Cultural Depictions Of Spiders
Throughout history, there have been many cultural depictions of spiders in popular culture, mythology and in symbolism. From Greek mythology to African folklore, the spider has been used in human culture to represent many varied 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. The spider has symbolized patience and persistence due to its hunting technique of setting webs and waiting for its prey to become ensnared. It is also a symbol of mischief and malice for its poisonous 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 steam-punk spectacle.
Although not all spiders spin webs to hunt prey, numerous cultures attribute this ability with the origin of spinning, textile weaving, basketry, knotwork and net making. Web-spinning has also associated the spider with creation myths because they seemingly can excrete their own artistic worlds. Spiders have been the focus of fears, stories and mythologies of various cultures for centuries. Philosophers often use the spider's web as a metaphor or analogy; and today, terms such as the Internet or World Wide Web evoke the inter-connectivity of a spider web.
Read more about Cultural Depictions Of Spiders: In Folklore and Mythology, In Philosophy, In Literature, In Film and Television, Other Depictions
Famous quotes containing the words cultural, depictions and/or spiders:
“By Modernism I mean the positive rejection of the past and the blind belief in the process of change, in novelty for its own sake, in the idea that progress through time equates with cultural progress; in the cult of individuality, originality and self-expression.”
—Dan Cruickshank (b. 1949)
“Surely, of all creatures we eat, we are most brutal to snails. Helix optera is dug out of the earth where he has been peacefully enjoying his summer sleep, cracked like an egg, and eaten raw, presumably alive. Or boiled in oil. Or roasted in the hot ashes of a wood fire.... If God is a snail, Bosch’s depictions of Hell are going to look like a vicarage tea-party.”
—Angela Carter (1940–1992)
“The mind cannot support moral chaos for long. Men are under as strong a compulsion to invent an ethical setting for their behavior as spiders are to weave themselves webs.”
—John Dos Passos (1896–1970)