'Cthulhuic literacy' : teaching secondary English with a dose of Lovecraft

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