So what, exactly, is a "Weird Tale?"

[Hand of Evil]

So, are we to simply say that Weird Tale is a parent genre that is now more precisely labelled as something else? If so, it seems "Lovecraftian" fiction is a sub-genre that remains un-named.

Well, there are the Brothers Grimm Fairy Tales. They are rather dark and horror filled.

 

[Tom Cashel]

Dyal, you rock. It's refreshing that few people take me seriously anymore.

I think one quote that bears visiting from Lovecraft's essay (from earlier in the oft-quoted paragraph) is the following:

Naturally we cannot expect all weird tales to conform absolutely to any theoretical model. Creative minds are uneven, and the best of fabrics have their dull spots.

Not a definition, I know, but to define a genre is to limit it, to some extent.

 

[Desdichado]

Dyal, you rock. It's refreshing that few people take me seriously anymore.

What can I say. I try not to take myself too seriously, and that helps tremendously. Besides, you have a point!

I think one quote that bears visiting from Lovecraft's essay (from earlier in the oft-quoted paragraph) is the following:
[...]
Not a definition, I know, but to define a genre is to limit it, to some extent.

That's a good point, but there have to be some paramaters, or else we can't really call this a genre.

 

[nikolai]

I suspect you've got the order backwards -- I think the genre, if it even is a recognized one, is named for the magazine, not the other way around.

The magazine started in 1923. People (Lovecraft for example) were certainly writing weird fiction, and calling it weird fiction, before this.

 

[Yellow Sign]

[/i]
That's a good point, but there have to be some paramaters, or else we can't really call this a genre.

What kind of genre are we talking about. RPG? Literature Style?

Personally I have never heard "Weird Tale" used as a genre. Unless your talking about the kind of stories from the "Weird Tales" magazine.

 

[Cthulhu's Librarian]

I looked for a good definition of what a "weird tale" is, and found that there really isn't a good, all encompasing definition. Every critic has their own definition, and many argue that it doesn't exist as such. I did find the following in the introduction to S.T. Joshi's The Weird Tale:

The weird tale, in the period covered by this volume (generally 1880-1940), did not (and perhaps does not now) exist as a genre but as the consequence of a world view. Of the six writers covered here, only Lovecraft appears to have been conscious of working in a weird tradition; the others--even Blackwood and Dunsany, nearly the whole of whose fictional work is weird--regarded themselves (and were regarded by contemporary reviewers) as not intrinsically different from their fellow novelists and short-story writers.
...
If the weird tale exists now as a genre, it may only be because critics and publishers have deemed it so by fiat.

I am not, as a result, prepared to define the weird tale, and venture to assert that any definition of it may be impossible. Recent work in this field has caused an irremidiable confusion of terms such as horror, terror, the supernatural, fantasy, the fantastic, ghost story, Gothic fiction, and others. It does not appear that any singe critic's useage even approximates that of any other, and no definition of the weird tale embraces all types of works that can plausibly be assumed to enter into the scope of the term. This difficulty is a direct result of the conception of the weird tale as some well-defined genre to which some works "belong" and others do not.

Perhaps the best definition is that there isn't any definition in the conventional sense, in that what one person finds to be a weird tale, isn't a weird tale to someone else.

 

[Hand of Evil]

I think part of the problem is also language, meanings change and fall out of use and so Weird does not provide the same response. Word Association.

1 weird: 1 - fate, destiny (esp. ill fortune) 2 - soothsayer

2 weird: 1 - of, relating to, or caused by witchcraft or the supernatural : magical 2 - of strange or extraordinary character

So as the word falls from use, other words come into use.

 

[Desdichado]

Cthulhu's Librarian, you would have to respond to any literary question about wierd tales, wouldn't you? Just wouldn't be right if the librarian of the Old Ones didn't venture an opinion.

I think you also make a good point; it's entirely possible that there is no such genre per se as a Weird Tale.

 

[Cthulhu's Librarian]

Cthulhu's Librarian, you would have to respond to any literary question about wierd tales, wouldn't you? Just wouldn't be right if the librarian of the Old Ones didn't venture an opinion.

I think you also make a good point; it's entirely possible that there is no such genre per se as a Weird Tale.

Hey, I know a weird tale when I see it.

 

[Particle_Man]

Hmmmm....would the old black and white (1959-62) tv series "The Twilight Zone" contain Weird Tales? I always liked the idea of a character being shocked (and sometimes horrified) to realize that something they depended upon to explain reality just ain't so anymore.