The Temple of Dagon

Hi all, I'm new here and I will admit I haven't read anything of Lovecraft save the actual necronomicon itself, which is as I understand the mythological "bible" of the mythos itself. I'm curious, but not the least bit stupid so my question to you all is, how much detail does Lovecraft as well as other mythos authors give about the places and beings described in the necronomicon? Does any character ever actually go to say Kadath or R'lyeh, look into these worlds through nightmares, etc? I guess what I'm asking is, where do I turn, book and story wise, if I want to see how far the rabbit hole goes? Like down to the most vivid descriptions of the other worlds and the beings that inhabit them..

Thanks

Allow me to point you here for a discussion E.A. Lovecraft and I had on the use of the Necronomicon. Which, by the way, is not real. Not to seem condescendin, but you referred to it like a real book, and so I assume you've obtained one the 'hoax Necronomicons'.
For a crash course in the Mythos, I suggest you take a look-see at the FAQ section of the main page. Not the one in the forums, though, because that only deals with how to use BB Code.
For a more in-depth idea of the Mythos, after the FAQ, try looking through some of the stories on this site. Not to sound pompous, but I'd suggest taking a gander in the public archives at some of my work, as an example of Mythos tales that aren't overtly so. Not every Tom, Dick, Harry and Wingate Peaslee needs to own the Necronomicon, and the only time I ever used it in a serious tale was when it made sense - and even then, only one character even knew what it was and he wasn't telling anyone. (tale in question is 'Thorn Within', props to whoever gets the reference)
Oh, and welcome aboard. To paraphrase the traditional greeting from another site I frequent,

WARNING: THE TEMPLE OF DAGON CONTAINS NUTS!

Thanks Prime, I wanted to link you to my Necronomicon 'source', and I do realize it's just a myth I was hoping I didn't sound like one of those idiots. This is where I read that which I reffered to as The Necronomicon:

http://www.palmyra.demon.co.uk/supersti ... omicon.htm

What do you make of it, as a Lovecraft aficionado?

Wow...I took a look at that site. I'm not sure what to say. Except, apparently someone has a lot of spare time. Or else uses their spare time a WHOLE lot better than I do.

I'm busy proof-reading now, so I'll cehck that out later. I do recommend, for reading purposes, S.T. Joshi's anotated trilogy, from Penguin Classics. I'll let you know about "Thing on the Doorstep and Other Wierd Stories" soon, as my order for it just came in today. The other two ("Call of Cthulhu and Other Wierd Stories" and "Dreams in the Witch House and Other Wierd Stories" are definately worth what you'll pay for them (£8.99 each, methinks).

Janus wrote:What do you make of it . . .

Looks like a collection of rpg props got transferred to hypertext. Who ever did it is pretty creative.

Creative, yes. Versed in Old English, no. Sweet YHWH's vowels, the language has a 'the' in addition to 'ye'!

lol . . . I noticed that, too. Not sure if "ye" actually qualifies as Old English, though.

I think so, Chaucer uses it sometimes.

Chaucer spoke (and wrote) Middle English. Now, get ready for some nerd stuff . . .

I looked up the origin of "ye," which is an archaic form of "the," which is actually the origin of "ye." Confused yet? It's a cyclical thing.

The Old English-speaking Anglo-Saxons used the word "the," but used a Germanic character (called "thorn") to represent the "th" sound.

"The" survived the change to Middle English, but printers did not have thorns available to represent the hard "th" sound, so they used "Y" instead. Thus, "the" became "ye" but was still pronounced as "the."

Wow, thank you. Honestly, I was curious about that. I've seen it just tossed around myself quite a bit. Makes a lot of sense.

What I'm curious to know now is when did the pronunciation of "ye" change from /thuh/ to /yee/. Was it something gradual, over centuries, was it a misnomer spread through modern popular media, or what?

The most complete, and quite frankly interesting discussion of the various bogus Necronomicons is The Necronomicon Files by Wisdom and Harms, which delves into modern paganism, as well as Lovecraftian scholarship.

In old English, the most common indefinite article is (thorn)-a. That's right, "tha" just like you see on rap albums. "Ye" is a pure artifact of writing that down--the "y" really should be a thorn, and should be pronounced "th". But since anyone can pick up Chaucer without knowing this, it is commonly pronounced as "Yee" which is incorrect. It really should be pronounced more of a "tha".

I completely agree with you Nicodemus. I love that book! It is so nicely researched.

Interesting research guys

Nice work, E.A.
My two pence on the pronunciation thing is that it was simply a dialect or accent thing - 'the' is still commonly pronounced as 'thee', which the 'th' and 'y' part would easily confuse the then-almost-illiterate masses (we're talking about a time when most things were taught in Latin, after all). So, part mispronunciation, part dialect/accent.