Arthur Machen: Critical Essays studies the works of Arthur Machen in twelve essays, exploring different aspects of the literary production of the Welsh writer who has won the readers and the critics' attention with works such as "The Great God Pan," "The Terror," and "The Angels of Mons."

Arthur Machen: Critical Essays offers a study of the works by Arthur Machen (1863-1947), the Welsh writer who has attracted a cult following for decades, especially among fans and scholars of weird fiction and Gothic studies. These essays take readers into different areas and address several topics in Machen's literary production: the literary, the artistic, the scientific, the religious, the socio-cultural, and the personal. The twelve chapters constituting the volume examine the representation of human beings in the writer's works and their relationship with the surrounding environment, whether it is the omnipresent London or the mysterious, menacing nature. The contributors also interpret Machen's writings through a series of disciplines and academic theories that were contemporary to the writer (such as paleontology and medicine) and demonstrate how he was influenced by the scientific discourses of his time and reproduced them in his works. The last section of the volume considers Machen's interest in the occult and mysticism and the religious themes present in many of his works.

Introduction: Arthur Machen: His Life, His Works, and His Critics

Antonio Sanna

Part I: Human Beings and Their Environments

Chapter 1: ‘A London cognita and a London incognita’: Contesting London in Arthur Machen’s The London Adventure, or the Art of Wandering

Amanda M. Caleb

Chapter 2: The Problem of Agency in Arthur Machen’s The Terror

Francesco Corigliano

Chapter 3: Heterotopic Spaces in Machen’s Fiction

Antonio Sanna

Chapter 4: Dead Matter: Posthumanism and Stones

Fernando Gabriel Pagnoni Berns and Emiliano Aguilar

Part II: Darwinism and Degeneration

Chapter 5: Fear and Fossils: The Legacy of Arthur Machen’s ‘Little People’ Stories

Justin Phillip Mullis

Chapter 6: ‘Dissolution and Change’: Reading The Great God Pan as Monstrous Adaptation

Jessica George

Chapter 7: Lucian’s Ornaments in Jade: Symbolist Decadence in Arthur Machen’s Prose Poetry

Kostas Boyiopoulos

Chapter 8: ‘A Substance as Jelly’: Helen Vaughan as Infectious Pathogen in The Great God Pan

Loredana Salis and Laura Mauro

Part III: Spirituality

Chapter 9: ‘[A] mystic, ineffable force and energy’: Arthur Machen and Theories of New Materialism

Adrian Tait

Chapter 10: Occult Investigations in Arthur Machen’s Detective Stories

Deborah Bridle

Chapter 11: Through the Ancient Wood: Envisioning Apophatic Mysticism in A Fragment of Life

Geoffrey Reiter

Chapter 12: A ‘Miracle’ In No Man’s Land?: Arthur Machen and the Angels of Mons

Andrew R. Lenoir