post: 6257389" data-attributes="member: 42582">[MENTION=51930]fireinthedust[/MENTION], I agree that the Great War is an important factor in the modernist outlook overall. For many, it kills romanticism dead. (Not all, obviously - eg Tolkien.)But a lot of the key motifs in REH and Lovecraft aren't linked to the war. The vitalist strand in REH, for instance, has its origins in the second half of the 19th century. And both authors are full of racialised imagery which predates the war also. For instance, re-reading CoC this morning, clearly part of the horror of the ritual in Louisiana is meant to be conveyed by the description of the worshippers themselves - "this hybrid spawn . . . of a very low, mixed-blooded, and mentally aberrant type. Most were seamen, and a sprinkling of negroes and mulattoes . . . [d]egraded and ignorant . . ." Not to mention the death of the narrator's grand-uncle "after having been jostled by a nautical-looking negro".The effects of the war may have created an environment where this sort of stuff had more emotional purchase on people. But in my view it is not itself an expression of trauma resulting from the war.</blockquote>