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"Dagon" is a short story by H. P. Lovecraft, written in July 1917, one of the first stories he wrote as an adult. It was first published in the November 1919 edition of ''The Vagrant'' (issue #11).() ==Inspiration== After reading Lovecraft's juvenilia in 1917, W. Paul Cook, editor of the amateur press journal ''The Vagrant'', encouraged Lovecraft to resume writing fiction. That summer, Lovecraft wrote two stories: "The Tomb" and "Dagon". The story was inspired in part by a dream he had. "I dreamed that whole hideous crawl, and can yet feel the ooze sucking me down!" he later wrote.〔H. P. Lovecraft, "In Defence of Dagon", ''Miscellaneous Writings'', p. 150; cited in S. T. Joshi and David E. Schultz, "Dagon", ''An H. P. Lovecraft Encyclopedia'', p. 58.〕 Critic William Fulwiler indicates that Lovecraft may have been influenced by Irvin S. Cobb's "Fishhead", a story about a strange fish-like human.〔Joshi and Schultz, p. 58.〕 Fulwiler has also suggested that Lovecraft took the story's theme of "an ancient prehuman race that will someday rise to conquer humanity" from Edgar Rice Burroughs' ''At the Earth's Core'' (1914). The story mentions the Piltdown Man, which had not been exposed by the scientific community as a fraud and hoax at the time of writing. As to the name of the story, Lovecraft seems to be referring to the ancient Sumerian god named Dagon who is the fertility god of grains and fish, because in the story, the main character makes inquiries "....regarding the ancient Philistine legend of Dagon, the Fish-God."〔http://www.hplovecraft.com/writings/texts/fiction/d.aspx〕 The Sumerian deity is sometimes depicted as being part fish, or simply wearing a fish. Since Lovecraft was fond of references to actual archaeological discoveries in his writings from time to time, he may have come across this ancient god. 抄文引用元・出典: フリー百科事典『 ウィキペディア（Wikipedia）』 ■ウィキペディアで「Dagon (short story)」の詳細全文を読む スポンサード リンク
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