Altar Call of Cthulhu
Religion and Millennialism in H.P. Lovecraft’s Cthulhu Mythos
Bibliographic Data
| ID | 16901398 |
|---|---|
| Authors | Benjamin Zeller (0000-0002-4378-6088, Lake Forest College, corresponding author) |
| Year | 2019 |
| Volume | 11 |
| Issue | 1 |
| Pages | 18 |
| Publication date | 2019-12-30 |
| Open Access | Yes |
| Type | ARTICLE |
| Venue | Religions (JOURNAL) |
| Journal identifiers | ISSN: 2077-1444 • E-ISSN: 2077-1444 |
| Publisher | MDPI AG (PUBLISHER • IT) |
| DOI | 10.3390/rel11010018 |
| OpenAlex | W2998708976 |
| Language | EN |
| References cited | 11 |
Religion suffuses H.P. Lovecraft’s (1890–1937) short stories—the most famous of which, “The Call of Cthulhu,” has led to a literary subculture and a shared mythos employed by Lovecraft’s successors. Despite this presence of religion in Lovecraft’s work, scholars of religion have paid relatively little attention to Lovecraft and the Cthulhu mythos, with a few notable exceptions. This article offers a close analysis of millennialism within Lovecraft’s thought, especially as expressed in three of his “Cthulhu mythos” stories: “The Call of Cthulhu,” “The Dunwich Horror,” and “The Shadow over Innsmouth.” This article considers Lovecraft’s formative experiences and non-fiction writings so as to contextualize his approach and millennial outlook. Tied to his nativist views of social decline, I argue that Lovecraft expresses in his fiction a peculiar form of millennialism, “anti-millennialism,” which entails the reversal of traditional millennialism, offering no hope in a collective salvation, but rather expectation that the imminent future would bring only decline
Altar · Art · Literature · Psychoanalysis · Theology · American Sports and Literature · Gothic Literature and Media Analysis · History · Philosophy · Short Stories in Global Literature
| Highly cited | No |
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