Forms and Functions of Description in the (New) Weird

Abstract This essay discusses how and to what effect Weird and New Weird fiction use description in unique and genre-defining ways. Using H. P. Lovecraft’s “The Call of Cthulhu” and China Miéville’s The City & The City as examples, it shows how the Weird relegates a comparatively large part of the text to description and attempts to elicit dread as an aesthetic effect. The essay argues that the Weird breaks with the traditional use of description by employing formally realist tendencies which it defies functionally, and by combining over-description with the failure to describe, whereas the New Weird is more concise in its use of description, ties it more closely to the narrative, and is less reliant on descriptive failures. Both the Weird and the New Weird demand more active reader participation in their creation of aesthetic illusion, which they encourage through the frames they create around their descriptions, thus preparing readers for the potential of aesthetic distance in the reception process and diminishing its effect. The analysis emphasizes the potential of description to be more than a subordinate to the narrative mode and to be a central component in the formation of a text’s implied worldview.