Lucian’s Strange Creatures by Aubrey Beardsley in The Savoy, (1896) is an example of sinuous and distorted creatures, which create an effect of alienation. These odd shapes make Arthur Machen’s unnameable horrors congenital and tactile in a way that the written word cannot. vBeardsley’s use of ambiguity and distortion reflects fin-de-siècle Gothic art’s engagement with cultural anxieties. According to David Punter as described in his book, The Literature of Terror, Gothic literature has a specific function of revealing fears through the disturbing and the odd. This illustration provides an incisive representation of the aesthetics of creativity and the uncanny in the weird fiction tradition in Britain at the fin de siècle.
Works Cited:
Smithers, Leonard, and Arthur Symons, editors. The Savoy, No. 1. 1896. https://archive.org/details/savoy01smituoft.
Punter, David. The Literature of Terror: A History of Gothic Fictions from 1765 to the Present Day. Routledge, 1996.