Cthulhu
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Cthulhu is a cosmic entity created by writer H. P. Lovecraft. It was introduced in his short story "The Call of Cthulhu",[2] published by the American pulp magazine Weird Tales in 1928. Considered a Great Old One within the pantheon of Lovecraftian cosmic entities, this creature has since been featured in numerous popular culture references. Lovecraft depicts it as a gigantic entity worshipped by cultists, in the shape of a green octopus, dragon, and a caricature of human form. The Lovecraft-inspired universe, the Cthulhu Mythos, where it exists with its fellow entities, is named after it.
Etymology, spelling, and pronunciation
Invented by Lovecraft in 1928, the name Cthulhu was probably chosen to echo the word chthonic (Ancient Greek "of the earth"), as apparently suggested by Lovecraft himself at the end of his 1923 tale "The Rats in the Walls".[3] The chthonic, or earth-dwelling, spirit has precedents in numerous ancient and medieval mythologies, often guarding mines and precious underground treasures, notably in the Germanic dwarfs and the Greek Chalybes, Telchines, or Dactyls.[4]
Lovecraft transcribed the pronunciation of Cthulhu as Khlûl′-hloo, and said, "the first syllable pronounced gutturally and very thickly. The 'u' is about like that in 'full', and the first syllable is not unlike 'klul' in sound, hence the 'h' represents the guttural thickness"[5] yielding something akin to /χ(ə)ʟʊʟˈluː/. S. T. Joshi points out, however, that Lovecraft gave different pronunciations on different occasions.[6] According to Lovecraft, this is merely the closest that the human vocal apparatus can come to reproducing the syllables of an alien language.[7] Cthulhu has also been spelled in many other ways, including Tulu, Katulu, and Kutulu.[8]
Long after Lovecraft's death, Chaosium stated in the Call of Cthulhu role-playing game: "we say it kuh-THOOL-hu" (/kəˈθuːluː/), even while noting that Lovecraft said it differently.[9] Others use the pronunciation Katulu or Kutulu or /kəˈtuːluː/.[10]
Description
In "The Call of Cthulhu", H. P. Lovecraft describes a statue of Cthulhu as: "A monster of vaguely anthropoid outline, but with an octopus-like head whose face was a mass of feelers, a scaly, rubbery-looking body, prodigious claws on hind and fore feet, and long, narrow wings behind."[11]
Cthulhu is said to resemble a green octopus, dragon, and a human caricature, hundreds of meters tall, with webbed, human-looking arms and legs and a pair of rudimentary wings on its back.
Publication history
The short story that first mentions Cthulhu, "The Call of Cthulhu", was published in
Lovecraft conceived a detailed genealogy for Cthulhu (published as "Letter 617" in Selected Letters)[1] and made the character a central reference in his works.[14] The short story "The Dunwich Horror" (1928)[15] refers to Cthulhu, while "The Whisperer in Darkness" (1930) hints that one of his characters knows the creature's origins ("I learned whence Cthulhu first came, and why half the great temporary stars of history had flared forth.")[13] The 1931 novella At the Mountains of Madness refers to the "star-spawn of Cthulhu", who warred with another race called the Elder Things before the dawn of man.[16]
August Derleth, a correspondent of Lovecraft's, used the creature's name to identify the system of lore employed by Lovecraft and his literary successors, the Cthulhu Mythos. In 1937, Derleth wrote the short story "The Return of Hastur", and proposed two groups of opposed cosmic entities:
the Old or Ancient Ones, the
Elder Gods, of cosmic good, and those of cosmic evil, bearing many names, and themselves of different groups, as if associated with the elements and yet transcending them: for there are the Water Beings, hidden in the depths; those of Air that are the primal lurkers beyond time; those of Earth, horrible animate survivors of distant eons.[17]: 256
According to Derleth's scheme, "Great Cthulhu is one of the Water Elementals" and was engaged in an age-old arch-rivalry with a designated air elemental, Hastur the Unspeakable, described as Cthulhu's "half-brother."[17]: 256, 266 Based on this framework, Derleth wrote a series of short stories published in Weird Tales (1944–1952) and collected as The Trail of Cthulhu, depicting the struggle of a Dr. Laban Shrewsbury and his associates against Cthulhu and his minions. In addition, Cthulhu is referenced in Derleth's 1945 novel The Lurker at the Threshold published by Arkham House. The novel can also be found in The Watchers Out of Time and Others, a collection of stories from Derleth's interpretations of Lovecraftian Mythos published by Arkham House in 1974.
Derleth's interpretations have been criticized by Lovecraft enthusiast Michel Houellebecq, among others. Houellebecq's H. P. Lovecraft: Against the World, Against Life (2005) decries Derleth for attempting to reshape Lovecraft's strictly amoral continuity into a stereotypical conflict between forces of objective good and evil.[18]
In John Glasby's "A Shadow from the Aeons", Cthulhu is seen by the narrator roaming the riverbank near Dominic Waldron's castle, and roaring.[19]
The character's influence also extended into gaming literature; games company TSR included an entire chapter on the Cthulhu mythos (including character statistics) in the first printing of Dungeons & Dragons sourcebook Deities & Demigods (1980). TSR, however, were unaware that Arkham House, which asserted copyright on almost all Lovecraft literature, had already licensed the Cthulhu property to game company Chaosium. Although Chaosium stipulated that TSR could continue to use the material if each future edition featured a published credit to Chaosium, TSR refused and the material was removed from all subsequent editions.[20]
Influence
Politics
Cthulhu has appeared as a
In 2016, the
The Cthulhu Party (UK), another pseudo-political organisation, claim to be 'Changing Politics for Evil', parodying the
Science
Several organisms have been named after Cthulhu, including the California spider
In 2014, science and technology scholar Donna Haraway gave a talk entitled "Anthropocene, Capitalocene, Chthulucene: Staying with the Trouble", in which she proposed the term "Chthulucene" as an alternative for the concept of the Anthropocene era, due to the entangling interconnectedness of all supposedly individual beings.[29] Haraway has denied any indebtedness to Lovecraft's Cthulhu, claiming that her "chthulu" is derived from Greek khthonios, "of the earth".[30] However, the Lovecraft character is much closer to her coined term than the Greek root, and her description of its meaning coincides with Lovecraft's idea of the apocalyptic, multitentacled threat of Cthulhu to collapse civilization into an endless dark horror: "Chthulucene does not close in on itself; it does not round off; its contact zones are ubiquitous and continuously spin out loopy tendrils."[31]
In 2015, an elongated, dark region along the equator of Pluto, initially referred to as "the Whale", was proposed to be named "Cthulhu Regio", by the NASA team responsible for the New Horizons mission.[32] It was given the informal name Cthulhu Macula,[33][34] though the feature was later officially named Belton Regio by the International Astronomical Union.[35]
References
- ^ ISBN 0-87054-035-1. Retrieved 17 August 2023.
- ^ "{title}". Archived from the original on 2018-08-02. Retrieved 2018-08-02.
- ISBN 978-1476602394.
- ^ Kearns, Emily (2011). Finkelberg, Margalit (ed.). "Chthonic deities". The Homer encyclopedia. Wiley. Retrieved 4 May 2017.
- ^ Lovecraft, H. P. Selected Letters V. pp. 10–11.
- ^ Joshi, S. T. "The Call of Cthulhu". The Call of Cthulhu and Other Weird Stories. note 9.
- ^ "Cthul-Who?: How Do You Pronounce 'Cthulhu'?", Crypt of Cthulhu #9
- The Encyclopedia Cthulhiana. p. 64.
- ^ Petersen, Sandy; Willis, Lynn; Herber, Keith (1981). Call of Cthulhu (2 ed.). Oakland, California: Chaosium.:What's in this box?
- .
- ^ a b c s:The Call of Cthulhu
- ^ s:The Shadow Over Innsmouth
- ^ a b s:The Whisperer in Darkness
- ISSN 1077-8179.
- ^ s:The Dunwich Horror
- ^ Lovecraft, H. P. At the Mountains of Madness. p. 66. Archived from the original on 2011-06-06. Retrieved 2011-04-14.
- ^ a b Derleth, August. "The Return of Hastur". In Price, Robert M. (ed.). The Hastur Cycle.
- ^ Bloch, Robert. "Heritage of Horror". The Best of H. P. Lovecraft: Bloodcurdling Tales of Horror and the Macabre.
- ^ Glasby, John S. (2015-08-09). The Brooding City and Other Tales of the Cthulhu Mythos. Ramble House.
- ^ "Deities & Demigods, Legends & Lore". The Acaeum. Archived from the original on 2010-09-03. Retrieved 2010-05-10.
- ^ "Cthulhu for America". Archived from the original on 3 August 2016. Retrieved 3 Aug 2016.
- ^ "Cthulhu Dagon 2012". Archived from the original on 2016-10-14. Retrieved 2016-10-29.
- ^ Watson, Zebbie (June 16, 2016). "Who Is Behind Cthulhu For America?". Inverse. Archived from the original on October 25, 2020. Retrieved May 31, 2020.
- ^ Barnett, David (March 1, 2016). "Could Cthulhu trump the other Super Tuesday contenders?". The Guardian. Archived from the original on June 13, 2020. Retrieved May 31, 2020.
- (PDF) from the original on 2012-10-13. Retrieved 2011-05-09.
- ^ Zilli, Alberto; Holloway, Jeremy D. & Hogenes, Willem (2005). "An Overview of the Genus Speiredonia with Description of Seven New Species (Insecta, Lepidoptera: Noctuidae)". Aldrovandia. 1: 17–36. Archived from the original on 2011-07-22 – via Internet Archive.
- (PDF) from the original on 2019-09-23. Retrieved 2019-09-23.
- PMID 23526991.
- ^ Donna Haraway (9 May 2014). Donna Haraway, "Anthropocene, Capitalocene, Chthulucene: Staying with the Trouble", 5/9/14. Vimeo, Inc. Archived from the original on 28 January 2017. Retrieved 2017-03-06.
- ISBN 978-0-8223-6224-1.
- ^ Wark, McKenzie (September 8, 2016). "Chthulucene, Capitalocene, Anthropocene". PublicSeminar.org. Archived from the original on 2017-12-01. Retrieved 2017-11-30.
- ^ Feltman, Rachel (14 July 2015). "New data reveals that Pluto's heart is broken". The Washington Post. Archived from the original on 2015-07-15. Retrieved 14 July 2015.
- Bibcode:2015DPS....4721001Z.
- S2CID 119072504.
- ^ "Two Names Approved for Pluto: Belton Regio and Safronov Regio | USGS Astrogeology Science Center". astrogeology.usgs.gov. Retrieved 2023-09-27.
Further reading
- ISBN 0-345-35080-4.
- Burleson, Donald R. (1983). H. P. Lovecraft, A Critical Study. Westport, CT / London, England: Greenwood Press. ISBN 0-313-23255-5.
- Burnett, Cathy (1996). Spectrum No. 3:The Best in Contemporary Fantastic Art. Nevada City, CA, 95959 USA: Underwood Books. ISBN 1-887424-10-5.)
{{cite book}}
: CS1 maint: location (link - Harms, Daniel (1998). "Cthulhu". The Encyclopedia Cthulhiana (2nd ed.). Oakland, CA: Chaosium. pp. 64–7. ISBN 1568821190.
- "Idh-yaa", p. 148. Ibid.
- "Star-spawn of Cthulhu", pp. 283 – 4. Ibid.
- ISBN 0313315787.
- Lovecraft, Howard P. (1999) [1928]. "The Call of Cthulhu". In S. T. Joshi (ed.). The Call of Cthulhu and Other Weird Stories. London, UK; New York, NY: Penguin Books. Archived from the original on November 26, 2009.
- Lovecraft, Howard P. (1968). Selected Letters II. Sauk City, WI: ISBN 0870540297.
- Lovecraft, Howard P. (1976). Selected Letters V. Sauk City, WI: Arkham House. ISBN 087054036X.
- Marsh, Philip. R'lyehian as a Toy Language – on psycholinguistics. Lehigh Acres, FL 33970-0085 USA: Philip Marsh.
{{cite book}}
: CS1 maint: location (link) - ISBN 0940884909.
- Pearsall, Anthony B. (2005). The Lovecraft Lexicon (1st ed.). Tempe, AZ: New Falcon Pub. ISBN 1561841293.
- "Other Lovecraftian Products" Archived 2008-07-23 at the Wayback Machine, The H.P. Lovecraft Archive
External links
- Lovecraft, H. P. "The Call of Cthulhu". www.hplovecraft.com. Donovan K. Loucks. Retrieved 2020-04-15.