page_title: Cultural depictions of spiders
section_title: In literature
hierarchical_section_title: Cultural depictions of spiders / In literature
context_page_description: Throughout history, spiders have been depicted in popular culture, mythology and in symbolism. From Greek mythology to African folklore, the spider has been used to represent a variety of things, and endures into the present day with characters such as Shelob from The Lord of the Rings and Spider-Man from the eponymous comic series. It is also a symbol of mischief and malice for its toxic venom and the slow death it causes, which is often seen as a curse. In addition, the spider has inspired creations from an ancient geoglyph to a modern steampunk spectacle. Spiders have been the focus of fears, stories and mythologies of various cultures for centuries.
  The spider has symbolized patience and persistence due to its hunting technique of setting webs and waiting for its prey to become ensnared. Numerous cultures attribute the spider's ability to spin webs with the origin of spinning, textile weaving, basket weaving, knotwork and net making. Spiders are associated with creation myths because they seem to weave their own artistic worlds.
context_section_description: The epic poem Metamorphoses, written by Ovid two millennia ago, includes the metamorphosis of Arachne. This was retold in Dante Alighieri's depiction as the half-spider Arachne in the 2nd book of his Divine Comedy, Purgatorio.
  Considered as the earliest known work of science fiction in Western literature, the 2nd-century satirical novel, A True Story by Lucian of Samosata includes a battle between the People of the Moon and the People of the Earth featuring giant spiders.
  In the 15th century, the French king Louis XI acquired the nickname "the universal spider" (l'universelle aragne), from Georges Chastelain, a chronicler of the dukes of Burgundy, referring to the king's tendency to implement schemes and plans during his contention with Burgundy and the following conflicts with Charles the Bold.
  In the 16th-century Chinese folk novel, Wu Cheng'en's Journey to the West, the buddhist monk Tang Sanzang's odyssey includes being trapped in a spider's cave and bound by beautiful women and many children, who are transformations of spiders.
  Published in 1808, the poem Marmion by Walter Scott includes the popularly quoted line:
  Oh! what a tangled web we weave
  
  When first we practise to deceive!
  The spider gained an evil reputation from the 1842 Biedermeier novella by Jeremias Gotthelf, The Black Spider. In this allegorical tale which was adapted to various media, the spider symbolizes evil works and represents the moral consequences of making a pact with the devil.
  Atlach-Nacha is the creation of Clark Ashton Smith and first appeared in his short story "The Seven Geases" (1934). Atlach-Nacha resembles a huge spider with an almost-human face. In the story, Atlach-Nacha is the reluctant recipient of a human sacrifice given to it by the toad-god Tsathoggua.
  Spiders recur in themes for works by J. R. R. Tolkien. Tolkien included giant spiders in his 1937 book The Hobbit where they roamed Mirkwood, attacking and sometimes capturing the main characters. The character of Ungoliant is featured as a spiderlike entity, and as a personification of Night from his earliest writings. In The Lord of the Rings, the creature's final surviving daughter Shelob is encountered as Frodo and Sam move through the mountain pass of Cirith Ungol. Shelob was featured in the film adaption of the last book of the Lord of the Rings series. Although described as giant spiders, Tolkien gave them fictional attributes such as compound eyes, beaks and the spinning of black webs. He also resurrected the Old English words cob and lob for "spider".
  A key element of Richard Matheson's novel The Shrinking Man and the film based on it The Incredible Shrinking Man is the struggle of the protagonist, shrunken to the size of an insect, with a voracious spider - ending with his waging an epic battle and killing the spider with a straight pin. Having a human shrunken to the spider's size had essentially the same result as Tolkien's giant spiders, in both cases making the spider a formidable and highly threatening foe.
  The 1952 children's novel Charlotte's Web written by E. B. White, is notable in its portrayal of the spider in a positive manner as a heroine rather than an object of fear or horror.
  More recently, giant spiders have featured in books such as the 1998 fantasy novel Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets by J. K. Rowling. This book was later followed by a motion picture of the same name, using the giant spider Aragog from the novel as a supporting character and pet of grounds keeper, Hagrid. In Fantastic Beasts and Where to Find Them, a book about many of the creatures within the Wizarding World, these giant spiders are also known as Acromantulas.
  The spider is also found in modern children's tales. The nursery rhymes "Itsy Bitsy Spider" and "Little Miss Muffet" have spiders as focal characters. The poem "The Spider and the Fly" (1829) by Mary Howitt is a cautionary tale of seduction and betrayal which later inspired a 1949 film and a 1965 Rolling Stones song, each sharing the same title, as well as a 1923 cartoon by Aesop Fables Studio.
  The poet Walt Whitman de
caption: William Wallace Denslow's illustrations for Little Miss Muffet, from a 1901 edition of Mother Goose
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