Cthulhu Mythos

A sketch of Cthulhu drawn by Lovecraft, May 11, 1934
Cover of the pulp magazine Weird Tales (March 1944, vol. 37, no. 4) featuring "The Trail of Cthulhu" by August Derleth. Cover art by John Giunta.

The Cthulhu Mythos is a shared fictional universe, based on the work of American horror writer H. P. Lovecraft. The term was coined by August Derleth, a contemporary correspondent of Lovecraft's, to identify the setting and lore employed by Lovecraft and his literary successors. The name Cthulhu derives from a central creature in Lovecraft's literary works such as the short story "The Call of Cthulhu", first published in pulp magazine Weird Tales in 1928. The writer Richard L. Tierney later applied the term "Derleth Mythos" to distinguish between Lovecraft's works and Derleth's later stories.[1][2] Authors of Lovecraftian horror in particular frequently use elements of the Cthulhu Mythos.[3]:viii-ix

History

In his essay "H. P. Lovecraft and the Cthulhu Mythos", Robert M. Price described two stages in the development of the Cthulhu Mythos. Price called the first stage the "Cthulhu Mythos proper." This stage was formulated during Lovecraft's lifetime and was subject to his guidance. The second stage was guided by August Derleth who, in addition to publishing Lovecraft's stories after his death, attempted to categorize and expand the Mythos.[4]:8[5]:5

First stage

An ongoing theme in Lovecraft's work is the complete irrelevance of mankind in the face of the cosmic horrors that apparently exist in the universe. Lovecraft made frequent references to the "Great Old Ones", a loose pantheon of ancient, powerful deities from space who once ruled the Earth and have since fallen into a deathlike sleep.[3]:viii While these monstrous deities have been present in almost all of Lovecraft's published work (his second short story Dagon is considered the start of the mythos), the first story to really expand the pantheon of Great Old Ones and its themes is The Call of Cthulhu, which was published in 1928.

Lovecraft broke with other pulp writers of the time by having his main characters' minds deteriorate when afforded a glimpse of what exists outside their perceived reality. He emphasized the point by stating in the opening sentence of the story that "The most merciful thing in the world, I think, is the inability of the human mind to correlate all its contents."[6]

Writer Dirk W. Mosig notes that Lovecraft was a "mechanistic materialist" who embraced the philosophy of cosmic indifference. Lovecraft believed in a purposeless, mechanical, and uncaring universe. Human beings, with their limited faculties, can never fully understand this universe, and the cognitive dissonance caused by this revelation leads to insanity, in his view. This perspective made no allowance for religious belief which could not be supported scientifically, with the incomprehensible, cosmic forces of his tales having as little regard for humanity as humans have for insects.[7][8]:22

There have been attempts at categorizing this fictional group of beings. Phillip A. Schreffler argues that by carefully scrutinizing Lovecraft's writings, a workable framework emerges that outlines the entire "pantheon"—from the unreachable "Outer Ones" (e.g. Azathoth, who occupies the centre of the universe) and "Great Old Ones" (e.g. Cthulhu, imprisoned on Earth in the sunken city of R'lyeh) to the lesser castes (the lowly slave shoggoths and the Mi-go).[9]

David E. Schultz, however, believes that Lovecraft never meant to create a canonical Mythos but rather intended his imaginary pantheon to merely serve as a background element.[10]:46, 54 Lovecraft himself humorously referred to his Mythos as "Yog Sothothery" (Dirk W Mosig coincidentally suggested the term Yog-Sothoth Cycle of Myth be substituted for Cthulhu Mythos).[11][12] At times, Lovecraft even had to remind readers that his Mythos creations were entirely fictional.[8]:33–34

The view that there was no rigid structure is expounded upon by S. T. Joshi, who said "Lovecraft's imaginary cosmogony was never a static system but rather a sort of aesthetic construct that remained ever adaptable to its creator's developing personality and altering interests. . . . There was never a rigid system that might be posthumously appropriated. . . . The essence of the mythos lies not in a pantheon of imaginary deities nor in a cobwebby collection of forgotten tomes, but rather in a certain convincing cosmic attitude."[13]

Price, however, believed that Lovecraft's writings could at least be divided into categories and identified three distinct themes: the "Dunsanian" (written a similar style as Lord Dunsany), "Arkham" (occurring in Lovecraft's fictionalized New England setting), and "Cthulhu" (the cosmic tales) cycles.[5]:9 Writer Will Murray noted that while Lovecraft often used his fictional pantheon in the stories he ghostwrote for other authors, he reserved Arkham and its environs exclusively for those tales he wrote under his own name.[14]

Although the Mythos was not formalized or acknowledged between them, Lovecraft did correspond and share story elements with other contemporary writers including Clark Ashton Smith, Robert E. Howard, Robert Bloch, Frank Belknap Long, Henry Kuttner, Henry S. Whitehead, and Fritz Leiber—a group referred to as the "Lovecraft Circle."[15][16]

For example, Robert E. Howard's character Friedrich Von Junzt reads Lovecraft's Necronomicon in the short story "The Children of the Night" (1931), and in turn Lovecraft mentions Howard's Unaussprechlichen Kulten in the stories "Out of the Aeons" (1935) and "The Shadow Out of Time" (1936).[5]:6–7 Many of Howard's original unedited Conan stories also involve parts of the Cthulhu Mythos.[17]

Second stage

Price denotes the second stage's commencement with August Derleth. The principal difference between Lovecraft and Derleth being the Derleth's use of hope and development of the idea that the Cthulhu mythos essentially represented a struggle between good and evil.[4]:9 Derleth is credited with creating the "Elder Gods." He stated:

As Lovecraft conceived the deities or forces of his mythos, there were, initially, the Elder Gods . . . These Elder Gods were benign deities, representing the forces of good, and existed peacefully . . . very rarely stirring forth to intervene in the unceasing struggle between the powers of evil and the races of Earth. These powers of evil were variously known as the Great Old Ones or the Ancient Ones...
—August Derleth, "The Cthulhu Mythos"[18]

Price believes that the basis for Derleth's system is found in Lovecraft: "Was Derleth's use of the rubric 'Elder Gods' so alien to Lovecraft's in At the Mountains of Madness? Perhaps not. In fact, this very story, along with some hints from 'The Shadow over Innsmouth', provides the key to the origin of the 'Derleth Mythos'. For in At the Mountains of Madness we find the history of a conflict between interstellar races, first among them the Elder Ones and the Cthulhu-spawn.[19] Derleth himself believed that Lovecraft wished for other authors to actively write about the Mythos as opposed to it being a discrete plot device within Lovecraft's own stories.[10]:46–7 Derleth expanded the boundaries of the Mythos by including any passing reference to another author's story elements by Lovecraft as part of the genre. Just as Lovecraft made passing reference to Clark Ashton Smith's Book of Eibon, Derleth in turn added Smith's Ubbo-Sathla to the Mythos.[5]:9–10

Derleth also attempted to connect the deities of the Mythos to the four elements (air, earth, fire, and water), creating new beings representative of certain elements in order to legitimize his system of classification.[note 1] In applying the elemental theory to beings that function on a cosmic scale (e.g. Yog-Sothoth) some authors created a fifth element that they termed aethyr.

Derleth's elemental classifications
Air Earth Fire Water
Hastur*
Ithaqua*
Nyarlathotep
Zhar and Lloigor*		 Cyäegha
Nyogtha
Shub-Niggurath
Tsathoggua		 Aphoom-Zhah
Cthugha*		 Cthulhu
Dagon
Ghatanothoa
Mother Hydra
Zoth-Ommog
* Deity created by Derleth.

See also

Notes

  1. ↑ Derleth created "Cthugha" as a sort of fire elemental when a fan, Francis Towner Laney, complained that he had neglected to include the element in his schema. Laney, the editor of The Acolyte, had categorized the Mythos in an essay that first appeared in the Winter 1942 issue of the magazine. Impressed by the glossary, Derleth asked Laney to rewrite it for publication in the Arkham House collection Beyond the Wall of Sleep (1943). (Robert M. Price, "Editorial Shards", Crypt of Cthulhu #32, p. 2.) Laney's essay ("The Cthulhu Mythos") was later republished in Crypt of Cthulhu #32 (1985).

References

  1. ↑ Price, Robert M. (November 1982). "Cthulhu Elsewhere in Lovecraft". Crypt of Cthulhu (9). Retrieved 5 July 2017.
  2. ↑ Schweitzer, Darrell (2001). Discovering H. P. Lovecraft (Revised ed.). Holicong, Pennsylvania: Wildside Press. p. 52. ISBN 9781587154713.
  3. 1 2 Harms, Daniel (1998). The Encyclopedia Cthulhiana (2nd ed.). Oakland, California: Chaosium, Inc. ISBN 9781568821191.
  4. 1 2 Lovecraft, H. P.; Bloch, Robert (1987). The Best of H. P. Lovecraft: Bloodcurdling Tales of Horror and the Macabre (1st ed.). New York: Ballantine Pub. Group. ISBN 0345350804.
  5. 1 2 3 4 Price, Robert M. (1990). H. P. Lovecraft and the Cthulhu Mythos. Mercer Island, Washington: Starmont House. ISBN 1557421528.
  6. ↑ Lovecraft, H. P. (2014). The Call of Cuthulhu. Lanham: Start Publishing LLC. ISBN 1609772695.
  7. ↑ Mosig, Yozan Dirk W. "Lovecraft: The Dissonance Factor in imaginary Literature" (1979).
  8. 1 2 Mariconda, Steven J. (1995). On the Emergence of "Cthulhu" & Other Observations. West Warwick, Rhode Island: Necronomicon Press. ISBN 9780940884816.
  9. ↑ Shreffler, Philip A. (1977). The H. P. Lovecraft Companion. Westport, Connecticut: Greenwood Press. pp. 156–57. ISBN 9780837194820.
  10. 1 2 Connors, Scott (2002). A Century Less a Dream: Selected Criticism on H. P. Lovecraft (1st ed.). Holikong, Pennsylvania: Wildside Press. ISBN 9781587152153.
  11. ↑ Mosig, Yōzan Dirk W. (1997). Mosig at Last: A Psychologist looks at H. P. Lovecraft (1st ed.). West Warwick, Rhode Island: Necronomicon Press. p. 28. ISBN 9780940884908.
  12. ↑ "Yog-Sothothery". Timpratt.org. Retrieved 28 November 2012.
  13. ↑ Joshi, S.T. (1995). Miscellaneous Writings (1st ed.). Sauk City, Wisconsin: Arkham House Publishers. pp. 165–66. ISBN 9780870541681.
  14. ↑ Van Hise, James (1999). The Fantastic Worlds of H. P. Lovecraft (1st ed.). Yucca Valley, California: James Van Hise. pp. 105–07.
  15. ↑ Joshi, S. T. (1980). H.P. Lovecraft: Four Decades of Criticism. Athens, Ohio: Ohio University Press. ISBN 9780821405772.
  16. ↑ Schweitzer, Darrell (1996). Discovering Classic Fantasy Fiction: Essays on the Antecedents of Fantastic Literature. Gillette, New Jersey: Wildside Press. ISBN 9781587150043.
  17. ↑ Howard, Robert E.; Schultz, Mark (2003). The Coming of Conan the Cimmerian (1st ed.). New York: Del Rey/Ballantine Books. p. 436. ISBN 0345461517.
  18. ↑ Derleth, August (1997). The Cthulhu Mythos. New York: Barnes & Noble Books. p. vii. ISBN 0760702535.
  19. ↑ "Lovecraft-Derleth Connection". Crypt-of-cthulhu.com. Retrieved 2012-11-28.

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