E n g l ish in A u st r alia Vol um e 49 Num be r 1 • 2014

‘Cthulhuic Lieteracy’ ‘Cthulhuic Literacy’:

Teaching Secondar y English
with a Dose of Lovecraft
David R. Cole, University of Western Sydney

Abstract: This paper suggests how the ‘weird fiction’ of H.P. Lovecraft might be mobilised within
secondary English classrooms to examine aspects of visual literacy, literary style, narrative form and
intertextuality. The approach that is outlined is characterised, after Lovecraft’s famous monster, as
a ‘Cthulhuic literacy’ and is framed by Multiple Literacy Theory that positions learning as intrinsically
relational and encourages teachers to use affect positively to enhance textual practice (Masny &
Cole, 2009). Affect is put to work in the classroom as an organising principle, beginning with the
choice of text to be used and continuing through the particular ways in which teacher and students
work with the selected text.

Introduction
H.P. Lovecraft is perhaps one of the most fascinating and strangely misunderstood literary
personalities to emerge in the last 100 years. This article and set of lesson ideas for high
school English teachers, will attempt to capture and augment the fascinating, but rather
obscure literary quality that Lovecraft possesses to mobilise and enhance effective secondary
English teaching and learning practice. Such effective teaching and learning practice relies on
specific principles and ideas that have been articulated in recent English teaching and learn-
ing theory and research based on the philosophy of Gilles Deleuze and Félix Guattari (see
Cole 2009 & 2008), and these notions will be demonstrated throughout this article around
and through six key points:

1. The links and connections between effective speaking and listening, reading and writing
practice through the use of literature as pedagogy may be strengthened and theorised
through the notion of affective literacy (see Amsler 2002).
2. Affective literacy defines a manner of introducing and using unconscious forces (see
Guattari 2013) in the English literature teaching and learning context.
3. The non-linear development of and full engagement with the subject of secondary
English may be understood and acted upon through the emergence and use of affective
but variant themes and literacies for reading, writing, speaking and listening (Masny,
2006) such as the ‘Cthulhuic Literacy’ of this article.
4. Affective literacy is an important aspect of multiple literacies theory (MLT) that demon-
strates ways to complexify and contextualise the English teaching and learning space
through identification with minor literacies (Masny & Cole, 2009, pp. 167–181), and criti-
cally in relation to and with alterity. MLT has been defined as ‘reading the world, reading
the self and reading text’ (Masny & Cole, 2009, p. 3).
5. Multiple literacies theory and affective literacy include mediated and digitised literacies
that have come about by working seamlessly with and through ICT applications in educa-
tion (e.g. Cole & Pullen, 2010) and the application of technology to the study of literature.
6. The English literature teaching and learning contexts as described through this article
work against sameness (cf. Cole & Hager, 2010) to exploit the difference opened up

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 E n gl ish in A u st ralia Vol um e 49 Num be r 1 • 2014

Figure 1. Picture of Cthulhu by Alexander Liptak. Image used with permission under Creative Commons repository.
Attribution 3.0 Unported licence.

through the introduction of the specific texts under
analysis (in this case, the oeuvre of H.P. Lovecraft)
via specific activities.
These six points above are interwoven into the
lesson plans and conceptual framing of this article as
described below through ‘Cthulhuic Literacy’. Affective
literacy and MLT demand that the ideas at work here are
interspersed with post-Freudian unconscious desires
and non-linguistic ways of working or ‘epiphanies’ (see
Cole & Throssell, 2008) in education, parallel with
the conscious development of language and literacy
skills along set curricula lines. Even though one still
has to read, write about and discuss the work of H.P.
Lovecraft to understand the texts, this article contends
that the non-linguistic, unconscious and non-cognitive
aspects of these textual encounters are paramount
to their success as secondary literature teaching and
learning resources, and this contention has been borne
out in research in this area (see Cole, 2008, 2009).
Such direct augmentation and play between text, prac-
tice and the embodiment of ideas, is aimed at helping
secondary English teachers who are looking for new
options and inspiration in an age that is perhaps
rapidly going beyond the written and printed textual
form as primary and central to language-based teach-
ing and learning practice.
‘Cthulhuic Literacy’
In this section, the notions of affective literacy and

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 E n g l ish in A u st r alia Vol um e 49 Num be r 1 • 2014
MLT will be applied to the writing of H.P. Lovecraft
and in particular to the study of ‘Cthulhu’ as a form
of literacy. Affective literacy has been defined as ‘a
broad range of somatic, emotive responses to reading
a text. Affective literacy seeks out the life-principle,
messy and complex, threading through reading activi-
ties and gestures toward bodily economies of reading
and transacting texts’ (Amsler, 2002). In the specific
case of ‘Cthulhuic Literacy’, students and teachers
will explore and articulate the affective and multiple
aspects of the concept of Cthulhu in their second-
ary English lessons. In Lovecraft’s works, Cthulhu
is a strange and obscure monster, a deity that is
currently trapped within an underwater city in the
South Pacific, but haunts mankind and will return.
Lovecraft asserts that Cthulhu is worshipped by differ-
ent groups in New Zealand, Greenland, Louisiana,
and the Chinese mountains. Cthulhu’s worshippers
chant ‘Ph’nglui mglw’nafh Cthulhu R’lyeh wgah’nagl
fhtagn’ (Lovecraft, 1928) [In his house at R’lyeh, dead
Cthulhu waits dreaming]. The Cthulhu creature is
described by Lovecraft as, ‘an octopus, a dragon, and a
human caricature … with a pulpy, tentacled head [that]
surmounted a grotesque scaly body with rudimentary
wings’ (Lovecraft 1928). Such a description has given
rise to an extensive minor industry that has grown up
around attempts to represent Cthulhu. For example:
The first and most conspicuous aspect of the liter-
acy involved with learning about Cthulhu is a visual
one. The traditional tale of terror, as published in
Blackwood’s Magazine in the nineteenth century, often
involved a terrifying creature, and horror stories such as
Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein and Bram Stocker’s Dracula
rely heavily for the generation of suspense upon the
anticipated appearance and actions of such an aber-
ration. Lovecraft has provided an excellent resource
for English teachers in terms of creating interest in
the texts through the construction of Cthulhu and a
whole array of other creatures and deities that appear
in his stories. The strange appearance of Cthulhu
could be compared by the teacher and the students to
other demons, monsters and ghouls from the history
of literature, film and religion, so that students may
build up an understanding of why and how Lovecraft
has designed Cthulhu in a particular way. The notion
of doing research with respect to the visual appear-
ance of Cthulhu could be accompanied by looking
at and thinking about what is terrifying or otherwise
with respect to the appearance of Cthulhu (see lesson
outline 1 on visual literacy below). Lovecraft was
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concerned to make his monsters ‘real’, in that the
detailed anatomical descriptions, written in a scientific
vein, are an attempt to steer readers away from absolute
or escapist fantasy writing (see Home, 1966). Lovecraft
creates the illusion of verisimilitude through the detail
of his writing style and due to the fact that many of
his main characters are scientists — even though the
scientists in his stories are often on the verge of going
mad! Furthermore, the point here is to explore the
construction of Cthulhu as a creature that has simul-
taneously given rise to countless parallel offspring and
reconceptions of Lovecraft’s original beasts. The crea-
tion of Cthulhu can have a lasting, visceral and haunt-
ing effect on the reader, because Lovecraft has created a
hybrid and peculiar monster that defies categorisation
and sits in a pantheon that deliberately stretches and
colours the imagination and impacts on learning about
the unrepresentable (see Semetsky 2007).
The reader of Lovecraft must deal with the pantheon
of Cthulhu, and this is one of the most pressing issues
with respect to understanding ‘Cthulhuic Literacy’. The
genre that Lovecraft has been credited with creating
and helping to define through his writing has been
termed as ‘weird fiction’ (see VanderMeer 2011). This
genre sits between science fiction, fantasy, horror and
adventure narratives. Proponents of this genre look for
ways to bend and alter reality, without creating an abso-
lute fictional wonderland that the reader may reside in
comfortably or escape to. The ‘trick’ of weird fiction
is to create a believable world where the unbelievable
can quite readily happen. In the case of Lovecraft, the
believable world is based upon the landscapes of New
England where he grew up and continued to reside.
Lovecraft mythologises and expands New England so
that the extraordinary adventures of his imagination
will have appropriate and credible physical settings.
In these adventures, Cthulhu sits outside of the real,
knowable, human world, and inhabits an ‘other’ world,
a world of many gods and unimaginable horror (see
Thacker 2010). One is able to access this world though
dreams, portals and clues in forgotten, ancient manu-
scripts and by understanding the archaeology of anni-
hilated civilisations. Lovecraft does not directly or
experientially take us into the pantheon of Cthulhu,
but sets about creating stories and plotlines whereby
we may come closer to the world of Cthulhu, without
taking the ‘vertiginous’ plunge into this dark space.
Rather, the practice of ‘Cthulhuic Literacy’, i.e. under-
standing and articulating the manner of construction
of Lovecraft’s text, incorporates, but is not exhausted
 E n gl ish in A u st ralia Vol um e 49 Num be r 1 • 2014
by the discovery, reading and recognition of occult
signs and codex, and writing that summons this sense
of Cthulhu when necessary.
The pantheon of Cthulhu has led to the develop-
ment of the ‘Cthulhu Mythos’. This notion was coined
and expanded upon after Lovecraft’s death by August
Derleth (for example in 1958), and describes the
universe where the Cthulhu is prominent and casts
an ineffable, slimy influence over the rest of existence.
Many creative writers, filmmakers, electronic game
designers and occult devotees have ‘bought’ into the
Cthulhu Mythos, and as such have been practising
‘Cthulhuic Literacy’ as described in this article through
their imaginative recreation of Lovecraftian worlds. The
creative possibilities and ‘intertexuality’ that Lovecraft
wove into his original stories are astonishing, and
testament to the wide reading that he practised (see,
for example, Lovecraft 1973). Yet, for the high school
teacher and their students, the Mythos might be more
understandable by comparison with, for example,
the Greek, Roman or Mayan realms of the Gods. The
difference that is opened up by Lovecraft is that his
reconception of Paganism is not a reflection of human
existence into another, more reified space. Importantly,
the Cthulhu and the many other ‘Lovecraftian’ Gods
in their non-human realms should not be perceived as
psychoanalytic projections, or as a result of an inner
pathology turned outwards (see Lord 2004). Lovecraft
is not simply describing an alternative to the Devil or
Satan when he refers to Cthulhu, nor is he exploring
the contrasts between the human world and the non-
human one. Rather, the possibility arises that Lovecraft
has imagined (an)other world through Cthulhu, and
this world is strictly non-human, and can be seen to
be complementary to, for example, the science fiction
ocean world of Solaris that was created by Stanislaw
Lem (1970). Importantly, one could suggest that to the
extent that when one mentions the name of Cthulhu,
or renders the Cthulhu Mythos in any way, one is
simultaneously indulging in an unconscious activity
to bring this world into existence (see Derleth 1966).
Ben Woodard (2011) explores this possibility some-
what in his Slime Dynamics. In this book, examining
slime in a range of cultural objects and texts as a darkly
vitalist and overlooked substance, Woodward argues
that Lovecraft plays an important role as a fiction
writer who has promoted the place of slime in the
world through the creation of Cthulhu. As Woodard
(2011) states at the end of the book, ‘[s]lime, in the end,
is the proof of cohesion and the hint of its undoing, the
evidence that something disgusting happened, some
foul thing called life. Something that will fill space
till the cosmos burns too low for anything to again
cohere, ending only with an ocean of putrescence spill-
ing over into the boundless void of extinction’ (p. 68).
This quote is a good description of slimy life to add to
one’s understanding of ‘Cthulhuic Literacy’, and how
Cthulhu may be understood in existence. The idea
that Woodard and Lovecraft predominantly espoused
is that human kind has too often ignored lower life
forms, as we have focused on the extrapolation of
humanity into the world. A similar point has been
recently made by Jane Bennett (2010) in her Vibrant
Matter when discussing the importance of worms and
nonhuman matter. The pivot between Bennet and
Lovecraft is that Cthulhu and the other Gods in the
Cthulhu Mythos are ‘things’, akin to slime, worms
and matter. Yet this slimy matter has agency, it can do
things in the world that count, and that can impinge
upon the human world. One of the definite points
that one may understand about ‘Cthulhuic Literacy’,
and which defines Lovecraft as an exemplar of vitalist
writing, is that ‘things’ have an important role to play
in the world and we ignore them at our peril. Lovecraft
frames Cthulhu within a scientific mindset that is,
however, consistently coming across the paradoxical,
weird and subaltern as a companion to investiga-
tion (see Touponce 2013). One could argue that such
a ‘Cthulhuic Literacy’ process defined in this way is
deeply ethical, in that it unites curiosity in the world
with the perception that the discovery of ‘things’ in the
world does not lead to their exploitation. Indeed, the
introduction of Cthulhu into the imagination may well
lead to the reversal of exploitation.
Some may object to this ethical orientation of
‘Cthulhuic Literacy’, in that it could be seen to deni-
grate and question the intrinsic worth of humanity,
and the continued domination of the human race on
and over the planet Earth. Yet, in a similar way to the
analysis of affect as a means to connect writing with
written effects (as affects) such as those of shame or
danger (Gibbs 2006), the vitalist writing of Lovecraft
opens up the idea that fictional writing can have
important political and cultural ramifications in the
world (see Simmons 2013). Understanding the realm
of Cthulhu should be approached with an open imagi-
nation, and not be burdened by pre-defined prejudice
or any narrowing moral judgements. The slimy obscen-
ity of Cthulhu is an invitation to explore the ways
in which such notions may undermine and expand
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certain aspects of ‘what counts as human’. In a parallel
case to Nietzsche and with respect to the metaphysics
of Western philosophy, Lovecraft questions traditional
narrative forms, and sets up the possibility of a new
form of literature, and one that has been termed as
‘weird fiction’ (see VanderMeer & VanderMeer2012).
However, one should not move to classify and normal-
ise the world of Cthulhu too quickly in terms of a
settled and comprehensible literary genre with definite
boundaries. One could say that the expansive and
connective power of Cthulhu has already broached
such limitations through its very inception. ‘Cthulhuic
Literacy’ must therefore include the creeping, under-
world power of Cthulhu, as a focused, transgressive
and boundary-breaking force in the student’s world.
This means that any other genres and media that have
included Cthulhu should be explored in the activity
of ‘Cthulhuic Literacy’, and these include the analysis,
articulation and recreation of: comics; role playing and
online gaming; the many derivative Mythos tales; and
any philosophical or literary commentary (see Joshi
1980) that have appropriated and expanded upon
Lovecraft, such as the work of Graham Harman (2012).
Furthermore, such extended literary and intellectual
pursuits fit with the tenets of affective literacy and
multiple literacy theory (MLT) that have framed this
‘Cthulhuic Literacy’ approach to teaching and learning
secondary English in terms of affect and the multiple.
In the next section, the ideas contained in ‘Cthulhuic
Literacy’ are applied to practical lesson outlines suit-
able for secondary English classes.
Four session plans
The activities that follow are designed to be starting
points for further investigation into the most perti-
nent, universal and engaging aspects of ‘Cthulhuic
Literacy’ for high school students.
Lesson outline 1 – visual literacy
Target groups
Years 8/9
Lesson objectives
To analyse and articulate the visual aspects of
Lovecraft’s creations
To understand how Lovecraft created his monsters/
deities
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To judge which of Lovecraft’s creations are the most
effective and to be able to explain why that is the case
Lesson procedures/materials
Lovecraft was interested in pushing the limits of the
imagination and has invented some of the strangest
creations in literary history. In the lessons on the visual
nature of Lovecraft’s deities and monsters, students
should be able to understand the descriptions of the
monsters and learn how to visually depict the crea-
tures. The teacher can use Figure 1 as a prompt, and as
an example of an articulated monster, the description
of Cthulhu and 15 other Lovecraftian creations are
listed on the following web page:
http://www.hplovecraft.com/creation/bestiary.aspx
Students will work in groups and read through the 16
descriptions of the monsters in the bestiary. Students
will discuss and inquire about: What do the creatures
have in common? What makes them weird/strange/
interesting/different? How should they pronounce the
names of the creatures? Why did Lovecraft make the
names so difficult to enunciate? In their groups, the
students will work on drawing 5/6 creatures from the
descriptions in the bestiary. Later, students will be
given the chance to present their drawings and orally
explain why they have chosen these particular features
to represent.
In a follow up session, students need to have access
to a web site where 10 Cthulhu Mythos deities are
ranked in terms of their frightening qualities. The ten
descriptions and pictures of deities from the ‘Cthulhu
Mythos’ can be found at:
http://www.denofgeek.com/books-comics/
lovecraft/27427/the-10-scariest-monsters-from-
lovecrafts-cthulu-mythos
The student groups will discuss what makes a
Lovecraftian deity or creature more frightening than
another. Note that this web site includes creations
from the entire Cthulhu Mythos, which produces an
expanded repertoire of creatures, many of which are
not directly attributable to Lovecraft. The students
will come up with a list of attributes that make a
Lovecraftian monster scary and rank all creations from
both lists. The students will have the chance to present
their ideas and explain why they have ranked the crea-
tures in their particular order.
Follow up visual literacy classes on ‘Cthulhuic
Literacy’ include the following: designing a short
graphic novel or comic strip around one or more of
the Lovecraftian creations; finding further Lovecraft
 E n gl ish in A u st ralia Vol um e 49 Num be r 1 • 2014
monsters and depicting them with keys/explanation;
writing an essay on how Lovecraft has articulated a
notion of the non-human through his monstrosities;
compiling a list of sources for the body parts and differ-
ent aspects of the Lovecraftian menagerie; designing
your own Lovecraftian monster.
Curriculum links
These visual literacy lessons have clear links to the
visual arts, and enable students to explore how one can
depict something which is terrifying or nightmarish.
There are also implicit links at work in these lessons to
psychology and mythology.
Assessment of lessons
The teacher will be able to assess the engagement and
commitment of the students in terms of their demon-
strated understanding about how and why Lovecraft
put together his monsters. Students should be able to
make their discussion and writing about Lovecraft’s
visual decisions progressively more coherent, and
they will work towards understanding how Lovecraft
produced an entirely nonhuman fictional realm.
Lesson outline 2 – Lovecraft’s style of writing
Target groups
Years 10/11
Lesson objectives
To understand Lovecraft’s style of writing
To analyse Lovecraft’s style of writing
To use Lovecraft’s style of writing in original student
work
Lesson procedures/materials
How did Lovecraft write and what literary effects did
he produce in his writing? Lovecraft was not consid-
ered a literary hero during his lifetime, but gradually
his style of writing has come under the spotlight and
has started to be taken seriously as his popularity
has grown over the past half-century, as evidenced by
the enormous online interest in his work. As a start-
ing point to understanding the written choices that
Lovecraft made, students will read through the web
site below, where an author has attempted to reproduce
Lovecraft’s style in response to ‘relationship’ questions:
http://www.bygonebureau.com/2012/04/04/
h-p-lovecraft-answers-your-relationship-questions/
Clearly, the questions and responses in this blog
are aimed at being humorous and should not be
considered serious literary analysis of Lovecraft’s style
of writing1. However, this exercise is a good introduc-
tion for students to understand the written aspect of
Lovecraft’s work. Students will interpret and answer
the questions: What adjectives are used in the writing?
What objects are referred to in the responses and why
have they been chosen? What is the tone of the writing
and is it a successful parody of Lovecraft? In order to
attempt a more serious appraisal of Lovecraft’s style
of writing, students will read the discussion on the
following web site:
http://www.blackgate.com/2010/12/20/
hp-lovecraft-the-style-adjectival/
Given this article and their own research on this
topic, students will answer the questions: How does
Lovecraft use language to create effects? What is
Lovecraft aiming for in his writing, e.g., a description
of a wholly different, nonhuman reality? How does
the style of Lovecraft’s writing align with the subject
matter of the prose? How does Lovecraft use irony and
fantasy? What is the tension in Lovecraft’s writing and
how does he produce it? What is a ‘vivid moment’ in
Lovecraft and why is it important?
The students will use their answers to the ques-
tions above to write their own Lovecraftian tale. This
should not be a mere parody of Lovecraft’s work, but
a purposeful use of the style of writing as the students
understand it. The stories could be collected and
published online to add to the tremendous amount
of material that has already been committed to the
‘Cthulhu Mythos’ online. Students might want to add
illustrations and commentary to their stories to make
them more comprehensible and engaging to a general
audience.
Curriculum links
These sessions revolve around understanding and
using the techniques of writing English literature.
Students should improve in their writing skills if prop-
erly engaged in these sessions, which will consequently
have positive effects across the curriculum wherever
writing is involved.
Assessment of lessons
Product analysis can be completed on the student
writing, as well as peer and class assessment with
respect to the articulation of Lovecraft’s writing style.
A potentially more interesting assessment procedure
could be used with the original writing if it is collected
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online and subject to the comments of a general
online readership. These comments will be particularly
important if made by other members of the writing
community who are interested in weird fiction and
expanding the ‘Cthulhu Mythos’.
Lesson outline 3 – story analysis
Target groups
Years 10/11
Lesson objectives
To understand and articulate the plot-lines of Lovecraft
To analyse how Lovecraft constructed his narratives
To explain how textual features such as characterisa-
tion, exterior description, voice and perspective are
created by Lovecraft
Lesson procedures/materials
Lovecraft was a master of the short story. Students
will become familiar with the genre of ‘weird fiction’
through reading and analysing several of Lovecraft’s
stories. The entire collection of Lovecraft’s fiction writ-
ings can be found at:
http://www.hplovecraft.com/writings/fiction/
Teachers must decide which text to look at first,
before the students do their own literary analysis of
a Lovecraft short story. If the teacher decides upon,
for example, The Dunwich Horror (1928) students will
examine:
1. How does Lovecraft set up the scene of the story?
What place is depicted in the story and why is it a
powerful environment for what happens next?
2. Who are the main characters in the story? What are
their roles and how do they relate to each other?
How do the relationships between characters create
tension?
3. What is the ‘Dunwich Horror’, and how does
Lovecraft introduce the notion of this horror into
the storyline?
4. What is the book the Necronomicon? And how is it
used in the story?
5. How is the story resolved? How does the writer
keep the tension until the end of the story and
beyond?
Once the students have answered these questions
in their groups, they will feed back their responses to
the rest of the class. This activity will facilitate a whole
class discussion about the nature of Lovecraft’s story
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The Dunwich Horror. Subsequently, each group will
chose a different story from the list on the web site and
answer similar questions that are specific to the texts
they have chosen over the next few sessions. Groups
will make independent presentations of their findings
that collectively explain the story lines of Lovecraft.
This work could be amalgamated into a class publica-
tion of literary analysis with illustrations and editing
by the group.
Curriculum links
This literary analysis set of lessons will help students
to understand how to construct and structure short
stories. These techniques will have positive benefits in
any subject that requires structured writing skills.
Assessment of lessons
The written products of the students and the responses
to the structured analysis of Lovecraft’s stories can be
assessed by the teacher and through peer assessment.
These sessions should be run according to the princi-
ples of formative assessment, with the various analyses
of the Lovecraft stories leading to enhanced knowledge
of the writing of powerful short stories that are rich
with atmosphere and create deep ‘affects’.
Lesson outline 4 – research project
Target group
Years 10/11
Lesson objectives
To understand the knowledge base that Lovecraft uses
in his stories
To engage in meaningful research with respect to
Lovecraft’s writing
To critically analyse and use data bases that relate to
the ideas in Lovecraft’s work
Lesson procedures/materials
Lovecraft’s stories are full of references to science, the
supernatural and the occult. These sessions will give
students the opportunity to work through the refer-
ences, concepts and ideas in Lovecraft’s stories, and
to produce original research that could be published
on a class web site or blog. Students will be organ-
ised into groups of 3 or 4 and decide upon their
research topic, given their knowledge and interest
in Lovecraft’s texts. Once the groups have decided
which knowledge area to explore, they will be asked to
 E n gl ish in A u st ralia Vol um e 49 Num be r 1 • 2014
articulate a definite research question that will mould
their inquiry-based learning for the dedicated research
sessions. An example of such a question could be: What
the relationship between the study of archaeology and
Lovecraft’s writings? Or, What are the references to
demonology in Lovecraft and how do they relate to
particular religious traditions? Once the research topic
and question have been formulated, the groups need
to be given time and resources to research their area.
All the necessary resources for these research projects
can be found on the internet, so reliable access to these
resources is essential for these sessions. The teacher
might want to point students to, for example, the ideas
of Erik Davis, who is an exponent of research on the
texts of Lovecraft and their knowledge implications:
http://www.techgnosis.com/
The groups will bundle their information and criti-
cal analysis of the knowledge sources of H.P. Lovecraft
and present the information as an e-portfolio. The
portfolio will be wholly electronic and published as
part of a whole class wiki site that examines the refer-
ences and knowledge embedded in the writings of H.P.
Lovecraft.
Curriculum links
This research project has links to science and the study
of religion. The student will learn inter-disciplinary
critical thinking skills in terms of putting their ideas
together and organising the research for the wiki site.
The students will begin to understand some of the
principles of research.
Assessment of lessons
This type of open-ended task does require that the
teacher is aware of the progress that is being made
by the groups of students at all times. Daily updates
should be given to the teacher and peers with respect
to where each group has reached in terms of their
research and the presentation of their findings. The
final e-portfolios can be assessed through negotiated
whole class criteria for criticality, originality, thorough-
ness, insight and depth.
Cthulhuic analysis
Teachers may want to encourage students not only
to make reference to the voluminous online works
on Lovecraft, which could perhaps be rightly criti-
cised for their frequent lack of broad reading, factual
mistakes and overall lack of intellectual integrity.
However, in an effort to connect with a generation
of students whose first access point for information is
usually typing a search term into Google, these sets of
lesson outlines are designed to start the students off
with respect to ‘Cthulhuic Literacy’, and to encourage
further and more varied reading. Of course, the schol-
arly pursuit of completely understanding Lovecraft’s
bestiary, plot-lines, referencing and style of writing is
not wholly possible at the high school level. What is
possible is a satisfying and lively introduction to what
Lovecraft achieved and how his work has gone from
obscurity to the prominent role in the development of
American and world horror and fantasy writing that
it occupies today. Lessons that analyse Lovecraftian
texts should not be built around traditional reading
comprehension or straightforward textual questions
and answers. Rather, the study of Lovecraft encour-
ages a form of synthesis of concepts, affects, ideas and
language, which will help students and teachers with
the processes of imaginative recreation and expansive
thinking and representation beyond the confines of the
text. Such a synthetic approach to the high school prac-
tice of English teaching and learning has previously
been incorporated in and expanded upon through
the practical and evidence-based notion of affective
literacy (Cole 2007 & 2008) as argued above.
Conclusion
The lesson ideas and conception of ‘Cthulhuic Literacy’
that have been described in this article make connec-
tions to the further study of the genres of horror and
fantasy, as well as inquiring into how writers can formu-
late fictional work from disparate knowledge fields in
the sciences and in the study of religion. One should
not underestimate the power of Lovecraft’s texts to
provoke thinking beyond the disciplines of literary and
critical analysis. The ‘dark magnetism’ of Lovecraft’s
imaginary world is testament to the ways in which
the imagination can be augmented and funnelled to
create new ways of thinking and new approaches to
things, for example as exemplified by China Miéville’s
recent novel, Kraken (2010). One cannot stop with
the analysis of Lovecraft the writer of ‘weird fiction’,
but allow the concepts contained in his work to be
seriously debated and worked through by students as
they engage with and explore Lovecraft’s writing. For
example, what are the portals and cracks in reality that
could give us further clues to the ‘Cthulhu Mythos’?
When, how and why might Cthulhu come back? Who
today has the knowledge and resources to access and/
or contain the world of Cthulhu?
79
 E n g l ish in A u st r alia Vol um e 49 Num be r 1 • 2014
Note
1 Editor’s note: Another Cthulhuic parody is the old Spice
advertisement available at: http://www.youtube.com/
watch?v=Xc90UhV6hJA Thanks to one of our anonymous
reviewers for this link.
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David  R Cole is currently Associate Professor in Literacies,
English and ESL at the University of Western Sydney. Before
becoming a university lecturer, David was an international
English teacher, working in Egypt, Colombia and the UK. He has
authored numerous books on MLT and has an abiding interest
in weird fiction. Contact David at: David.Cole@uws.edu.au