Conan Meets the Academy: Multidisciplinary Essays on the Enduring Barbarian [1 ed.] 0786461527, 9780786461523

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Conan Meets the Academy

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Conan Meets the Academy Multidisciplinary Essays on the Enduring Barbarian Edited by JONAS PRIDA

McFarland & Company, Inc., Publishers Jefferson, North Carolina, and London

Conan, Conan the Barbarian and Hyboria are registered trademarks of Conan Properties International. Robert E. Howard is a registered trademark of Robert E. Howard Properties.

ISBN 978-0-7864-6152-3 softcover : acid free paper LIBRARY

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BRITISH LIBRARY

CATALOGUING DATA ARE AVAILABLE

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© 2013 Jonas Prida. All rights reserved No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying or recording, or by any information storage and retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publisher. Cover design by Mark Durr; images © 2013 Shutterstock Manufactured in the United States of America

McFarland & Company, Inc., Publishers Box 611, Jefferson, North Carolina 28640 www.mcfarlandpub.com

To the shades of Robert E. Howard and Gary Gygax for keeping me out of trouble and in the library

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Table of Contents Preface

1

Introduction

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Part One: The Literary Conan Hyborian Age Archaeology: Unearthing Historical and Anthropological Foundations JEFFREY SHANKS

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Barbarism Ascendant: The Poetic and Epistolary Origins of the Character and His World FRANK COFFMAN

35

Life, Liberty and the Pursuit of Women: Gender Dynamics in the Hyborian World WINTER ELLIOTT

51

Robert E. Howard’s Barbarian and the Western: A Study of Conan Through the West and the Western Hero DANIEL WEISS

70

Canaan Lies Beyond the Black River: Howard’s Dark Rhetoric of the Contact Zone PAUL SHOVLIN

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Statistics in the Hyborian Age: An Introduction to Stylometry DANIEL M. LOOK

103

Part Two: The Cultural Conan Arnold at the Gates: Subverting Star Persona in Conan the Barbarian NICKY FALKOF

123

“Hot Avatars” in “Gay Gear”: The Virtual Male Body as Site of Conflicting Desires in Age of Conan: Hyborian Adventures JAMES KELLEY

144

Fandom and the Nostalgia of Masculinity

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STEPHEN WALL

“Barbarian Heroing” and Its Parody: New Perspectives on Masculinity IMOLA BULGOZDI

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About the Contributors

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Index

215 vii

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Preface Conan Meets the Academy: Multidisciplinary Essays on the Enduring Barbarian grew out of the need to apply more modern critical methodologies to Robert Howard’s creation, Conan the Cimmerian. There have been several critical biographies of Howard (Glenn Lord’s seminal The Last Celt and Mark Finn’s Blood and Thunder being the most insightful) and an academic journal dedicated to his writing, but there are few explorations of Conan not fundamentally based in traditional literary analysis. While these literary examinations are important and useful, the changing face of academic discussion has opened up figures such as Conan to a wider range of approaches. This project is a multi-disciplinary investigation, drawing from stylometry, archaeology, cultural studies, folklore studies, and literary history. By incorporating multiple perspectives and disciplines, the variety of approaches displays the range and depth of scholarly interest in Conan. Some of the articles employ close readings of the original Howard texts, while others look at the figure of Conan in popular culture. Regardless of the approach used, the focus remains on Conan in any of his forms: movies, online RPG, pastiches, or Howard’s Weird Tales barbarian. There is an intentional editorial effort on my part to make sure that the explorations engaged as little as possible Howard’s other creations. With the exception of Frank Coffman’s article on the evolution of Conan, the characters King Kull, Bran Mak Morn, or Solomon Kane are seldom mentioned. This omission is not to slight or undervalue these characters. However, this collection is about the many faces of Conan, not the various creations of Robert Howard. Scholars interested in Howard’s other figures will have little problem finding sources to help guide or inform their thinking. An obvious question to ask is why critical essays on a figure that seems as obvious and artistically unsophisticated as Conan? With the exception of Burroughs’s Tarzan, muscle men wearing loincloths are not the usual topic for serious academic investigation. However, in the case of Conan, several components are at play marking the Cimmerian as a worthwhile subject. The first is the length of time the character has circulated in popular culture. Conan’s first appearance is in the December 1932 issue of the pulp magazine Weird Tales; the most recent Conan movie was released in August 2011. The 1

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barbarian’s eighty-year run as a cultural figure indicates that the character is more than a quirky manifestation of lurid, Depression-era magazines. A second component is the amount of Conan texts produced since Howard stopped writing Conan in 1936. From the Gnome press reprints in the 1950s to the forty-plus Conan novels printed in the 1980s and 1990s to 235 issues of the Savage Sword of Conan comic, the variety and number of works supports my earlier assertion that there is something to Conan’s “direct actionist” philosophy (as Howard calls it in the classic “Red Nails”) that strikes readers in multiple decades. A third facet is the growing academic interest in cultural studies. Conan is fertile ground for cultural studies approaches: the pulp industry that originally published Conan and pulp aesthetics that made him popular; the overt masculinity of the typical Conan text; the appropriation of barbarian imagery in heavy metal music. Cultural studies and its more inclusive methodologies have broadened our understanding of what is worthy of study, and this collection demonstrates this new conception. In an effort to make this collection as diverse as possible, contributors were drawn from a variety of fields, a variety of countries, and a variety of academic positions. Readers will find articles by established Howard scholars and graduate students, in addition to articles written by mathematicians and archeologists. Given that this project is about new approaches to Conan, I wanted to make sure that twenty-first-century textual material — the internet and video games — were included. Thankfully, the academic community responded, and two of the essays explore how the new digital space is reacting to and incorporating Conan. Regardless of the approach used, all these essays are academic in nature, aimed at furthering Howard and Conan scholarship. Curious undergraduate and graduate students will find these essays have intriguing arguments and methodologies that can be applied to other popular figures. Additionally, all the essays are theoretically grounded with extensive suggestions for additional reading. As such, casual readers may find some of the articles less accessible than others. However, almost any reader with an appreciation for Howard, Conan, or fantasy literature in general will find something in this collection. As editor, I took it upon myself to read every Conan story, rewrite, pastiche, and novel available, leaving out only the comics. If this collection is going to engage new approaches, I felt it necessary to explore the de Camp/Carter works of the late 1960s/early 1970s and the Tor fantasy publications that ran from the 1980s until the late 1990s. I describe more about these novels in the collection’s introduction, but this range of reading allowed me to articulate the importance of seeing the difference between Howard’s

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Conan and Conan the product. To be sure, not all of these later texts are as energetic or interesting as Howard, but many of them are entertaining reads and all of them helped develop the Conan of today. Two other editorial decisions should be mentioned. The first is which collection of Howard material to use. Because his Conan texts are now in the public domain, there are many versions available. For ease, all the articles save one use the Wandering Star/Del Rey collections: The Coming of Conan, The Bloody Crown of Conan, and The Conquering Sword of Conan. Imola Bulgozdi’s essay on parody in Terry Prachett’s Discworld series uses The Complete Chronicles of Conan. Although having one standard text is useful, I also felt that, given the global collaboration of this project, it was important to have the Howard collections available in different markets. Second, since this collection is multi-disciplinary, essays use discipline-specific citations. In all cases, every effort has been made to make citations and references easy to follow. As anyone who has ever put a large scale project together knows, it is impossible to do it without the help, guidance, and support from many people. Although few readers want to know everyone who made this project possible, there are some specific individuals and groups that need to be recognized. The most important people in the collection are obviously the contributors themselves. I cannot thank them enough for the interesting and provocative essays. Without them, there would be no collection. The College of St. Joseph, my current institution, has been extremely encouraging of this project, especially my former Division chair, Dr. Donald Harpster, and current chair, Dr. David Balfour. My Fantasy Literature course allowed me to explore some of these ideas in depth, and undergraduate students Evan Jobst, Christine Munger, Lauren Davie, and Natalie Russo helped with researching the project. Fellow popular culture enthusiast Scott West contributed to my articulation of some of the ideas behind the pulp aesthetic, and long-time associate Mark Brock-Cancellieri provided editing and proofreading. Tulane professor Donald Pizer was critical in developing my understanding of naturalism, and Ben Reiss’s guidance in the fields of cultural studies during my dissertation process planted the seeds to this work. Last, I thank my parents for taking me to see Conan the Barbarian in the theaters, even though it was not age appropriate, and supporting my reading habits, trashy as they may have seemed.

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Introduction My first introduction to Conan was Arnold Schwarzenegger’s well-oiled, muscle-bound version in Conan the Barbarian (1982). I had recently won an elementary school math contest, and, as a reward, my parents offered to take me to any movie I wanted to see. About the same time, I was heavily invested in the role playing game Dungeons and Dragons; although I knew nothing about the long history of Conan, I did know that the poster prominently featured a helmeted man with a sword, and that was good enough to draw the attention of my eleven-year-old mind. My father was indulgent enough to keep his word, and we made the hour and a half drive to the nearest theater to see the movie. About ten minutes in, sometime after the decapitation of Conan’s mother and before his career as a pit fighter, I, like one of Robert Howard’s black lotus smokers, became hooked. It was not until much later in my life that I realized the character I knew as Conan was actually an amalgamation of Howard’s original seventeen stories, L. Sprague de Camp and Lin Carter’s rewrites and pastiches, Roy Thomas’s comics, Frank Frazetta’s drawings, and John Milius/Oliver Stone’s screenplay. Reading the Ace/Lancer series soon after seeing the movie, I had no idea of the textual controversy this reworking of Conan was causing. To me, it was all Conan: “Beyond the Black River,” “The Curse of the Monolith,” and Conan of the Isles all fit together in one bloodsoaked tapestry. To my adolescent mind, Robert Jordan’s Conan the Invincible was as good as “Red Nails,” and questions about Howard’s psychological state while writing his Depressionera texts were of no importance. I remember reading de Camp’s introductions to several of the Ace paperbacks, but since the introductions did not have severed heads or glittering treasure troves, I paid little attention to them. Now almost thirty years later, I am getting back to Conan. Thanks to some well-timed courses in theories of popular culture and American naturalism and the development of cultural studies as a legitimate field of academic investigation, a scholarly monograph about a popular figure such as Conan is possible. And it should be: in Conan, we have a figure that has lasted almost eighty years, spawned fifty plus novels, five different comic books, three movies, a television show, two cartoons, and multiple video games. With the release of the Conan the Barbarian remake in 2011, we have seen action figures 5

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and lunch boxes. If popularity is one measure of success, then there can be little question as to Conan’s importance.

Conan and Canon Figures such as Conan are difficult ones to discuss using traditional interpretive literary devices. Most thinking about literary merit is organized around the idea of an author as creator of, and responsible for, his or her creations. Growing out of Romantic conceptions of the solitary artist, this method has a difficult time dealing with a figure such as Conan, who is the result of multiple authors. Since there was a two decade period when the character was licensed to a new author every couple years, what or who is the real Conan? The question of what counts as canonical Conan is a vexing one. Howard purists make the argument the only Conan texts that are worthy of the name are those written by Howard himself. De Camp and Carter’s re-workings of other Howard stories (for example, “The Bloodstained God” taken from Howard’s “Trail of the Bloodstained God,” or “Hawks over Shem” revised from Howard’s “Hawks over Egypt”) dilute the character of Conan and their revised, more orderly chronology of Conan’s wanderings is not in the true spirit of Howard’s barbarian. The multiple novels published by Tor Fiction since the early 1980s are essentially glorified fan fiction, having no place in the discussion of Conan. While I understand the thrust of this argument and am in many ways sympathetic to it, this vision of Conan also strikes me as confusing two different concepts: Conan as produced by Robert Howard and Conan as cultural production. The first, Robert Howard’s Conan, is a discrete entity; we can mark off the seventeen Howard texts published in Weird Tales between 1932 and 1936 and investigate them as a closed field. What academic research that has been done on Conan takes this approach. This Conan is chaotic, at times comic, and certainly energetic. When at its best, for example Howard’s “Beyond the Black River,” the writing almost cannot contain the play of ideas and action it is conveying.1 Although there is vigor in purity, seeing only Howard’s Conan as Conan misses opportunities for interesting and productive discussions. Since most of the texts about Conan are not written by Howard, what does this mean for the character? Roy Thomas, who wrote many of the Conan comics and the screenplay for Conan the Destroyer (1984), has as much to do with contemporary visions of Conan as Howard. Later authors such as John Maddox Roberts and Leonard Carpenter have written more Conan than Howard; does

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this mean their figures of Conan are more important than Howard’s? As I mentioned earlier, seeing Conan as a cultural product helps navigate this constellation of ideas. Conan as cultural product allows us to incorporate the wide variety of Conan texts into the discussion. Robert Jordan’s spank-happy Conan can be compared with Steve Perry’s more outrageous narratives. The Conan of early video games can be examined in and of itself, without questions of originality or Howard’s intent. These investigations are not arguments saying that all these texts have equal literary merit or are of equal importance. There is certainly a difference in the flavor of Howard’s writing that is not found in the slightly tamer versions of de Camp. The well-meaning and good-natured rogue of the short-lived television show Conan the Adventurer is a pale imitation of Robert Howard’s ruthless mercenary. But that does not mean we should ignore these conceptions of Conan; they can be studied and analyzed based on their own merits without the constant meta-analytic struggle about original intent. Seeing Conan as a cultural production also helps with one of the more disputatious aspects of Conan scholarship and appreciation: the knee-jerk dismissal of L. Sprague de Camp and Lin Carter’s contributions in keeping Conan alive. Undoubtedly putting Conan’s wanderings in chronological order and revising/rewriting/retelling other Howard stories to fill in the gaps of Conan’s career changed the dynamics of Howard’s creation. Knowing where Conan would end (King of Aquilonia in “Phoenix and the Sword” and “The Scarlet Citadel”) leads to some heavy-handed foreshadowing in stories such as “The Thing in the Crypt,” foreshadowing not present in Howard’s writing. Conan also loses some of his rougher edges in the de Camp/Carter writings; we are less likely to see the racist Conan of “Vale of Lost Women” or the hyper-violent Conan of “Red Nails.” But what was gained during the decades of de Camp was survival, and that is something any figuration of Conan would approve of. During the 1950s and early 1960s, fantasy in general, and sword and sorcery in particular, were distinctly out of favor. The space age, Sputnik, and the Cold War emphasized science and technology; battle axes and conjuring spells seemed even more anachronistic during this decade than before. The desire for normalcy that is central to the Eisenhower years was not satisfied by sandal-wearing barbarians.2 It is in this fifteen-year period that de Camp and Howard’s literary executive Glenn Lord waged their own campaigns to keep the figure of Conan alive and published. Gnome Press’s publication of Conan the Conqueror (1950), The Sword of Conan (1952), and King Conan (1953), which included de Camp’s reworking of “The Black Stranger” as “The

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Treasure of Tranicos” brought Conan out of the pulp pages and back into bookstores. The 1955 Tales of Conan, which contained four de Camp reworkings —“The Bloodstained God,” “Hawks Over Shem,” “The Road of Eagles” and “The Flame Knife”— and 1957’s The Return of Conan, co-authored with Bjorn Nyberg, demonstrated that de Camp would be both editor and creator. The problem of de Camp’s decision to re-order the chronology and list himself on Tales of Conan’s cover as one of the authors has been alluded to, but what must also be admitted is that without the controlling hand of de Camp, both Conan and Howard may have gone the way of Kull, relegated to footnote status in investigations into fellow Weird Tales’ contributor H.P. Lovecraft.3 Although these Gnome printings were only available as more expensive hardbacks, they circulated Conan’s name and kept sword and sorcery alive. The rising youth market and the anti–Establishment feelings of the middle and late sixties led to another wave of Conan publishing. The Lancer/Ace paperbacks that de Camp and Carter organized, wrote, and constructed interstitial material for are, after the original Weird Tales, the seminal Conan collections.4 Combining Frazetta’s covers, the rough chronology set out in the earlier Gnome hardbacks, and a mixture of Howard originals with pastiches and re-writes, these twelve books trace the career of Conan from his escape from the Hyperborean slave pens in “The Thing in the Crypt” to his trip across the great Western Ocean in Conan of the Isles. Forming a narrative arc never developed in Howard’s Weird Tales, the Lancer/Ace paperbacks showed Conan moving through almost all of the Hyborian kingdoms, stealing, fighting, and wenching his way from Turan to Vanahiem. De Camp’s writing and his decisions about chronology may have angered many Howard purists, but the decision to promote Conan in paperbacks with a linear narrative made what we now think of as Conan possible. Without de Camp and Lancer/Ace paperbacks, the explosion of Conan comics in the 1970s would have been less likely. Roy Thomas’s Conan the Barbarian (1970–1993), which directly retold Howard material like “Rogues in the House” and “Tower of the Elephant,” introduced the Howard/de Camp hybrid to a new group of readers. The more adult-themed Savage Sword of Conan (1974–1995), also largely written by Thomas, again used much of the original Howard material with de Camp’s chronology, influencing, among others, a young Barack Obama. These two comics did as much to shape modern conceptions of Conan as any of Howard’s pieces, and both of these texts draw from de Camp.5 Seeing Conan the cultural product as something distinct from Robert Howard’s Conan reiterates the importance of de Camp in keeping Conan as product alive. Writers can both investigate the distinct field of Howard and

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the more ambiguous field of cultural Conan. We can still make aesthetic distinctions and we can still make evaluations of merit, but scholars, unlike the fractious city-states of Shem, can also avoid the fruitless battles over what constitutes the real Conan.

The Essays As a reflection of the separate conceptions of Howard’s Conan and Conan the product, this volume is broken into two sections. The first section investigates Howard’s Conan from a variety of literary and cultural studies perspectives. The second section looks at the cultural figure of Conan, using a similar multi-disciplinary approach. The first section begins with archeologist Jeffrey Shanks’ essay “Hyborian Age Archaeology: Unearthing Historical and Anthropological Foundations,” which traces the development of Howard’s Hyborian age, linking this mythical time before time with popular histories and theories of cultural development circulating during Howard’s life. Connecting sources as diverse as H.G. Wells’ An Outline of History with William Scott-Elliot’s The Story of Atlantis, Shanks provides an overview of Howard’s evolving development of the Hyborian kingdoms. Long-time Howard scholar Frank Coffman’s “Barbarism Ascendant: The Poetic and Epistolary Origins of the Character and His World” continues the exploration of how Howard developed Conan. Despite Howard’s claim that Conan came to him as a fully-fleshed character, Coffman charts the evolution of Conan from Howard’s early poetry and prose works to what will become his best-known character. Coffman’s close textual examination of these more obscure primary sources indicates the stylistic and aesthetic growth in Howard’s writing. Winter Elliott’s “Life, Liberty and the Pursuit of Women: Gender Dynamics in the Hyborian World” looks closely at the connections linking Conan, women, and civilization. Exploring the relationship between Conan’s distrust of the civilized with his desire for what civilization has to offer, Elliott ties Conan’s state of barbaric otherness with his women’s similar state. Arguing that both Conan and Howard’s women are forced to operate within the specific constraints of Hyborian civilization, Elliott traces the various routes to power and freedom that these characters access. Daniel Weiss’ essay “Robert E. Howard’s Barbarian and the Western: A Study of Conan Through the West and the Western Hero” traces the influence Howard’s West Texas upbringing has on his figurations of civilization and the frontier. Looking specifically at Howard’s conceptions of the body, justice,

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and progress, Weiss investigates how these various drives and desires are mapped onto the figure of Conan. Additionally, Weiss ties previously existing Westerns such as Owen Wister’s The Virginian (1902) and Zane Grey’s Riders of the Purple Sage (1912) with Howard’s Hyborian frontier. Given that Howard moves towards writing western tales at the end of his career, Weiss’ article also provides background and explanation for this transition. The intersection of race, space, and place in Conan informs Paul Shovlin’s essay “Caanan Lies Beyond the Black River: Howard’s Dark Rhetoric of the Contact Zone.” Connecting the Conan story “Beyond the Black River” with Howard’s frontier weird tale “Black Caanan,” Shovlin explores how the frontier myths of Native Americans are contrasted with the more pessimistic representations of slavery and colonization. Drawing from the theoretical concept of contact zones, this essay outlines the complicated racial coding found in Howard’s texts. Daniel Look’s essay “Statistics in the Hyborian Age: An Introduction to Stylometry” employs stylometric tools to investigate de Camp and Carter’s refashioning of Howard’s texts. Stylometry, or the statistical analysis of texts, has been used on a variety of documents before —The Federalist Papers and The Bible as examples — but Look’s exploration is the first in the field of pulp studies. Using a variety of stylometric analysis from traditional word counts to the cutting-edge methodology of bootstrapping and cluster analysis, this article demonstrates the intersection of literary and statistical methodologies, providing tools that other researchers can apply to texts of unknown or disputed authorship. Look’s interest in de Camp and Carter’s re-writings of Howard’s Conan is an excellent transition point to the second part of the collection, which focuses on Conan’s cultural production. This section’s first essay is Nicky Falkof ’s “Arnold at the Gates: Subverting Star Persona in Conan the Barbarian.” Falkof explores the career of movie star/politician Arnold Schwarzenegger and how his role of Conan in the 1982 movie subtly subverts many of the later politically hegemonic roles that Schwarzenegger plays. Falkof looks at how characters in the movie such as Valeria complicate readings of Conan’s masculinity and Thulsa Doom complicates the racial typing underwriting much of the sword and sorcery genre. James Kelley’s “‘Hot Avatars’ in ‘Gay Gear’: The Virtual Male Body as Site of Conflicting Desires in Age of Conan: Hyborian Adventures” continues the investigation into masculinity. Looking at the Age of Conan online role-playing game, Kelley uses the methodology of grounded analysis to uncover the competing ideas of the masculine found in both the game and the active message boards supporting the games. Focusing specifically on rep-

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resentations of armor and body type for various classes in the game, Kelley explores the dialectal relationship between straight gamers’ desire for more masculine armor and bodies with the more subversive desires of gay-themed participants. Also looking at fans, fandom, and the masculine is Stephen Wall’s essay “Fandom and the Nostalgia of Masculinity.” Drawing from the discipline of folklore studies, Wall analyzes what the masculinity of Conan means for fans. Incorporating both direct interviews of long-time Conan readers and various discussion board conversations, Wall charts the fraught relationship that many of these participants have with maleness in the early twenty-first-century, a relationship largely informed by the nostalgia of pre-feminist gender identities. Imola Bulgozdi rounds out the investigation in the masculine with her essay, “‘Barbarian Heroing’ and Its Parody: New Perspectives on Masculinity.” Looking at Terry Pratchett’s fantasy-adventure parodies in his Discworld series and one of its central characters, Cohen the Barbarian, Bulgozdi discusses the various forms of masculinity that Pratchett’s parody exposes and complicates. Using Conan as his template and directly parodying scenes and lines from Howard’s Conan, Pratchett shows what happens when aging barbarians become self-reflective. Bulgozdi links questions of race and masculinity to both characters, using Prachett’s parody as an avenue to explore the changing male face. The title of this collection is indicative of the multi-disciplinary arena that academic scholarship is moving towards. The new approaches are a mixture of traditional investigations with more contemporary ones, demonstrating the wide range of scholarship possible in popular culture and cultural studies. However, the overarching claim for all of these essays is their deep engagement in academic scholarship, an engagement I hope will continue as more scholars explore the many facets of Howard’s, de Camp’s, Carter’s, and many other authors’ Hyboria.

Notes 1. Stephen King, in his collection of horror essays Danse Macabre, writes, “In his best work, Howard’s writing seems so charged with energy that it nearly gives off sparks.... At his best, Howard was the Thomas Wolfe of fantasy, and most of his Conan tales seem to almost fall over themselves in their need to get out” (346). 2. Two exceptions to this generalization are the Italian sword and sandal epics that started to appear in American theaters and drive-ins during the middle 1950s and Hollywood movies such as Sampson and Delilah (1949), Ben Hur (1959) and Spartacus (1960). 3. This tension between original Conan and the pastiches did not start with de Camp.

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Sammon cites an exchange between Weird Tales editor Farnsworth Wright and a reader about rewriting Howard that occurs in 1937 (39). 4. The Lancer series sold more than ten million copies (Sammons 45). 5. Thomas was directly influenced by de Camp’s Tales of Conan. For more on this influence, see Sammons 72–73.

Works Cited King, Stephen. Stephen King’s Danse Macabre. New York: Berkeley, 1987. Print. Sammon, Paul M. Conan the Phenomenon. Milwaukie, OR: Dark Horse Books, 2007. Print.

Part One: The Literary Conan Hyborian Age Archaeology Unearthing Historical and Anthropological Foundations JEFFREY SHANKS In late 1932, when the readers of Weird Tales magazine thumbed through their December issue, they would have seen a story entitled “The Phoenix on the Sword,” featuring a new character that would come to define modern heroic fantasy. Much like Tarzan, Dracula, James Bond, and Sherlock Holmes, Conan the Cimmerian — Robert E. Howard’s most famous protagonist — would ultimately transcend both his creator and the original medium from which he sprang to become an iconic figure of twentieth-century popular culture. Conan’s debut in that 1932 story not only introduced the reader to a significant and influential character, but also to the “Hyborian Age”— a fictional world set in the dim prehistoric past before the dawn of recorded history. The opening lines of that first Conan story, written as though they were an excerpt from some lost annals of antiquity, gives the reader a taste of this forgotten epoch and the exotic locales and denizens that could be found therein: Know, oh prince, that between the years when the oceans drank Atlantis and the gleaming cities, and the years of the rise of the Sons of Aryas, there was an Age undreamed of, when shining kingdoms lay spread across the world like blue mantles beneath the stars — Nemedia, Ophir, Brythunia, Hyperborea, Zamora with its dark-haired women and towers of spider-haunted mystery, Zingara with its chivalry, Koth that bordered on the pastoral lands of Shem, Stygia with its shadow-guarded tombs, Hyrkania whose riders wore steel and silk and gold. But the proudest kingdom of the world was Aquilonia, reigning supreme in the dreaming west. Hither came Conan, the Cimmerian, blackhaired, sullen-eyed, sword in hand, a thief, a reaver, a slayer, with gigantic melancholies and gigantic mirth, to tread the jeweled thrones of the Earth under his sandalled [sic] feet — The Nemedian Chronicles [Howard, “The Phoenix on the Sword” 7].

This introduction to the milieu of Conan suggests a rich and detailed world that Howard obviously took considerable time in developing, especially for a new, unproven series in a pulp magazine. 13

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Over the course of the Conan series, which included some twenty stories, Howard would breathe life into these Hyborian Age kingdoms and their more exotic contemporaries to the south and east, often by describing a particular nation with features similar to an appropriately analogous culture from “real” history. Thus the reader might encounter Aquilonians and Nemedians with Greco-Roman names living under a medieval European-style feudal system complete with knights and barons. These existed in the same world with civilizations based on pharaonic Egypt and Mogul India, and with oceans that are prowled by pirates bedecked like seventeenth-century buccaneers. By blending together seemingly anachronistic features from historical cultures into his fictional world, sometimes even within the same nation, Howard was able to give his readers a sense of familiarity with the world he was creating, and yet still keep it strange and mysterious. This deliberate use of cultural anachronism is often credited as the reason Howard’s Hyborian Age carries with it such a strong sense of verisimilitude (an adjective frequently used to describe Howard’s fictional world). This technique was made possible by Howard’s decision to place his world in the remote past, before recorded history itself, giving him the freedom to write his pseudohistorical fiction without having to be overly concerned with historical accuracy. By tapping into his own interest in history, archaeology, anthropology, and geology, he was able to fit a new, unknown epoch more or less comfortably into the standard chronology of the prehistoric world. In doing so, he created a fictional setting that was steeped in realism unprecedented within the genre of speculative literature up to that point.

The Birth of Conan and His World 1 It is commonly known that “The Phoenix on the Sword” was actually a rewrite of a previously unsold story “By This Ax I Rule!,” which featured an earlier character King Kull of Atlantis (Louinet, “Hyborian Genesis” 436). Howard had written a number of stories and poems from 1926 to 1930 with Kull as the protagonist, though only three of them had seen print in Weird Tales. Kull was a barbarian warrior from Atlantis who became king of Valusia, a highly civilized antediluvian empire. The world of Kull, which Howard placed 100,000 years in the past,2 was primarily a fantastic construct that included imaginary kingdoms with names like Grondar, Zarfhaana, and Verulia existing alongside legendary lands such as Atlantis, Thule, and Lemuria. In “The Phoenix on the Sword,” Conan, like Kull, is a barbarian usurper

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who has become king of the powerful nation of Aquilonia. Conan exists in a different time, however. The Hyborian Age is postdiluvian — it takes place after the sinking of Atlantis — and a new group of kingdoms, the Hyborian civilization, has been established, with names taken primarily from history and mythology.3 The first version of “The Phoenix on the Sword” submitted to Weird Tales in early 1932 did not have the introductory passage from the “Nemedian Chronicles,” but it did have a scene in which King Conan is filling in the blank areas of a map of the Hyborian kingdoms and their neighbors, particularly the lands of the north, while his advisor Prospero looked on: “By Mitra,” said Prospero, “those lands are known to few. All know that east of Aquilonia lies Nemedia, then Brythunia, then Zamora, south lies Koth and the lands of Shem; west, beyond the Bossonian Marches lies Cimmeria. Who knows what lies beyond that country?” “I know,” answered the king, “and am setting down my knowledge on this map. Here is Cimmeria, where I was born. Here —” “Asgard and Vanaheim,” Prospero scanned the map. “By Mitra, I had almost believed those countries to be fabulous.” Conan grinned and involuntarily touched the various scars on his dark face. “By Mitra, had you spent your youth on the northern frontiers of Cimmeria, you had known otherwise! Asgard lies to the north, and Vanaheim to the northwest of Cimmeria, and there is continual war along the borders. The western part of Vanaheim lies along the shores of the western sea, and east of Asgard is the country of the Hyperboreans, who are civilized and dwell in cities. East beyond their country are the deserts of the Hyrkanians” [Howard, “Phoenix (Draft)” 359–360].

In this passage we can see that Howard already had a general idea of the layout of the Hyborian kingdoms and the lands around them. Two extant maps of the Hyborian world, as well as a page of background notes and a list of names for kingdoms, rulers, deities, and characters, were probably created around this time or a little later (Louinet, “Hyborian Genesis” 439– 440). After completing “The Phoenix on the Sword,” Howard immediately wrote a second story about Conan, “The Frost-Giant’s Daughter,” which takes place during the barbarian’s youth in the lands of the north. Both stories were then submitted together to Weird Tales. They were followed by a third story, “The God in the Bowl,” which was written and submitted separately a few days later. It was probably about this time that Howard began work on an essay that would become the blueprint for the world of Conan (Louinet, “Hyborian Genesis” 437–440).

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“The Hyborian Age” Essay “The Hyborian Age” is a pseudo-historical essay that would serve as a chronological and geographical framework for the new Conan series.4 Howard begins the essay with a discussion of the previous age of Kull. He describes Valusia, Grondar, Kamelia, Commoria, and the other civilized kingdoms of the mainland (referred to here as the Thurian Continent) along with the barbarous lands of Lemuria, Atlantis, and the Pictish Islands (381). The last is an island group west of Atlantis inhabited by the Picts, Howard’s fictional prehistoric version of the later historical Picts of Scotland and Wales. The Pre-Cataclysmic civilization comes to an end with a massive geological upheaval in which Valusia and her neighbors are destroyed, Atlantis and Lemuria sink beneath the ocean, and the Pictish Islands are raised up to become the mountains of the newly formed North American continent. Colonies of Atlanteans and Picts on the mainland survive, but both groups sink back into stone-age savagery, while survivors of Lemuria reach the eastern shores of what would become Asia (382). The Picts and Atlanteans form stone-age kingdoms and war with each other for five hundred years until another lesser cataclysm rocks the world sending them further into savagery (and in the case of the Atlanteans, deevolving into hominids). After another millennium, an unnamed eastern race, displaced by the Lemurians, migrates westward across the continent until they reach the lands to the south of the Picts and Atlanteans. There they conquer a mysterious pre-human civilization and form the new kingdom of Stygia (383). Over the next two millennia, a group of northern tribes known as the Hybori migrate down through the western part of the continent and found a series of kingdoms —first Hyperborea and Koth, then later Aquilonia, Nemedia, Brythunia, Corinthia, Ophir, and Argos (383–386). This Hyborian civilization is the setting for many of the Conan stories. Other important nations that appear in the Conan stories include: the northern countries of Cimmeria (whose inhabitants were the descendants of the Atlanteans) and the Nordic lands of Aesgard and Vanaheim; the great Pictish Wilderness west of Cimmeria and Aquilonia; the pastoral lands of Shem between the Hyborian kingdoms and Stygia; Kush and the other jungle kingdoms south of Stygia; and the exotic eastern lands of Khitai and Vendhya. The steppes to the east of the Hyborian kingdoms are inhabited by the Hyrkanians, descendants of the Lemurians, whose greatest nation is the imperialistic Turan (385–387). Not long after the time of Conan, the Hyborian kingdoms fall into ruin due to a series of wars between Aquilonia and her neighbors, followed by an

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invasion of Picts from the west and another invasion by the Turanians from the east. The destruction is completed by a new group of northern invaders made up of Aesir and Vanir that sweeps though the remnants of the Hyborian kingdoms (387–395). These völkerwanderungen are followed by a smaller cataclysm that creates the Mediterranean and North seas and changes the world to its present geological configuration, setting the stage for the rise of the first historical civilizations of Egypt and Mesopotamia and the appearance of the “Aryans” (396–398). This pseudo-historical essay contains a number of elements that may seem fanciful to the modern reader, even for a fantasy setting. Many of the ideas expressed here, while not accepted today, were actually widely believed in Howard’s time. This includes the over-emphasis on theories of racial typology and migrations, rapid evolution and de-evolution, cataclysmic geology, and the like. Even the more fringe ideas like the historicity of Atlantis and other lost continents had many proponents. Our understanding of the prehistoric world was much more limited in the early twentieth century than it is today. There was no radiometric dating — only estimates based on stratification and geological processes. Our knowledge of human evolution was fragmentary at best; the Piltdown Man had not yet been revealed as a hoax and was still considered to be a human “cousin,” while true hominids like the Australopithecines were dismissed as mere apes. The theory of continental drift had been proposed, but few took it seriously; mechanisms like sunken continents and land bridges were often used to explain similar species of flora and fauna separated by oceans. Now-discredited racialist theories dominated the study of physical anthropology (Trigger 138–143, 166–176; Stocking 42– 132).5 So “The Hyborian Age,” even with all of its antiquated concepts, would have carried a greater sense of veracity in the early 1930s than it does today. Around the time of the writing of this essay, Howard received notice from Weird Tales editor Farnsworth Wright that he was accepting “The Phoenix on the Sword,” pending some suggested revisions, but rejecting “The Frost-Giant’s Daughter” and “The God in the Bowl.” Howard made the necessary changes to “Phoenix,” condensing the scene with Conan working on the map and adding the “Nemedian Chronicles” preamble, and then resubmitted it (Louinet, “Hyborian Genesis” 440–441). He also sent in a new story, “The Tower of the Elephant,” about a young Conan living as a thief in the land of Zamora. In this story, Conan encounters an ancient alien creature named Yag-Kosha who tells the history of Conan’s world going back to the Pre-Cataclysmic Age. In effect Yag-Kosha’s speech serves as a brief synopsis of the events recorded in the unpublished “The Hyborian Age”:

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Part One: The Literary Conan We saw men grow from the ape and build the shining cities of Valusia, Kamelia, Commoria and their sisters. We saw them reel before the thrusts of the heathen Atlanteans and Picts and Lemurians. We saw the oceans rise and engulf Atlantis and Lemuria, and the isles of the Picts, and shining cities of civilization. We saw the survivors of Pictdom and Atlantis build their stoneage empires, and go down to ruin, locked in bloody wars. We saw the Picts sink into abysmal savagery, the Atlanteans into apedom again. We saw new savages drift southward in conquering waves from the Arctic circle to build a new civilization, with new kingdoms called Nemedia, and Koth, and Aquilonia and their sisters. We saw your people rise under a new name from the jungles of the apes that had been Atlanteans. We saw the descendants of the Lemurians who had survived the cataclysm, rise again through savagery and ride westward as Hyrkanians [Howard, “The Tower of the Elephant” 78].

With the inclusion of this passage, the basic framework of “The Hyborian Age” became codified within the Conan stories themselves, and Howard would remain remarkably faithful to his fictional backstory for the remainder of the series, with only a few minor revisions and additions.6 Although it was never intended to be published, “The Hyborian Age” was clearly important to Howard as he wrote three drafts before the final version.7 It begs the question why he would spend so much time and energy on this essay if it was only intended to be his personal notes for the Conan series. In fact, a closer look at a few of Howard’s weird stories prior to the Conan series shows that this fictional setting has its roots in some of his earliest writings and did not develop overnight. It appears that “The Hyborian Age” is actually the culmination of a process of world-building that Howard had been engaging in for at least six years.

“Men of the Shadows” In early 1926, Howard wrote a story featuring Bran Mak Morn called “Men of the Shadows” and submitted it to Weird Tales. In this story, a Pictish shaman recounts the tale of his people going back to the dawn of human prehistory. Although “Men of the Shadows” was rejected and not published in Howard’s lifetime, it is of great importance for our purposes as it is here that Howard’s prehistoric setting first begins to take shape. The world that we see described in “Men of the Shadows” was the prototype for the Pre-Cataclysmic Age of Kull and the Hyborian Age of Conan. According to the shaman’s account in “Men of the Shadows” (23–27), the Picts were the first great race of mankind, and they dwelt on a group of islands west of the continent of Atlantis. The second great race was that of

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the Lemurians who lived on a large continent in what is now the Pacific Ocean. The Atlanteans, the third great race, lived on a continent in the Atlantic Ocean. Eventually a great cataclysm shook the world. The Pictish Isles rose up to form the peaks of the Rocky Mountains, and the continent of North America was formed. Lemuria sank beneath the waves leaving only the mountain tops as islands in the Pacific. Unlike the cataclysm in the later “The Hyborian Age,” however, Atlantis was not destroyed with Lemuria and the Pictish Isles. As surviving Lemurians began to invade and colonize North America and the ice sheets began to encroach from the north, the Picts migrated first into South America and then into Atlantis. The Atlanteans, whom Howard explicitly identifies as Crô-Magnon people, were driven out of their homeland by the Picts and into Europe. There they encountered the Neanderthals and made war on them. Eventually, the Picts also made their way to the Eurasian mainland where they became the so-called “Mediterranean race” of the Neolithic. Driving all previous inhabitants before them, including the Atlantean Crô-Magnons, they spread across Europe as far as the British Isles. Then the Picts too were displaced by the rise of the fourth race, the Celts, who swept down from the north bringing their Bronze Age culture with them. So here we have a number of elements that would reappear years later in “The Hyborian Age”: the presence of Atlantis, Lemuria, and the Pictish Isles; the Great Cataclysm; the migration of the stone-age Atlanteans and Picts to the mainland; and the invasion of northern barbarians sweeping down through the continent. For Howard this story was an attempt to create an artificial history for the Picts, a people with whom he had a great fascination. Howard, following British historian G. F. Scott Elliot’s book The Romance of Early British Life, linked the historical Picts of Scotland and Wales with the so-called “Mediterranean race” (Burke and Louinet 344–345; Scott Elliot 80–81).8 At that time, many anthropologists believed this Mediterranean race was responsible for spreading Neolithic culture throughout Europe prior to the Bronze Age. Howard went further, however, by extending the story of the Picts back to the dawn of humankind. Howard would use the framework he developed in “Men of the Shadows” as the setting for his Kull stories over the next few years, beginning with an untitled story written soon after “Men of the Shadows” that would be published posthumously as “Exile of Atlantis.” In this story Howard added details to the Pre-Cataclysmic Age with the addition of Valusia and the other civilized nations of Kull’s time, while retaining the barbarous nature of the Atlanteans and Picts (Howard, “Untitled Story” 5–6). Later, when he began the Conan series, Howard fleshed out the post-cataclysm period with the development

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of the Hyborian Age. He made a few changes, such as Atlantis being destroyed along with Lemuria and the Pictish Islands, and filled in some details, but for the most part his vision of the prehistoric world remained fairly consistent from its earliest form in “Men of the Shadows” to its final incarnation in the Conan stories.

The Atlantis Theme in Howard’s Prehistoric World The legendary lost continent of Atlantis was a central theme in Howard’s fictional prehistoric world. The Hyborian Age took place after the sinking of Atlantis, and Conan was a descendent of Atlanteans who had escaped to the mainland. Kull of course was an Atlantean himself, and even Howard’s Puritan adventurer Solomon Kane visited the ruins of an Atlantean colony in Africa in historic times.9 Howard, however, has a somewhat unique take on Atlantis, seemingly a result of being influenced by two very different theories on the nature of the lost continent. The idea that the Crô-Magnon people came from Atlantis had its origins in the works of Scottish folklorist Lewis Spence (Burke and Louinet 350– 351; Louinet, “Atlantean Genesis” 292; Shanks, “Creating an Age Undreamed Of ” 3–5). Spence published a book called The Problem of Atlantis in 1924 arguing that the appearance of the Aurignacian and Magdalenian cultures of the Crô-Magnon people in Europe (around 25,000 B.C . and 15,000 B.C . respectively) were a result of migrations from Atlantis as the legendary continent began to break up. They were followed by the Azilian people around 10,000 B.C. According to Spence, the Azilians had a maritime culture and were the last refugees to leave Atlantis before it completely sank (Problem 80– 81). In “Men of the Shadows,” Howard is very explicit about the Crô-Magnon people being Atlanteans, but he also seems to be basing his Picts on Spence’s Azilian culture. Howard’s prehistoric Picts hailed from islands west of Atlantis and were described as “strongly built ... not tall nor huge, but lean and muscular like leopards, swift and mighty” (“Men of the Shadows” 23). They were a “slim, small, black-haired people” who spread through the Mediterranean basin as they invaded Europe before eventually entering the British Isles (25– 26). Compare this to Spence’s description of the Azilians: The Azilians, were shorter in stature [than the Aurignacian people], and darker in colouring, and I venture to deduce from their maritime habits that they were originally an insular people, possibly inhabiting some of the larger islands to the west of Atlantis... [Problem 227].

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These Azilian people were undoubtedly the parents of the great Mediterranean or Iberian race, who spread over southern Europe and penetrated to Britain and Norway... [Problem 74].

Howard’s purpose in writing “Men of the Shadows” was to create a prehistoric backstory for his fictional Picts whom he believed were descended from the Neolithic Mediterranean race. With the theories of Lewis Spence, Howard could now take their history back even further, equating their ancestors with the Paleolithic Azilian culture. In 1927, Spence published another work on the lost continent, The History of Atlantis, in which he attempted to “flesh out” his concept of a stone-age antediluvian civilization. Spence examined ancient classical sources on Atlantis such as Plato, Diodorus Siculus, and Strabo and looked in more detail at the material remains of the Aurignacian and Azilian cultures. Howard seems to have read this work prior to his writing “The Hyborian Age,” as several elements in the essay appear to have their origin in The History of Atlantis (Shanks, “Creating” 12–13). For example, Spence emphasizes the cultural and physical differences between the highly artistic Aurignacian people and the later Azilian invaders: [T]he Azilian civilisation shows in some ways a marked inferiority to the Aurignacian. Its art-forms are distinctly cruder, and its cultural remains of a more primitive kind generally [History 96].

The Azilians, however, made more sophisticated weapons and hunting implements. As we saw in “Men of the Shadows,” Howard seems to have equated his Atlanteans with Spence’s Aurignacians and his Picts with Spence’s Azilians. This equation is reinforced by a passage in “The Hyborian Age” in which Howard makes a comparison between the artistic sensibilities of the Atlanteans and Picts: The Picts ... had advanced more rapidly in the matter of population and warscience. They had none of the Atlanteans’ artistic nature; they were a ruder, more practical, more prolific race. They left no pictures painted or carved on ivory, as did their enemies, but they left remarkably efficient flint weapons in plenty [382].

In fact, the first section of “The Hyborian Age,” with the warring stone-age kingdoms of Picts and Atlanteans, seems to be heavily influenced in general by the ideas of Spence. The sequence of the “races” of mankind — the Picts, followed by the Lemurians, then the Atlanteans, then the Celts — that Howard describes in “Men of the Shadows” appears to come from the ideas of the Theosophy movement (Burke and Louinet 350), a metaphysical belief system that was

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founded in the late nineteenth century by the well-known spiritualist Helena Petrovna Blavatsky. The most likely place for Howard to have encountered the theosophical conception of prehistory and evolution was in the works of William Scott-Elliot (no relation to G. F. Scott Elliot), particularly in The Story of Atlantis.10 Written in 1896, this book describes the theosophical belief that mankind has progressed through a series of evolutionary stages known as “Root Races” over the last few million years. The first two Root Races were nonphysical beings; they were followed by the Lemurians, then the Atlanteans, then the Aryans (Scott-Elliot 20–26). In co-opting this idea for his own prehistory, Howard simply replaced the first two nonphysical races with his fictional Picts and replaced the Aryan race with the Celts. One of the more notable features of Scott-Elliot’s book is a series of maps that show the earth as it looked (according to the theosophists at any rate) at various stages in the geological past. Interestingly, the geological changes they depict are very close to those described by the Pictish wizard in “Men of the Shadows.” In the first of Scott-Elliot’s maps, for example, we see the Rocky Mountains as an island west of the large continent of Atlantis, just as Howard described the Pictish Isles; further west, we find Lemuria in the Pacific (Figure 1). In Scott-Elliot’s second map, after a cataclysm, Lemuria has sunk; North America has risen out of the sea; and Atlantis, though smaller, is still in existence (Figure 2). Again this is almost identical to the description of the cataclysm in “Men of the Shadows.” Scott-Elliot describes Atlantis as a highly advanced civilization lasting hundreds of thousands of years. This is in sharp contrast to Spence’s stoneage Atlanteans that we see in Howard’s “Men of the Shadows,” “Exile of Atlantis,” and “The Hyborian Age.” There are, however, a number of similarities between the advanced antediluvian civilization of Scott-Elliot and Howard’s Valusia. It is unusual to have a primitive Atlantis alongside an advanced mainland civilization — it is exactly the opposite of what one usually sees in Atlantean fiction. But it seems that with his pre-cataclysmic world Howard found a way to reconcile the different theories of his two most important sources on Atlantis, by retaining the stone-age Atlanteans of Spence and transferring the advanced Atlantis of Scott-Elliot to the mainland in the form of Valusia.

Historical Sources for Howard’s Prehistoric World In addition to incorporating the fringe theories of Spence and W. ScottElliot, Howard also took some of his ideas from more reputable popular works

Figure 1: W. Scott-Elliot’s first Atlantis map showing a group of islands where the western part of North America should be (The Story of Atlantis).

Figure 2: Scott-Elliot’s second Atlantis map, showing the creation of North America after a cataclysm (The Story of Atlantis).

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on history, anthropology, and geology. As noted previously, G. F. Scott Elliot’s book, The Romance of Early British Life seems to have been a major influence on Howard’s conception of the Picts and their Neolithic ancestors. Howard is known to have had two other influential historical works in his library (Burke “Howard Bookshelf ”), The Prehistoric World, or Vanished Races by E. A. Allen and The Outline of History by H. G. Wells. Both of these works may have given Howard ideas about past geological changes as well as “racial” migration theory. Many of the concepts presented in Allen’s book, first published in 1885, were already outdated by the 1920s, but Howard still used it as a reference. Burke and Louinet have already noted that several elements in Allen’s The Prehistoric World appear in “Men of the Shadows” (351–352). In addition to those elements, Allen’s reference to the elevation of the west coast of North America in a geological upheaval during the Miocene Epoch may be another concept adopted by Howard. Allen wrote: Considerable changes in the geography of both Europe and America were going forward during the Miocene Age, and the result was quite a change in climate. There was a steady elevation of the Pacific coast region of America, and, as a consequence a period of great volcanic outbursts in California and Oregon [53].

It is a passing remark to be sure, but this passage, along with the visual representations in W. Scott-Elliot’s maps, may have given Howard the idea for the Pictish Isles rising up to become the Rocky Mountains.11 The Outline of History was a massive work of nonfiction by Wells, who is best known, of course, as an early pioneer of science-fiction literature. First published in 1919 as a series of soft-cover chapbooks, then in a two-volume edition in 1920, this ambitious work of macrohistory tells the story of humankind from its prehistoric origins up to Wells’s own time. Wells took his information from contemporary scholarly sources and presented his history in an easy-to-read popular format that made this work an instant bestseller. Quick to incorporate feedback from academic reviewers, Wells revised and amended his work several times in the first few years of its publication, and The Outline of History soon became one of the most influential nonfiction works of the early twentieth century. Howard, who appears to have owned the 1922 fourth revised edition,12 used Wells’s work as an historical reference throughout his career, beginning with his first published story, “Spear and Fang” (Shanks, “REH and H.G. Wells” 17). One of the more dramatic examples of an element in Howard’s works, probably inspired by Wells, is the creation of the Mediterranean Sea in “The Hyborian Age”:

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[F]ar to the south the Stygian continent was broken away from the rest of the world, on the line of cleavage formed by the river Nilus in its westward trend. Over Argos, western Koth and the western lands of Shem, washed the blue ocean men later called the Mediterranean [397].

In Howard’s chronology, this event takes place during the minor cataclysm at the end of the Hyborian Age, not long before the rise of historical civilizations. Even in Howard’s time, most geologists thought that the creation of the Mediterranean Sea had taken place much earlier in the Miocene Epoch Interestingly, in The Outline of History, Wells not only dates this event to the late Pleistocene (specifically 30,000–10,000 B.C.), but devotes a lengthy section of his book to it and describes it in terms very similar to Howard’s description. Wells writes: This refilling of the Mediterranean, which ... may have happened somewhen [sic] between 30,000 and 10,000 B.C., must have been one of the greatest single events in the pre-history of our race. If the later date is the truer, then ... the crude beginnings of civilization ... were probably round that eastern Levantine Lake into which there flowed not only the Nile, but the two great rivers that are now the Adriatic and the Red Sea. Suddenly the ocean waters began to break through over the westward hills and to pour in upon these primitive peoples.... Day by day and year by year the waters spread up the valleys and drove mankind before them. Many must have been surrounded and caught by the continually rising salt flood.... [I]t rose over the tree-tops, over the hills, until it had filled the whole basin of the present Mediterranean and until it lapped the mountain cliffs of Arabia and Africa [i:118–119].

The Hyborian Age Maps As noted previously, Howard drew two maps of the Hyborian kingdoms in early 1932 as he was developing his fictional world (“Hyborian Age Maps”). These maps depict a large land mass overlaying a line drawing of modern Europe, a technique Howard uses to show the geological changes that would take place after the age of Conan. On these maps, the English Channel, North Sea, and Mediterranean are all dry land; much of the western part of North Africa is under the Atlantic Ocean; and a huge inland sea encompasses all of what would later become the Caspian and Aral seas and a great deal of western Khazakstan and parts of Russia. The lands to the far south and east of the inland sea are not depicted; and Howard explains why in a 1936 letter to a fan, P. Schuyler Miller: I’ve never attempted to map the southern and eastern kingdoms, though I have a fairly clear outline of their geography in my mind. However, in writing about them I feel a certain amount of license, since the inhabitants of the

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Part One: The Literary Conan western Hyborian nations were about as ignorant concerning the peoples and countries of the south and east as the people of medieval Europe were ignorant of Africa and Asia. In writing about the western Hyborian nations I feel confined within the limits of known and inflexible boundaries and territories, but in fictionizing [sic] the rest of the world, I feel able to give my imagination freer play [Letter to Miller 428].

For most fantasy writers today, the creation of a map of their fictional worlds is almost a given, but this was not the case in Howard’s time. Up until that point, L. Frank Baum’s Oz was one of the only major fantasy worlds that had a published map.13 It would be 1938, two years after his death, that one of Howard’s Hyborian Age maps would see print, but having a map at all was remarkable enough. We have already seen that Howard may have been influenced by the Atlantis maps of W. Scott-Elliot in his descriptions of cataclysmic geological changes in “Men of the Shadows,” but it also appears likely that the third of Scott-Elliot’s maps (Figure 3) gave Howard some ideas when he created his maps of the Hyborian Age. Likewise, Wells’s map of Europe at around 50,000 years ago (Figure 4), published in The Outline of History, also seems to have influenced the Hyborian Age maps. On both Wells’s and Scott-Elliot’s maps, the British Isles and Scandinavia are connected to mainland Europe, while most of the Mediterranean is greatly reduced to a pair of large lakes or small seas. More striking is the presence of a great inland sea on both maps, separating Europe from Asia. On Scott-Elliot’s map much of western Africa is under water as well. All of these are features that can be found on Howard’s two Hyborian maps. Additionally, both Wells and Scott-Elliot used the same technique of overlaying a line drawing of modern Europe over their prehistoric map, just as Howard does. There are plenty of differences to be sure, and Howard was not simply copying Wells and Scott-Elliot, but it does seem likely that Howard gleaned some of his ideas for the geography of the Hyborian world from these particular maps of the other two.

The Chronolog y of the Hyborian Age Since Howard was trying so hard to fit his fictional world into the popular prehistoric paradigm of his day, it begs the question of when exactly he intended the Hyborian Age to take place. He gives us a vague relative chronology: after the sinking of Atlantis and before the appearance of the Indo-Aryans, but what about an absolute chronology? The conventional wisdom during the Conan boom of the 1960s and 1970s was that the age of Conan was sometime around 10,000 B.C. This date seems to be confirmed by the first-person narrator of a

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Figure 3: Detail of Europe and North Africa from W. Scott-Elliot’s third map of Atlantis (The Story of Atlantis).

non–Conan Hyborian Age story by Howard entitled “Marchers of Valhalla” (81) and by the events described in “The Hyborian Age” itself, which has the rise of the first historical civilizations occurring not long after the great migrations that followed the collapse of the Hyborian kingdoms. The 10,000 B.C. date has been challenged in recent years by Howard researcher Dale Rippke. In a series of popular essays, eventually collected in The Hyborian Heresies, Rippke attempts to reconcile Howard’s chronology with modern theories (both mainstream and fringe) on geology and paleoclimatology and concludes that Howard’s Hyborian Age is set much earlier, before the beginning of the last ice age around 32,500 B.C. (82–86). Rippke’s ideas have had no small influence on many recently published Conan media such as comic books and role-playing games. However, trying to correlate

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Figure 4: H. G. Wells’s map of Europe circa 50,000 years ago. (The Outline of History i:74).

Howard’s fictional prehistory with modern theories on the subject rather than the contemporary theories of Howard’s time is an inherently flawed methodology. This is, of course, because Howard would have had no access to the modern information on which Rippke bases much of his argument. The primary basis for Rippke’s argument rests on a single passage in “The Hyborian Age” that mentions the occurrence of “glacier ages” after the collapse of the Hyborian civilizations (395). Rippke interprets these “glacier ages” as the last great Pleistocene ice age (84–85), but in fact Howard may have simply been referencing a passage in Spence’s The History of Atlantis, which mentions a brief period of glaciation ending around 7000 B.C. (76).14 If this is the case, then Rippke’s main reasoning for such an early date is unnecessary. If Howard was following Spence’s model for migrating waves of refugees from a sinking Atlantis between 15,000 and 10,000 B.C., as seems to be the case, then his Hyborian Age was presumably intended to take place shortly after that time.

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The respective invasions of the Picts and Turanians at the end of the Hyborian Age is likely a reference to several now-outdated and discredited anthropological theories regarding the nature of Neolithic culture in Europe — specifically, whether Neolithic culture was spread by the Mediterranean race or the Mongoloid race. The authors that most influenced Howard on prehistory disagreed among themselves on this topic. E. A. Allen, for example, ascribed the Neolithic culture to the Mongoloid race, which he also referred to as the Turanians (211–213). G. F. Scott Elliot (78–81) and Wells (i:144– 148), on the other hand, both believed the Neolithic was spread by the Mediterranean race. In 1930, Howard discussed these ideas in an exchange of letters with fellow Weird Tales writer, H. P. Lovecraft (Howard, Letter to Lovecraft [August 9, 1930] 32–33; Lovecraft, Letter to Howard 26–28). Howard then wrote several stories over the next two years about his Neolithic Picts (i.e., the Mediterraneans) in conflict with the Mongoloid race, essentially combining the two theories into a fictional account of Neolithic warfare between the two “races.”15 The account of the Pictish and Turanian invasions after the fall of the Hyborian kingdoms is simply a more detailed version of this imagined conflict and indicates that the Hyborian Age should probably be considered a “lost epoch” in the early Neolithic period.16

Conclusion One of the great innovations of fantasy literature was Howard’s creation of an epoch-spanning, shared fictional universe for his heroic protagonists Conan, Kull, Bran Mak Morn, and others. It is a narrative of massive migrations of peoples both human and prehuman, with civilizations rising to glory and crumbling to dust, continents sinking beneath the waves, and mountains thrusting to the sky. This world began with a basic framework in “Men of the Shadows” in 1926 and evolved and developed through the Kull stories to emerge in its fullest form with the Hyborian Age of the Conan stories. The term mythopoesis—“myth-making”— is sometimes used in conjunction with Howard’s creation of the Hyborian Age. The term is not inaccurate, but perhaps does not go far enough; a better term might be “cosmopoesis”— the creation of a new world, a new epoch, a new universe. In his seminal essay “On Fairy Stories,” J. R. R. Tolkien writes about the reader’s thought process on encountering a literary fantasy world: That state of mind has been called “willing suspension of disbelief.” But this does not seem to me a good description of what happens. What really happens is that the story-maker proves a successful “sub-creator.” He makes a Second-

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Part One: The Literary Conan ary World which your mind can enter. Inside it, what he relates is “true”: it accords with the laws of that world. You therefore believe it, while you are, as it were, inside. The moment disbelief arises, the spell is broken; the magic, or rather art, has failed. You are then out in the Primary World again, looking at the little abortive Secondary World from outside [60].

The effectiveness of the Hyborian Age as a Secondary World comes from its grounding in the Primary World disciplines of anthropology, archaeology, geology, and history — albeit only to the level those disciplines had reached by the early twentieth century. Even the use of fringe material from Atlantis proponents like Spence and W. Scott-Elliot would have seemed less absurd in the early 1930s than it does today. Spence’s theories on Atlantis in particular were an attempt to make a rational case for the lost continent, and Howard himself seems to have accepted the veracity of those ideas.17 In contrast to the completely invented names of nations and cities in the Kull stories, many place-names of the Hyborian world were taken directly from or loosely based on names from history and mythology, and therefore served a euhemeristic function, providing a fictional origin for many of the tribes and nations of the historical ancient world. The Hyborian Age of Conan was not so much a fantasy age as it was a proto-historical age. As such, it has the internal consistency, which Tolkien suggests is necessary to help compel the reader to suspend disbelief and remain entrenched within this Secondary World. Howard seems to have been intuitively aware of this fact. In an introductory paragraph written for “The Hyborian Age,” when the essay was finally published in a 1936 fanzine, Howard explained his reasoning for the creation of his pseudo-historical setting: Nothing in this article is to be considered as an attempt to advance any theory in opposition to accepted history. It is simply a fictional background for a series of fiction-stories. When I began writing the Conan stories a few years ago, I prepared this “history” of his age and the peoples of that age, in order to lend him and his sagas a greater aspect of realness. And I found that by adhering to the “facts” and spirit of that history, in writing the stories, it was easier to visualize (and therefore to present) him as a real flesh-and-blood character rather than a ready-made product [381].

Not only was the Hyborian Age of Conan not intended to be in opposition to accepted history, but, for the most part, it was designed to fit within the framework of accepted history, rooted as it was in sources like Wells’s The Outline of History and Allen’s The Prehistoric World. In a 1933 letter, Howard told H. P. Lovecraft that “there is no literary work half so zestful as rewriting history in the guise of fiction” (Letter to Lovecraft 651). With the creation of the Hyborian Age, Howard was able to rewrite history with great success and

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in so doing was able to create a fantastic, yet believable, lost world — a world through which his greatest character, Conan of Cimmeria, tread with sandaled feet to become one of the icons of heroic fantasy.

Notes 1. Noted Howard scholar Patrice Louinet has taken a forensic approach to the study of the original typescripts of the Conan stories, using a combination of typewriter key “fingerprinting” and an analysis of Howard’s spelling habits to create a relative (and occasionally absolute) chronology of the extant typescripts of the Conan stories and drafts (Louinet, “Notes” 455–457). This has made it possible to track the development of Howard’s Hyborian Age as it grew and evolved, especially during the first few stories. 2. We know from a list of notes on various stories and characters compiled by Howard in early 1931 that he dated the time period of the Kull stories to 100,000 B.C. (“Untitled Notes”). This date is confirmed by a reference in the Bran Mak Morn story “Kings of the Night” that Kull lived “a hundred thousand years” before the time of Bran and Roman Britain (43). 3. Louinet makes a strong case for Bulfinch’s The Outline of Mytholog y as the source for most of the mythological proper names in the first few Conan stories. See “Hyborian Genesis” 434–439. 4. For a critical analysis of “The Hyborian Age” as a meta-historical narrative see Hall (84–88). 5. For Howard’s use of racialist themes in “The Hyborian Age” see Hall (89). 6. Most notably, Howard began to elaborate on the era of the first Hyborian kingdoms. In “The Scarlet Citadel,” we are told that the Hyborian kingdom of Koth was founded three thousand years before the time of Conan (102–103) and, later, in “Black Colossus,” we learn that the Hybori invaders that founded Koth destroyed a northern Stygian empire in the process (154–155). In “The Hour of the Dragon,” Howard explores this concept further by introducing the empire of Acheron, which also existed about three thousand years before Conan. Acheron, an early Hyborian empire ruled by sorcerers who worshiped the Stygian god Set, was destroyed by another wave of Hybori conquerors (86–88). 7. It finally did see print in 1936 when Howard submitted it to the fanzine Phantagraph. 8. Most anthropologists in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, following Thomas Huxley, Paul Topinard, and others, divided humankind into four major races: Caucasian, Negroid, Mongoloid, and Australoid. These races were defined primarily based on perceived differences in cranial shape. In his influential 1899 work The Races of Europe, William Ripley further subdivided the Caucasian race into three groups: the Mediterraneans, the Alpines, and the Teutonics (Nordics). This kind of racialist classification has long since been discredited and discarded by anthropologists, but it was still the prevailing thought in Howard’s time. For further discussion see Hall (88–90), Trigger (166–210), and Stocking (56–66). 9. The Solomon Kane episode appears in “The Moon of Skulls.” 10. For a full discussion of the arguments in favor of W. Scott-Elliot as Howard’s primary source for theosophical material, see Shanks, “Theosophy and the Thurian Age.” 11. The possible connection between Howard’s Pictish Isles and this passage by Allen was first pointed out to me by Howard researcher Deuce Richardson (personal communication). 12. Burke lists the 1920 edition in “The Robert E. Howard Bookshelf,” but there are four accession numbers given for the edition of The Outline of History in Howard’s library. The first set to be issued in four volumes was the fourth revised edition printed between 1922 and 1925. See Shanks, “REH and H G. Wells.” 13. The first map of Oz was published in 1914 in Tik-Tok of Oz. 14. Presumably Spence was referring to what we now call the Younger Dryas, a geologically

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brief period of cooling at the beginning of the Holocene period. Modern radiometric dating places it about 2,000 years earlier than Spence. 15. In one of these stories, “Children of the Night,” two of his characters actually debate these different viewpoints on the racial make-up of the Neolithic Europeans (217–221). Louinet (personal communication) noted that some parts of the dialogue of this debate were taken directly from The Outline of History (Wells i: 142–144). For further discussion see Burke and Louinet 356–358. 16. Interestingly, in the earliest draft of “The Hyborian Age,” the intervals between some of the events depicted are ten times as long as they are in the final version. In the second and third drafts, these intervals are reduced. Then, in the final version of the essay, they are further reduced until the events between the Cataclysm and fall of the Hyborian civilization take place over a few thousand years rather than twenty thousand (Howard, “Untitled Drafts, 1– 3”).This may represent Howard’s attempt to “shoehorn” his Hyborian Age into the standard chronology of the Upper Paleolithic, Early Neolithic, and the “Atlantean migration” chronology of Spence. 17. He was, however, more skeptical of the theosophical idea of an advanced Atlantean civilization as proposed by Scott-Elliot. In a 1927 letter to his friend Harold Preece, Howard wrote: About Atlantis — I believe something of the sort existed, though I do not especially hold any theory about a high type of civilization existing there — in fact, I doubt that. But some continent was submerged away back, or some large body of land, for practically all peoples have legends about a flood. And the Crô-Magnons appeared suddenly in Europe, developed to a high state of primitive culture; there is no trace to show that they came up the ladder of utter barbarism in Europe. Suddenly their remains are found supplanting the Neanderthal Man, to whom they have no ties of kinship whatever. Where did they originate? Nowhere in the known world, evidently. They must have originated in some land which is not now known to us. The occultists say that we are the fifth — I believe — great sub-race. Two unknown and unnamed races came, then the Lemurians, then the Atlanteans, then we. They say the Atlanteans were highly developed. I doubt it. I think they were simply the ancestors of the Cro Magnon [sic] men, who by some chance, escaped the fate which overtook the rest of the tribe [Letter to Preece 237].

Works Cited Allen, E. A. The Prehistoric World, or Vanished Races. Cincinnati: Central Publishing House, 1885. Print. Baum, L. Frank. Tik-Tok of Oz. Chicago: Reilly and Britton, 1914. Print. Bulfinch, Thomas. The Outline of Mytholog y. New York: Review of Reviews Company, 1913. Print. Burke, Rusty. “The Robert E. Howard Bookshelf.” REHupa.com. Robert E. Howard United Press Association, 1998. Web. April 2011. _____, and Patrice Louinet. “Robert E. Howard, Bran Mak Morn, and the Picts.” Bran Mak Morn: The Last King. Edited by Rusty Burke and Patrice Louinet. New York: Del Rey, 2005. 343–360. Print. Hall, Mark. “Crash Go the Civilizations: Some Notes on Robert E. Howard’s Use of History and Anthropology.” The Robert E. Howard Reader. Edited by Darrell Schweitzer. San Bernardino, CA: The Borgo Press, 2010. 82–93. Print. Howard, Robert E. “Black Colossus.” The Coming of Conan the Cimmerian. Edited by Rusty Burke and Patrice Louinet. New York: Del Rey, 2003. 151–184. Print. _____. “By This Ax I Rule!” Kull: Exile of Atlantis. Edited by Rusty Burke and Patrice Louinet. New York: Del Rey, 2006. 155–180. Print. _____. “Children of the Night.” Bran Mak Morn: The Last King. Edited by Rusty Burke and Patrice Louinet. New York: Del Rey, 2005. 215–232. Print.

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_____. “The Hour of the Dragon” The Bloody Crown of Conan. Edited by Rusty Burke and Patrice Louinet. New York: Del Rey, 2004. 81–254. Print. _____. “The Hyborian Age.” The Coming of Conan the Cimmerian. Edited by Rusty Burke and Patrice Louinet. New York: Del Rey, 2003. 379–398. Print. _____. “Hyborian Age Maps.” The Coming of Conan the Cimmerian. Edited by Rusty Burke and Patrice Louinet. New York: Del Rey, 2003. 421–423. Print. _____. “Kings of the Night.” Bran Mak Morn: The Last King. Edited by Rusty Burke and Patrice Louinet. New York: Del Rey, 2005. 33–75. Print. _____. Letter to H. P. Lovecraft. August 9, 1930. A Means to Freedom: The Letters of H. P. Lovecraft and Robert E. Howard. vol. 1. Edited by S. T. Joshi, David E. Schultz, and Rusty Burke. New York: Hippocampus Press. 32–38. Print. _____. Letter to H. P. Lovecraft. ca. September 1933. A Means to Freedom: The Letters of H. P. Lovecraft and Robert E. Howard. vol. 2. Edited by S. T. Joshi, David E. Schultz, and Rusty Burke. New York: Hippocampus Press. 631–652. Print. _____. Letter to Harold Preece. Received October 20, 1928. The Collected Letters of Robert E. Howard, Volume One: 1923 –1929. Edited by Rob Roehm. Plano, TX: Robert E. Howard Foundation Press, 2007. 236–239. Print. _____. Letter to P. Schuyler Miller. March 10, 1936. The Collected Letters of Robert E. Howard, Volume Three: 1933 –1936. Edited by Rob Roehm. Plano, TX: Robert E. Howard Foundation Press, 2007. 427–430. Print. _____. “Marchers of Valhalla.” The Black Stranger and Other American Tales. Edited by Steven Tompkins. Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press. 2005. 77–109. Print. _____. “Men of the Shadows.” Bran Mak Morn: The Last King. Edited by Rusty Burke and Patrice Louinet. New York: Del Rey, 2005. 1–30. Print. _____. “The Moon of Skulls.” The Savage Tales of Solomon Kane. Edited by Rusty Burke. New York: Del Rey, 2004. 97–170. Print. _____. “The Phoenix on the Sword.” The Coming of Conan the Cimmerian. Edited by Rusty Burke and Patrice Louinet. New York: Del Rey, 2003. 7–27. Print. _____. “The Phoenix on the Sword (First Submitted Draft).” The Coming of Conan the Cimmerian. Edited by Rusty Burke and Patrice Louinet. New York: Del Rey, 2003. 351–374. Print. _____. “The Scarlet Citadel.” The Coming of Conan the Cimmerian. Edited by Rusty Burke and Patrice Louinet. New York: Del Rey, 2003. 83–118. Print. _____. “Spear and Fang.” The Ultimate Triumph. Edited by Rusty Burke. London: Wandering Star, 1999. 211–222. Print. _____. “The Tower of the Elephant.” The Coming of Conan the Cimmerian. Edited by Rusty Burke and Patrice Louinet. New York: Del Rey, 2003. 61–81. Print. _____. Untitled Draft 1. Typescript. [The Hyborian Age, Draft 1] _____. Untitled Draft 2. Typescript. [The Hyborian Age, Draft 2] _____. Untitled Draft 3. Typescript. [The Hyborian Age, Draft 3] _____. Untitled Notes. Typescript. [List of stories and characters] _____. “Untitled Story (Previously published as ‘Exile of Atlantis’).” Kull: Exile of Atlantis. Edited by Rusty Burke and Patrice Louinet. New York: Del Rey, 2006. 3–9. Print. Louinet, Patrice. “Atlantean Genesis.” Kull: Exile of Atlantis. Edited by Rusty Burke and Patrice Louinet. New York: Del Rey, 2006. 287–303. Print. _____. “Hyborian Genesis.” The Coming of Conan the Cimmerian. Edited by Rusty Burke and Patrice Louinet. New York: Del Rey, 2003. 429–452. Print. _____. “Notes on the Conan Typescripts and the Chronology.” The Coming of Conan the Cimmerian. Edited by Rusty Burke and Patrice Louinet. New York: Del Rey, 2003. 453– 457. Print. _____. Personal Communication. April 2011. Email. Lovecraft, H. P. Letter to Robert E. Howard. July 20, 1930. A Means to Freedom: The Letters of H. P. Lovecraft and Robert E. Howard. vol. 1. Edited by S. T. Joshi, David E. Schultz, and Rusty Burke. New York: Hippocampus Press, 2009. 23–31. Print.

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Richardson, Deuce. Personal Communication. November 2010. Email. Ripley, William. The Races of Europe. New York: D. Appleton and Company, 1899. Print. Rippke, Dale E. The Hyborian Heresies. Winchester, VA: Wildcat Books, 2004. Print. Scott Elliot, G. F. The Romance of Early British Life. London: Seeley and Company, 1909. Print. Scott-Elliot, W. The Story of Atlantis. London: Theosophical Publishing Society, 1896. Print. Shanks, Jeffrey. “Creating an Age Undreamed Of: Robert E. Howard and the Works of W. Scott-Elliot and Lewis Spence.” Popular Culture Association/American Culture Association National Conference. Marriott Rivercenter Hotel, San Antonio, TX. April 21, 2011. Presentation. _____. “REH and H. G. Wells’ Outline of History.” REHupa 228 (2011). 14–18. Print. _____. “Theosophy and the Thurian Age: Robert E. Howard and the Works of William Scott-Elliot.” The Dark Man: The Journal of Robert E. Howard Studies 6: 1–2 (2011). Print. Spence, Lewis. The History of Atlantis. London: William Rider and Son, 1927. Print. _____. The Problem of Atlantis. London: William Rider and Son, 1924. Print. Stocking, George W., Jr. Race, Culture, and Evolution: Essays in the History of Anthropolog y. Chicago: The University of Chicago Press, 1982. Print. Tolkien, J. R. R. “On Fairy Stories.” The Tolkien Reader. New York: Ballantine, 1966. 3–84. Print. Trigger, Bruce G. A History of Archaeological Thought. 2nd ed. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2006. Print. Wells, H. G. The Outline of History: Being a Plain History of Life and Mankind. 4th ed. 4 vols. New York: Review of Reviews Company, 1922. Print.

Barbarism Ascendant The Poetic and Epistolary Origins of the Character and His World FRANK COFFMAN And a strange shape comes to your faery mead, With a fixed black simian frown, But you will not know and you will not heed Till your towers come tumbling down. —Robert E. Howard from “The Years Are as a Knife”

There is no doubt that the character of Conan has become Robert E. Howard’s signature creation. Highly popular from its original publication, principally in Weird Tales, the series of stories about the mighty Cimmerian are solidly the vanguard of Howard’s growing literary reputation and represent the essence of his generally acknowledged position as the founder of “Sword & Sorcery” fantasy. But while the actual “birth” of this barbarian super-hero can be targeted with some accuracy, the conception of the Hyborian Age; of Cimmeria, “land of darkness and deep night”; of Conan himself; and, essentially, Howard’s evolving conception of barbarism itself are not so simple to delineate. The gestation period leading to these interconnected births is far more complex than most would imagine. And it was decidedly more involved than Howard himself would have his “pen-friends”— such as H. P. Lovecraft, Clark Ashton Smith, Emil Petaja — and, ultimately, his readers believe. The influences of Howard’s antecedent warrior heroes — Kull of Atlantis; the Pict, Bran Mak Morn; and Turlogh Dubh O’Brien, an offspring of Howard’s Celtophile nature — must be acknowledged as having influence upon the development of the character of Conan. Quite possibly external fictional characters had some influence — characters, for example, such as Burroughs’ Tarzan, Kipling’s Mowgli, and intriguingly-possible others such as Fennimore Cooper’s Chingachgook (in these cases, of course, without the accompanying “noble savage” romanticized notions of Shaftsbury and others, ultimately alien to Howard’s developing views on barbarism). Some continue to see Conan as 35

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a sort of “bolt-from-the-blue” inspiration and a suddenly serendipitous creature springing wondrously forth from Howard’s fertile imagination, something like Athena from the brow of Zeus. But the truth of the development of Conan and Cimmeria is more accurately viewed as a complex web of entangled cross-associations which can be examined in the poetry and letters of Robert E. Howard. They are the creative result of much cerebration and contemplation leading to the eventual, but as we shall see, not the original mindset and motivation of that great Texas tale spinner. Speculation about the origins of artistic inspiration, about the processes of the imagination or the inception of a literary character or any other aspects of narrative creation should always be undertaken with care. J. R. R. Tolkien had some interesting comments on this very sort of speculation both before and while his own work was being scrutinized. In his important essay [originally an Andrew Lang lecture at St. Andrews College], “On Fairy-stories”— and one of the most important discussions of the creative process in the twentieth century, effectively supplanting Coleridge’s “willing suspension of disbelief ”— Tolkien states: In [George Webb] Dasent’s words I would say: “We must be satisfied with the soup that is set before us, and not desire to see the bones of the ox out of which it has been boiled.” Though, oddly enough, Dasent by “the soup” meant a mishmash of bogus pre-history founded on the early surmises of Comparative Philology; and by “desire to see the bones” he meant a demand to see the workings and the proofs that led to these theories. By “the soup” I mean the story as it is served up by its author or teller, and by “the bones” its sources or material — even when (by rare luck) those can be with certainty discovered. But I do not, of course, forbid criticism of the soup as soup [“On Fairystories” 46–47, emphasis mine].

Just so, the “bones” of the Conan cycle might never be completely discoverable, but while Tolkien correctly transforms Dasent’s comments on stories “in tradition”— as the folklorists say — to apply them to the creative work of a single author, he goes too far in suggesting that auctorial influences are almost certainly undiscoverable. While the entire “skeleton” of antecedents, inspirations, and origins of the character or the world of Conan might not be completely discoverable, there are some individual “bones” that might be. While Howard did not live long enough to see the breadth and depth of interest and discussion his works have stimulated — about which he would, likely, have been greatly surprised though, quite probably, gratified — Tolkien did live long enough to see the great amounts of speculation about origins that his creations evoked, especially from biographical, psychological, and myth/archetypal literary critics. This bothered him enough to prompt the following:

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An author cannot of course remain wholly unaffected by his experience, but the ways in which a story germ uses the soil of experience are extremely complex, and attempts to define the process are at best guesses from evidence that is inadequate and ambiguous [Tolkien, “Foreword” 10–11, emphasis mine].

That such evidence is, in some cases, neither “inadequate” nor “ambiguous” is the premise of the present writing. There is ample evidence in the letters and the poetry of Robert E. Howard to suggest strongly some of the ways Conan and his world germinated in the mind of their author. Perhaps Robert E. Howard would have objected as strenuously as Tolkien to attempts to discover his processes of literary creation. There is no doubt from his letters that he maintains that the origins and development of Cimmeria and Conan were essentially mystical things. But a critic’s reach should exceed his grasp, or what are literary appreciation and interpretation for? Conan could only have been born into a world and homeland and culture consistent with the developing worldview of his imaginer. Not only the character, but, as importantly, the world and times of Conan are essential to the tales. To put it in the jargon of rhetoric or poetics, the topographia, chronographia, and demographia; the verbal depiction of place and time and society, are as essential as the presentation of a vivid fictional character with distinctive character traits who presents, indeed embodies, important aspects of this author’s worldview. It has been noted by many Howard scholars and researchers, both academic and private, that one of the dominant themes presented throughout his literary corpus is that of Barbarism as the natural human condition, with the many historical cycles of great civilizations and any attempts to establish a lasting order in the face of chaos always and ultimately futile. In the title essay from his seminal critical anthology, The Dark Barbarian (1984), Don Herron presents one of the important discussions of this theme and this aspect of Howard’s character. Herron succinctly notes the differences between the nobly savage as depicted in Tarzan and Mowgli and Howard’s barbarian of a different ilk, also adding in the ingredients of deft swordplay (and “axeplay” too, of course), of sheer physical might, and of supernatural and often horrific magic and sorcery essential to epitomize a new genre with Conan at its core: ... the overriding difference is in mood and philosophy. Burroughs’ Tarzan is a respectable pillar of civilization as an English lord, and preserves the twentieth-century American sense of the status quo even when venturing naked in time-lost cities and primeval forests.... In Howard the unquiet surge of barbarism ever threatens to sweep the works of civilization under, the status quo is at best shaky — even when Howard’s barbarians put themselves on the thrones of the ruling class. The Howardian mood and philosophy is not simply barbaric, it is a dark

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Part One: The Literary Conan barbarism, a pessimistic view that holds the accomplishments of society of little account in the face of mankind’s darker nature [150].

Ironically, one of Howard’s clearest poetic inspirations and favorite writers, the devout Catholic and eventual Defender of the Faith, Gilbert Keith Chesterton sees the same glass half full in his early essay, “A Defense of Detective Stories” (1902): ... the romance of police activity keeps in some sense before the mind the fact that civilization itself is the most sensational of departures and the most romantic of rebellions. By dealing with the unsleeping sentinels who guard the outposts of society, it tends to remind us that we live in an armed camp, making war with a chaotic world, and that the criminals, the children of chaos, are nothing but the traitors within our gates. When the detective in a police romance stands alone, and somewhat fatuously fearless amid the knives, and fists of a thieves’ kitchen, it does certainly serve to make us remember that it is the agent of social justice who is the original and poetic figure, while the burglars and footpads are merely placid old cosmic conservatives, happy in the immemorial respectability of apes and wolves. The romance of the police force is thus the whole romance of man. It is based on the fact that morality is the most dark and daring of conspiracies. It reminds us that the whole noiseless and unnoticeable police management by which we are ruled and protected is only a successful knight-errantry [6 emphasis mine].

To Robert E. Howard, this Chestertonian vision of “knight errantry,” or any idealistic or Arthurian attempt at ultimate victory against the forces of barbarism and chaos would always be unsuccessful. Yet, inherent in both of these worldviews is the notion that there is an interplay between civilization and barbarism, or even a pendulum swing between the two — even from the more optimistic and positive side of the argument there is almost always the concession, as Gandalf says in The Lord of the Rings, “Always, after a defeat and a respite, the Shadow takes another form and grows again.” Chesterton saw civilization much the same way: as a great and difficult — and perpetual — effort to rise above and thereafter stave off the attacks of the barbaric and chaotic; Howard would come to view civilization as a thin veneer, an always vulnerable and never ultimately defensible condition, ever subject to degeneration, decay, and eventual conquest. Although Howard’s previously noted heroes of prose narrative all play important heuristic roles in the shaping, in the imaginative discovery of Conan, we must look at Howard’s poems and letters, most written years before the epiphanic blank verse poem, “Cimmeria,” to find the roots of Conan and his homeland expressed in what is their most direct and concise philosophical essence. One of the root origins of Conan lies in Howard’s interest in the primitive

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as demonstrated in early poetic and prose narrative characters. But as we shall see, there was a lingering touch of the romantic, even the essentially civilized in the young Howard — if one can say that about a man who only lived to be thirty — but speaking here of the years of his teens and very early twenties, the first creative period of his literary life. There was a time before the “dark barbarism” argued by Herron was fully realized, a time when Howard considered, at the very least, varying degrees of barbarism, a period before Howard’s eventually developed definition of the barbaric was complete. The long-running Howard journal AMRA took its name from the character that several “Howardists” [as scholar Mark Finn calls our clan of specialized literary commentators and critics] consider to have been the prototype of Conan. This character is found in the obscure and only relatively recently published and fragmentary poem, “Am-ra the Ta-an” in The Rhyme of Salem Town and Other Poems [2002, 2007]. In this poem, we find a barbaric outcast, wielding a stone-tipped spear: Out of the land of the morning sun, Am-ra the Ta-an came. Outlawed by the priests of the Ta-an, His people spoke not his name. Am-ra, the mighty hunter, Am-ra, son of the spear, Strong and bold as a lion, Lithe and swift as a deer. Into the land of the tiger, Came Am-ra the fearless, alone, With his bow of pliant lance-wood, And his spear with the point of stone. [153 ll. 1–12]

Yet, while this is definitely one of Howard’s early poems depicting a primitive warrior, a confusion has existed since Howard’s use of the alternate name “Amra” in the story “The Frost-Giant’s Daughter”— eventually published in The Fantasy Fan after the rejection of the piece as a Conan story by Farnsworth Wright of Weird Tales. That initial rejection was due to the explicitness (for its day), or at least suggestiveness, of the sexual content. In effect, the alternate name “Amra” is used primarily to separate this eventually published character from the central figure of the Conan series. If we read further into the earlier poem and (as far as we know) the initial use of “Amra” or, rather, “Am-ra,” we actually find a lack of the “dark barbaric” philosophy of Howard that has been suggested. Although a primitive savage, Am-ra is disgusted by those who are even more barbaric than he:

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Part One: The Literary Conan ... More like apes than men were they, They knew not the use of the bow, They tore their meat and ate it raw For fire they did not know. Then angry waxed bold Am-ra, Furious grew he then, For he would not share his country With a band of black ape-men [155 ll. 65–72].

Thus, it may be argued that the Am-ra of the poem is more civilized than those who disgust him, and the plan of the story, which trails off at that point in the poem, seems to have been for Am-ra (and perhaps his fellow exile follower and possibly planned-to-be “sidekick,” Gaur) to “open a can” of comparative civilization against these decidedly more barbaric ape-men. Hence, the chosen title for the journal AMRA, may not have been as appropriate after all, its conflation of Am-ra or Amra with Conan, neither completely appropriate nor correct. Conan is the truly darker barbarian, representing Howard’s matured mindset of barbarism ascendant. We see this earlier Howardian barbarian also in a prose counterpart in another prehistoric adventure. Howard’s first story sold to Weird Tales, “Spear and Fang,” was accepted for publication when he was only eighteen and appeared in the July 1925 number when Howard was nineteen. I have commented elsewhere (“The Promise of ‘Spear and Fang,’” internet) on the parallels that might be made between the young author Robert E. Howard and the main character of the story, Ga-nor, the young cave artist, also seeking to prove himself and also being atypical when contrasted with his stone-age, cave-dwelling brethren. Whether Ga-nor the troglographer is emblematic of or psychologically identifiable in any way with the teenage Howard himself, the central action of the story becomes essentially a fight to the death between Ga-nor (a Crô-Magnon, genus Homo sapiens) and a fearsome “Neandertaler” (Homo neanderthalenis). In fact, just as in the Am-ra poem, the superior intellect and determination of the comparatively more “civilized” cave man (even depicted as artistic, and advanced for his own clan) defeats the cannibalistic sub-human who threatens a prehistoric “damsel in distress.” So, we must look to later stories, but, more specifically, later poems and some interesting comments in Howard’s letters to find the true origins of Conan and the developing philosophical changes in his creator. Howard’s position has been presented by some critics as not merely a defender of barbarism, but even a veritable promoter of it. It is also the case that this purported theme of the “Dark Barbarian” has been fronted at the

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expense of the much richer, broader, and deeper spectrum of themes that Howard’s works present. His own words directly on this subject are plentiful, seen especially in a long and lasting debate in letters between Howard and H. P. Lovecraft. Examined closely, these epistolary debates reveal a much more complicated picture of Howard and his views on barbarism and civilization than has usually been presented in more shallow and cursory commentaries. Indeed, there seems to have been a great deal of conflict within Howard himself on the issue. In a letter to Lovecraft, from 22 September 1932, he writes: For myself, if I should be suddenly confronted with the prospect of being transported back through the centuries into a former age, with the option of living where I wished, I would naturally select the most civilized country possible. That would be necessary, for I have always led a peaceful, sheltered life, and would be unable to cope with conditions of barbarism. Thus, for my own safety, I would select Egypt rather than Syria, to which otherwise my instincts would lead me; I would choose Greece rather than Spain or Thrace; Rome rather than Gaul, Britain or Germany. As a matter of personal necessity I would seek to adapt myself to the most protected and civilized society possible, would conform to their laws and codes of conduct, and if necessary, fight with them against the ruder races of my own blood [425 Letters II, emphasis mine].

Yet, in the next paragraph we find: On the other hand, if I were to be reborn in some earlier age and grow up knowing no other life or environment than that, I would choose to be born in a hut among the hills of western Ireland, the forests of Germany or the steppes of Southern Russia; to grow up hard and lean and wolfish, worshipping barbarian gods and living the hard barren life of a barbarian — which is, to the barbarian who has never tasted anything else — neither hard nor barren [Letters II, ibid.].

He echoes much these same ideas in a letter to Lovecraft from 2 November of that same year: I didn’t say that barbarism was superior to civilization. For the world as a whole, civilization even in decaying form, is undoubtedly better for people as a whole. I have no idylic [sic] view of barbarism — as near as I can learn it’s a grim, bloody, ferocious and loveless condition [462 Letters II ].

He then proceeds to give his definition of a barbarian in very explicit detail: I have no patience with the depiction of the barbarian of any race as a stately, god-like child of Nature, endowed with strange wisdom and speaking in measured and sonorous phrases. Bah! My conception of a barbarian is very different. He had neither stability nor undue dignity. He was ferocious, brutal and frequently squalid. He was haunted by dim and shadowy fears; he committed horrible crimes for strange monstrous reasons. As a race he hardly ever exhibited the

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Part One: The Literary Conan steadfast courage often shown by civilized men. He was childish and terrible in his wrath, bloody and treacherous. As an individual he lived under the shadow of the war-chief and the shaman, each of whom might bring him to a bloody end because of a whim, a dream, a leaf floating on the wind. His religion was generally one of dooms and shadows, his gods were awful and abominable.... His life was often a bondage of tambus [sic], sharp sword-edges, between which he walked shuddering. He had no mental freedom, as civilized man understands it, and very little personal freedom, being bound to his clan, his tribe, his chief.... But he was lithe and strong as a panther, and the full joy of strenuous physical exertion was his. The day and the night were his book, wherein he read of all things that run or walk or crawl or fly [ibid., emphasis mine].

It’s important to note that the “Noble Savage” is decidedly not the view of the barbarian that Howard has in mind. After this definition, he reaffirms that, given the choice of which culture into which he would prefer to be born, he writes: I’ve never seen anyone who had any sympathy whatever with my point of view, nor do I want any. I’m not ashamed of it. I would not choose to plunge into such a life now; it would be the sheerest of hells to me, unfitted as I am for such an existence. But I do say that if I had the choice of another existence, to be born into it and raised in it, knowing no other, I’d choose such an existence as I’ve just sought to depict. There’s no question of the relative merits of barbarism and civilization here involved. It’s just my own personal opinion and choice [Letters II 463].

On the other hand, contrasting with Howard’s barbarians and primitives depicted early on like Ga-nor in “Spear and Fang” and like Am-ra in the poetic fragment, and especially as the character of Conan develops, Howard settles more and more into his definitive view of the barbarian as depicted in this letter to Lovecraft. But, clearly and for example, the Conan of “The Devil in Iron” is a different “barbarian” in several ways from the Conan of “The Phoenix on the Sword” or The Hour of the Dragon. Again, an evolution was occurring and not a sudden creative explosion. In a subsequent letter from that year we see more of the evolution of Howard’s notion of the barbarian hero. He’s speaking of the type of barbarian he himself would have cared to be, which is further delineated by the type he would not have cared to be. In a very lengthy letter to Lovecraft in ca. December 1932 he writes: No; I would not have cared to be a bard or shaman; if I had been a barbarian, I would have wanted to be a complete barbarian, well-developed, but developed wholly on barbaric lines; not a distorted dweller in a half world, part savage and part budding consciousness. Just as a man, dwelling in civilization, is happier when most fully civilized, so a barbarian is happier when fully barbaric [Letters II 514, emphasis mine].

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Eventually though, and somewhere between the selling of “Spear and Fang” at age eighteen in 1924 and his letter to Lovecraft of 9 August 1932 when Howard was 26, the more hardened and darker view of barbarism has developed. Perhaps the strongest indicator of how much Howard wished this element to be included in his writing is the following passage from that lengthy letter [lengthy even by REH-HPL standards]: I’ve often thought of fictionalizing the incident just mentioned [the legend of the killing of Tom Custer (brother of George A.) at Little Big Horn and the removal of his heart by one Rain-in-the-Face and, supposedly, the biting off of a piece, “...blood trickling from the corner of his mouth — blood that was not his own”], transferring it to another race and age — having Bran Mak Morn eat the heart of a Roman governor, or Conan the Cimmerian that of a Hyborian king. I wonder how much barbarity the readers will stand for.... Another problem is how far you can go without shocking the readers into distaste for your stuff — and therefore cutting down sales. I’ve always held myself down in writing action-stories; I never let my stories be as bloody and brutal as the ages and incidents I was trying to depict actually were. I think sometimes I’ll let myself go — possibly in a yarn of the middle ages — and see if I can sell the thing. I don’t know much [sic] slaughter and butchery the readers will endure [Letters II

411]. If we believe that Howard was indeed reining himself in with regard to the depiction of barbarity, held back to some degree by his question about just how much the reader — in other words, those who actually paid for his stories — would take, then it seems clear that the full scope of the barbaric had firmly become part of Howard’s philosophy. This “fully barbaric,” this “complete barbarian” of Howard’s vision we see most fully realized in the developing Conan, certainly owing a great deal to the ongoing epistolary discussions and debates with Lovecraft on the topic of civilization vs. barbarism. Over the next few months and before the sale of “The Phoenix on the Sword” to Farnsworth Wright and Weird Tales by early July of 1933, Conan had arisen and developed in the mind of Howard. Conan’s conception, gestation, birth, and maturation are chronicled by Howard himself as very mysterious things. The beginning can be traced to early 1932, before Howard’s debate regarding barbarism with Lovecraft in the later letters of that year. “On the typescript of Howard’s poem, ‘Cimmeria,’ which he sent to Emil Petaja was the comment ‘Written in Mission, Texas, February 1932; suggested by the memory of the hill-country above Fredericksburg seen in a mist of winter rain’” (Burke, “Biography,” internet). Thus, the place of Conan’s birth precedes the birth in Howard’s imagination. To use Tolkien’s metaphor, the “story germ” pretty clearly found the “soil of experience” in this vista that inspired the place Cimmeria, and was likely nurtured and cultivated in the

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intensive and extensive contemplation of the nature of the barbaric and of the civilized that transpired during the rest of 1932 in the letters between Howard and Lovecraft. In like manner, Howard’s intense historical interest in the details of barbarian cultures from the past, which shows itself again and again in the REH-HPL letters of that time period and his deep contemplations over the nature of barbarism and the true barbarian were also elements in what led to — what to him — seemed an almost mystical creative epiphany. He writes of the “birth” of Conan in various ways and to various correspondents. In a letter to Clark Ashton Smith postmarked 14 December 1933 he writes: I have sometimes wondered if it were possible that unrecognized forces of the past or present or even the future work through the thoughts and actions of living men. This occurred to me when I was writing the first stories of the Conan series especially. I know that for months I had been absolutely barren of ideas, completely unable to work up anything sellable. Then the man Conan seemed suddenly to grow up in my mind without much labor on my part and immediately a stream of stories flowed off my pen or rather, off my typewriter almost without effort on my part. I did not seem to be creating, but rather relating events that had occurred. Episode crowded on episode so fast that I could scarcely keep up with them. For weeks I did nothing but write of the adventures of Conan. The character took complete possession of my mind and crowded out everything else in the way of story writing. When I deliberately tried to write something else, I couldn’t do it. I do not attempt to explain this by esoteric or occult means, but the facts remain. I still write of Conan more powerfully and with more understanding than any of my other characters. But the time will probably come when I will suddenly find myself unable to write convincingly of him at all [Letters III 150–151, emphasis mine].

Pretty clearly, Howard himself did not attempt to ponder the evolution of Conan, but almost certainly it was an evolution and not a spontaneous sudden event; it was a serendipitous evolution, definitely, but an evolution nonetheless. Howard sometimes uses at least two different personae in the letters: one a self-deprecating, humble, “Gosh, I wish my stuff had merit”— used especially with close friends like Clyde Smith or with newly made acquaintances, as in a few of the early letters to Lovecraft; a second mask being the toughcountry Texan or Celtic/Viking stock poser, a bit boastful and a bit vain, teller of tall tales or “stretchers” as Twain might have called them, seen in later letters to Lovecraft or to others such as E. Hoffman Price. By the time of the writing of another letter to Smith, dated 23 July 1935, Howard had evidently thought more about how this particular “story germ” (or at least “character germ”) had used the soil of his experience. It may sound fantastic to link the term “realism” with Conan; but as a matter of fact — his supernatural adventures aside — he is the most realistic character I ever evolved. He is simply a combination of a number of men I have known, and

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I think that’s why he seemed to step full-grown into my consciousness when I wrote the first yarn of the series. Some mechanism in my sub-consciousness took the dominant characteristics of various prizefighters, gunmen, bootleggers, oil field bullies, gamblers, and honest workmen I had come in contact with, and combining them all, produced the amalgamation I call Conan the Cimmerian [Letters III 367– 368, emphasis mine].

It would be difficult to argue that this is the same character who appeared “without much effort on my part” and which simply “flowed” off the typewriter. Scholar Rusty Burke has noted this discrepancy and covered it in much finer detail elsewhere (Burke, “Without Effort,” internet). Howard here has reflected more deeply on the actual process of creation that led to his most famous character. In a letter from early 1935 to Alvin Earl Perry, who was to include it later in a biographical sketch of Howard, we find Howard echoing the more mystical and indefinable origin again: Conan simply grew up in my mind a few years ago when I was stopping in a little border town on the lower Rio Grande. I did not create him by any conscious process. He simply stalked full grown out of oblivion and set me at work recording the saga of his adventures [Letters III 287–288].

Again the problematic notion of “full grown out of oblivion” is put forth. But in granting that there was no “conscious process,” Howard leaves his statement open to the contradiction by the truth of the matter — there were unconscious processes at work. Importantly, Howard has, perhaps also unconsciously, conflated the origin of Conan with the origin of Cimmeria and the vista of Fredericksburg in the Texas hill country, seen through the mist of morning rain. In a letter written only a season before his suicide, Howard wrote a detailed response to P. Schuyler Miller who had worked out an outline of Conan’s life and even a map of his “environs.” In his reply, Howard notes again this mystical sense of the development of Conan and the chronicling of Conan’s adventures: In writing these yarns I’ve always felt less as creating them than as if I were simply chronicling his adventures as he told them to me. That’s why they skip about so much, without following a regular order. The average adventurer, telling tales of a wild life at random, seldom follows any ordered plan, but narrates episodes widely separated by space and years, as they occur to him [Letters III, 428 10 March 1936].

Again, Howard is posing. The awed fan might likely buy into the mystical voice of Conan, speaking through the mouth of his scribe as the Greeks believed the muses did through the poet, Calliope through Homer, “Sing

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goddess, the wrath of Achilles....” The truth is that Cimmeria and Conan have evolved through unconscious or, perhaps occasionally half-conscious, process. This evolution certainly includes a vista that inspired a homeland for the barbaric hero. It stems also from the amalgam of Howard’s experiences including various real characters or types of characters of his acquaintance. And certainly it stems from his meditations and thought-rich debates with Lovecraft in the series of letters focusing on Barbarism vs. Civilization. But another key element that must not be overlooked in the origin of the Conan cycle is Howard’s use of poetry in the depiction and development of a sense of the barbaric and the nature of barbarism. We can see Barbarism Ascendant in several of Howard’s poems. The most often-quoted poem on this theme — the one that speaks most directly of barbarism and Howard’s ultimate position — is certainly “A Word from the Outer Dark,” especially its final stanza: For all the works of cultured man Must fare and fade and fall. I am the Dark Barbarian That towers over all [Collected Poems 452, Selected Poems 19].

Howard, as usual, achieves the concision and succinctness that epitomizes his poetry. He combined this capability with a historical sense that became eerily prophetic in some poems, foreseeing the clash with Japan that was to come (“Little Brown Man of Nippon”) and in another poem of barbarism ascendant, “A Warning,” the final stanza of which is the epigraph of this essay, it is difficult not to be affected by the final line: “Till your towers come tumbling down.” Earlier stanzas in the same poem resonate on the warning being given and Howard’s view of the power of barbarism ever to rise again when civilization softens and sickens: You have builded a world of paper and wood, Culture and cult and lies, But the Night of the Earth shakes off her hood, And the star of your hour dies. She spoke to you once by the wind and drouth, But you mocked at her mind and plan, And she spoke again from the cannon’s mouth, And now through the lips of a man [Collected Poems 166, Selected Poems 18].

Often Howard’s vision of the barbarous is presented less directly. In an important though untitled poem, we find:

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Rise to the peak of the ladder Where the ghosts of the planets feast — Out of the reach of the adder — Never beyond the Beast. He is there, in the abyss brooding, Where the nameless black fires fall; He is there, in the stars intruding, Where the sun is a silver ball [Collected Poems 383, Selected Poems 67].

That we are “Never beyond the Beast” [perhaps the best title to give this poem] is at the core of Howard’s developed philosophy, and this view is the essence of what Herron called his “dark barbarism.” But the poetic roots of Conan run broader and deeper through the poetry than the basic views of the poet on the theme of barbarism. While there are barbarian characters that stand out in his prose fiction, Howard is also the narrative poet, certainly one of the last true bardic voices, since the story poem diminished and receded over the twentieth century in the wake of the vers libre movement, expressionism and impressionism, and all sorts of other experimentation with poetry. Howard loved to tell stories in verse, and many of his poetic influences — Chesterton, Kipling, Longfellow, Service and others — were predecessors in that last surge of narrative verse. Many of Howard’s story poems are about barbarians. Already noted is “Am-ra the Ta-an,” perhaps a fitting historical, or rather pre-historical, beginning to a brief survey of these. Howard’s love of history and the study of ancient cultures and societal types appear again and again in his narrative verses. In “The Gladiator and the Lady” (first line: “When I was a boy in Britain and you were a girl in Rome”), we find the earlier and undeveloped vision as seen to a degree in “Spear and Fang” of a romanticized barbarian in a sort of Romeo and Juliet societal clash between the civilized Roman patrician girl and the barbarian Briton — although in this poem, of course, they are never destined to be together. Much different is the mystical poem “An Echo from the Iron Harp”/alternate title “The Gold and the Grey” in which the speaking voice, as if somehow reincarnated and remembering (reincarnation being another theme in Howard’s work) recalls experiences in the historical Battle of Vercellae at which the Roman legions under Marius defeated and almost completely annihilated the Cimbrians. Of course the speaking voice in the poem is one of Howard’s barbarians: Like phantoms into the ages lost has the Cimbrian nation passed; Destiny shifts like summer clouds on Grecian hilltops massed. Untold centuries glide away, Marius long is dust;

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Part One: The Literary Conan Even eternal Rome has passed in days of decay and rust. But memories live in the ghosts of dreams and dreams still come to me, [Collected Poems 10, Selected Poems 193].

But the fact that “Even eternal Rome has passed in days of decay and rust” provides the refrain that is Howard’s theme of the unstoppable ascent of barbarism over civilization. Both “the Glory that was Greece” and “the Grandeur that was Rome” and all other civilizations are temporal and eminently mutable. In “The Cells of the Coliseum,” Howard depicts the musings of a barbarian about to enter the arena of death. The barbaric ideal as Howard saw it is epitomized in the last stanza: Along the halls a trumpet calls. The red arena glimmers nigh. Thor, let me mock these fools of Rome And show them how a Goth can die [Collected Poems 530, Selected Poems 185].

Of course there are the poems connected to the barbarian characters of Howard’s prose fiction: Conan himself with, interestingly, only the poem “Cimmeria” and some poetic epigraphs such as in “The Hour of the Dragon” introducing some of the stories, a couple that relate to the Picts and Bran Mak Morn, Turlogh of Connacht appears in the long heroic poem “The Ballad of King Geraint,” along with other heroes in a sort of “roll call of heroes” reminiscent of Homeric epic. Several of Howard’s poems focus in on his love of things Celtic, such as “The Marching Song of Connacht,” “Song Before Clontarf,” and “The Song of the Last Briton.” He writes at least seven poems about Vikings, and the barbaric nature of that culture in voyaging, raiding and warfare in general (one must remember that “viking” was a verb and “to go viking” the activity). This appealed to Howard’s sense of adventure. In poems such as “Singing Hemp” he crystallizes his vision of the Viking spirit: “Sons of the frost — the cold blue souls “Of the cloud-rack, torn and whirled, “Are the fires that rise in the Viking’s eyes, “Oh, blind black wolf of the world!” [Collected Poems 63, Selected Poems 462].

Howard also touches on the barbaric aspects of human nature in his poems about more modern “barbarians”— those more modern “wolves of the world,” the reavers of the days of piracy. Of course there are the prose stories

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of Black Vulmea, but Howard was so interested in pirates — likely stemming from his deep desire to sail the seas, to voyage, to travel with an indisputable wanderlust evident in his work — that he wrote no fewer than seven poems of piracy and pirates. The poem “Drake Sings of Yesterday” touches on an historical pirate, but some of the others such as “A Buccaneer Speaks” present Howard’s more general vision of the barbarous: I’ve broken the laws of man and God, I’ve flung my gauntlet forth to the world. I’ve turned from the ways that in youth I trod — Yonder the Skull Flag flies unfurled [Collected Poems 14, Selected Poems 403].

This “turning from the ways” of civilization and this law breaking are the markers of Howard’s developed sense of the barbaric. Civilizations rise up and seek to protect and perpetuate themselves. There are walls of protection and gates that are barred against chaos. But Howard sees the barbarians always ready to invade and conquer. The walls will not hold forever and the gates will, eventually and inevitably, be broken wide. So, we must see the character of Conan arising from this amalgam, this medley of influences and antecedent writings. The lengthy debates with Lovecraft regarding the interplay between barbarism and civilization were of great importance in the forming of Howard’s views on the subject. His own love of the general image of the warrior barbarian — both historical and fictional, both in prose and in poetry — as a key ingredient in much of his storytelling was also essential. His culminating triumph in characterization was in the creation of Conan — sparked by a vision of Cimmeria that arose from a realworld experience and expanded into an entire mythological world that would contain this greatest of Howardian characters. The gradually grown tree of tales in the Conan cycle had deep roots in the soil of Howard’s creative genius and imagination, but the two most significant are those that can be traced in his own letters and verses.

Works Cited Burke, Rusty. “A Short Biography of Robert E. Howard” Wandering Star Books website. Internet. http://www.wanderingstarbooks.com/reh-bio.htm _____. “Without Effort On My Part,” Robert-E-Howard: Electronic Amateur Press Association, Vernal Equinox Posting, 2001. The Iron Harp, vol.1, no. 1, Internet http://www.ro bert-e-howard.org/IronHarp1.html#Without Chesterton, G. K. [1902]. “A Defense of Detective Stories.” in The Art of the Mystery Story. Howard Haycraft. New York, Carroll & Graf, 1974: 3–6.

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Coffman, Frank. “The Promise of ‘Spear and Fang’: A Close Reading and Commentary on Robert E. Howard’s First Sale.” Robert-E-Howard: Electronic Amateur Press Assoc. The Shadow Singer, Vernal Equinox 2001–1 Internet. http://www.robert-e-howard.org/Shadow Singer1.html _____. Robert E. Howard: Selected Poems. print on demand, lulu.com. Robert E. Howard Properties, 2009. Herron, Don “The Dark Barbarian.” in The Dark Barbarian. ed. Don Herron. Berkeley Heights, NJ: Wildside Press, 1984: 149–181. Howard, Robert E. The Collected Letters of Robert E. Howard (3 Vols.) ed. Rob Roehm. The Robert E. Howard Foundation Press, 2007. _____. The Collected Poetry of Robert E. Howard. ed. Rob Roehm. Canada Art Bookbindery, Robert E. Howard Foundation Press, 2008 _____. A Rhyme of Salem Town and Other Poems. Canada Art Bookbindery: Robert E. Howard Foundation Press, 2006. Tolkien, J. R. R. “Foreword,” The Fellowship of the Ring. New York: Ballentine, 1954, 1986 (7th printing): 8–12. _____. “On Fairy-stories,” The Tolkien Reader. New York: Ballentine, 1966, 1983 (33rd printing): 33–90.

Life, Liberty and the Pursuit of Women Gender Dynamics in the Hyborian World WINTER ELLIOTT Male chauvinism; teenage sexism; even testosterone poisoning — all such flippant, dismissive comments could easily arise from a superficial reading of Robert E. Howard’s tales of Conan the Cimmerian. Women in peril flee across the wastelands and marshes depicted on Howard’s pages; frequently, like Atali of the story “The Frost-Giant’s Daughter,” they’re pursued by men with sex, if not outright rape, dominating their minds. Perhaps, indeed, it was this threadbare plot element that led Farnsworth Wright, the editor of Weird Tales, to bluntly reject this very early Conan story — although he accepted, with revisions, its companion submission, “The Phoenix of the Sword” (Lord 139). More likely, Wright simply bought the superior story (Schweitzer 17), dooming “The Frost-Giant’s Daughter” to rebirth, with title and character name changes, in a fanzine (Schweitzer 5). Indeed, Howard’s female characters, mostly, like Atali, all abundantly gorgeous, long of limb and luscious of form, often served to reward, not punish. While Howard’s women are sometimes sexual teases, sometimes malicious, and sometimes even outright dangerous, this seductive, bewitching population of female characters sometimes helped to land Howard the cover art of Weird Tales (Schweitzer 32), the primary publication venue for all of his Conan stories and, indeed, for almost all fantasy fiction in the 1930s. Such lovely ladies could also lead to some pointed speculation about the contributors to Don Herron’s The Dark Barbarian, one of the very few critical books or anthologies examining Howard’s work. To a man, these contributors are ... well, men. In fact, Darrell Schweitzer makes a comment very similar to the hypothetical disdainful remarks above; he describes, not Howard’s Hyborian canon in general, but Conan’s protective urges towards a vulnerable, quaking — but nonetheless lovely — heroine in one of Howard’s stories as “Vintage male chau51

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vinism, of course” (23). And he’s right, in a way. Of course, chauvinistic elements — and plenty of them — pervade Howard’s Conan corpus, just as there are racist elements. Although Lorenzo Ditommaso’s contrasts “raceconsciousness” with racism and concludes that Howard’s “Hyborian tales are racist neither in tone nor in substance” (167), it’s not so easy to disregard Howard’s often animalistic depiction of his black characters. Nor is it easy to pull the reader’s gaze away from all that scantily clad female flesh and onto a more academic consideration of Howard’s gender dynamics. But, despite his early death from suicide, Howard poured time, imagination, and turbulent energy into the creation of his stories. Not all of his stories or characters, male or female, can be reduced to mere chauvinist stereotypes. Nor should they. Conan and his women — and there certainly are enough of them — actually function conjointly to establish a distinct view of civilization. Ultimately, too, Conan and the women offer an interesting commentary upon gender set against this backdrop of barbarians and cities; as is so frequently the case, civilization and culture become associated with masculinity. By default, then, Conan — and his women — occupy a surprisingly feminine role in the texts. From the beginning, Howard, intentionally or not, poses Conan within a Western prototypical heroic pattern. As in the Celtic tradition Howard esteemed (Schweitzer 55), Conan follows a pattern of expulsion and return. This is a heroic blueprint seemingly as old as written literature, for it even appears in the ancient Mesopotamian Epic of Gilgamesh. Joseph Campbell, who compared myths and heroic tales from across cultures, identified a basic pattern now typically referred to as the “hero’s journey.” He described this cross-cultural formula, noting that “The standard path of the mythological adventure of the hero is a magnification of the formula represented in the rites of passage: separation — initiation — return: which might be named the nuclear unit of the monomyth” (23). He added that this journey consists of venturing forth, encountering and overcoming “fabulous forces,” and returning “with the power to bestow boons on his fellow man” (23). This pattern holds true from Gilgamesh to Conan. At odds with his civilization, Gilgamesh sets forth on a journey to gain wisdom. That period of individual development allows the hero to grow and mature. As he explores the natural world and beyond, Gilgamesh also undergoes a period of self-discovery. While that archetypal quest defines his character and establishes his heroic traits, his return is equally as significant; at the end of the work, Gilgamesh reconciles with his society and sets about furthering his civilization. Already, even this roughly four thousand-year-old literary text, carved on tablets, recognizes a tension between the needs of the individual and the demands of his society. Only alone, separate from his civ-

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ilization and city, can the individual fulfill his potential and develop into a hero. But equally as crucial as that period of separation, of journey, is his return. If he is not then assimilated back into society, he does not find a place within it. But there continually exists an anxiety about the hero’s free will juxtaposed with civilization’s constraints. Thousands of years after the “publication” of Gilgamesh’s adventure, Conan the Cimmerian, the barbarian hero of Robert E. Howard’s creation in the early 1930s, also feels this pressure. Of course, Conan’s situation is somewhat different from Gilgamesh’s; the Mesopotamian hero originates from civilization and returns to it, his period of separation and exploration an aberration rather than a custom. In contrast, Conan begins life as a barbarian, entirely separate from civilization. Nonetheless, his life is marked by its relationship with the civilized world around him. In fact, throughout Howard’s canon, Conan’s status as a barbarian, a primitive, vital man, forces him into both conflict and contrast with the softer, more deceptive men of civilization. Over and over, Howard stresses Conan’s primal inclinations and a lack of polish that extends to his usual absence of overly complicated clothing (why dress for success when a loincloth will do?). Conan’s body, his mind, and his behaviors are shaped by his barbarian nature. In fact, that barbarian identity constitutes a pursuit of absolute freedom at odds with the restrictions and customs of any human society. Yet, it is not the barbarian world in which Conan often travels, and, as a mature adult, finds himself a ruler. It is the civilized world, the very environment that Conan doubts, questions, and frequently condemns. Ironically, it is also this civilized world that defines Conan; he is almost as often described by what he is not as what he is. In his more mature years, this world even restricts and confines Conan’s behaviors. Consequently, Conan experiences a nearly constant tension between his needs as an independent, free-thinking barbarian and the desires of a society that prefers both structure and conformity. Significantly, the very first Conan story, “The Phoenix on the Sword,”1 establishes Conan as a man who doesn’t quite belong in a city, but can’t escape it, at least not completely, either. It’s irrelevant that this story originally featured another of Howard’s creations (Lord 139), because it ultimately produced a Conan consistent with the later tales. As in so many later stories, Howard emphasizes Conan’s connection to the natural world, describing his “cat-like speed” (11). Notably, Howard comes to rely on animalistic imagery in his depictions of Conan’s reactions and physicality. In “The Phoenix on the Sword,” Howard settles for pointing out that Conan’s “broad shoulders and sun-browned skin seemed out of place among those luxuriant surroundings” (11). Interested in Conan’s body, Howard notes

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that it’s at odds with the environment in which it finds itself. It’s that body, that big, muscled form, that doesn’t match the civilized setting. Conan’s physicality ties him to the natural world even as it establishes a distance from the artificial world of Conan’s palace. This link to animals carries through the Howard canon to the last written of the Conan stories, “Red Nails,” where Conan regards a dragon he’s just poisoned with a fair degree of sympathy and understanding. He feels a “comprehending interest” in the creature’s rage and struggles. Significantly, Conan sees “no such gulf ” between himself, men, and animals; the beast “was merely a form of life differing from himself mainly in physical shape” with “characteristics similar to his own” (222). Howard could not have put this conception of Conan’s character any plainer. Indistinct, then, from an animal, Conan would seem to belong to nature, not humanity. Indeed, Howard in “The Phoenix on the Sword,” bluntly describes Conan as “an image of the unconquerable primordial,” (22), a barbarian, opposite civilized men in his very nature and essence. Conan’s status as a “natural killer” (22) is such that his strengths trump that of many criminals “of a breed men called civilized, with a civilized background” (22). Like a wild animal, Conan’s body contains his essence. As a later story remarks, Conan “was not merely a wild man; he was part of the wild, one with the untamable elements of life; in his veins ran the blood of the wolf-pack; in his brain lurked the brooding depths of the northern night; his heart throbbed with the fire of the blazing forests” (“Black Colossus” 172). Conan’s repudiation of civilization, then, is both caused by his physical form and reflected in it. Ironically, this first-written Conan story, “The Phoenix on the Sword,” introduces a mature, older Conan who lacks the freedom of the younger self featured in many of the other tales. He’s a man with some regrets, a man intelligent enough to recognize the irony of his situation. He admits that he “did not dream far enough,” because he “had prepared [himself ] to take the crown, not to hold it” (11). The distinction is important, because a barbarian might seize a kingdom — but a civilized man must rule. And Conan has become, to some extent, tamed. “These matters of statecraft weary me as all the fighting I have done never did,” (11) he complains, but he does nothing about it. Conan vocally envies his friend, who’s setting forth to Nemedia, but he bows to the needs of his city. Of course, the story reveals that even this older, mature self is capable of summoning his inner wild man to rise up — like a phoenix itself— and fight off attackers and monsters. Strangely, though, that inner violence is unable to slip off the invisible chains of respectable kingship, even though Conan admits he’d rather be on a horse than a throne. This initial story does not put Conan’s resentment of civilized pressures

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to rest. In “A Witch Shall Be Born,” Conan, then a lowly captain, clearly blames the city for his present misfortune — crucified, he’s waiting to die in a desert. Staring at “the gleaming towers of Khauran,” he feels that the “city had betrayed him — trapped him into circumstances that left him hanging to a wooden cross like a hare nailed to a tree” (268). Conan then defines his view of cities, seeing them as “crooked streets and walled lairs where men plotted to betray humanity” (268). If there is purity in Conan’s association with the animal world, civilization, especially in cities, lacks an honesty that Howard seems to see as both brutal — wild animals kill of necessity — but also without malice. In contrast, men in cities have lost their candid savagery and replaced it with deceit and corruption. Indeed, in the story “Queen of the Black Coast,” Conan complains that “though I’ve spent considerable time among you civilized peoples, your ways are still beyond my comprehension” (123). By “ways,” Conan means the legal system and laws that privilege “duty to the state” (123) over loyalties to friends. For Conan, such duplicity holds little appeal. Clearly, Howard juxtaposes Conan’s barbarian nature with the civilized world, finding appeal in Conan’s association with a wild undiluted by “refined” customs. Yet, Conan is almost constantly drawn to some kind of civilization even as he pursues the natural freedom demanded by his animalistic nature. According to Abusch, in discussing Gilgamesh, an epic hero was a glorious warrior [who] exists at a time before the emergence of the developed state and of civilization. He usually represents the force needed to fight the enemy prior to the institutionalization of power in the form of the state.... Thus, for the individual who chooses to remain a traditional hero, the epic is often a meditation upon and an exploration of the inevitable conflict between, on the one hand, the forces represented by the absolute commitment of the powerful and heroic male energy to battle and, on the other, the forces that represent some newly emerging situations and value systems [615–616].

If Abusch’s summary of a hero’s function is correct, then Conan should feel a drive to establish order in the face of chaos, not create it. But Conan originally seems drawn more to a simplistic fulfillment of his own baser desires rather than any more grandiose philosophy. “Let me live deep while I live” (133), he states in “Queen of the Black Coast.” A barbarian pondering questions of philosophy, Conan concludes his life may be defined by two extremes: “I love, I slay” (133), he says simply, the pairing of sex and death matching an explanation of living “deep” earlier in the same passage. Conan, then, seeks an extreme life, extreme in the sense that he will fulfill his own desires even at the expense of so-called civilized customs. Conan wants what he wants, and the need to kill to attain the object of his desire

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presents no barrier. Paradoxically, given his repudiation of civilized ways, what Conan wants often can be found only in civilization itself. “I’ve never been king of an Hyborian kingdom,” (227) Conan remarks in “Red Nails.” His creator, of course, enjoyed that irony, because the first-published Conan story, “The Phoenix on the Sword,” establishes an older, kingly Conan. “But I’ve dreamed of being even that. I may be too, some day” (228) Conan continues in “Red Nails.” A barbarian, fully aware of the problems of civilization, he still wants, if not its approval, at least its highest honor: the kingship. Less nobly, though, things of value are to be had in cities. At the most basic level, cities offer food and water; for example, in both “Xuthal of the Dusk”2 and “Red Nails,” a somewhat desperate Conan and his female companion seek shelter and food in various cities. Of course, since these are Conan tales, the cities turn out to harbor various strange dangers and exotic evils in addition to lunch. Beyond food, cities serve as repositories of riches; in “The Tower of the Elephant,” Conan intends to steal a jewel from a city’s innermost tower, and finds more than he expected. Similarly, the adolescent Conan in the originally unpublished “The God in the Bowl” makes his living as a thief, stealing from places of wealth. So Conan’s relationship with cities depends upon an uneasy mix of need and animosity. But Conan, unlike many other inhabitants of his world, is free to define the parameters of that association himself. Just as Conan’s body establishes his basic nature as both primal and animalistic, it also literally gives him the strength to be truly free, in the sense that he is not confined by any social boundaries. Significantly, we meet Conan’s body before we meet Conan himself; he remains unidentified in “The Phoenix on the Sword” until a friend speaks to him by name, but, prior to that naming, Conan’s body is extensively described. In fact, Howard prioritizes Conan’s body over his identity; indeed, his body is his identity. In the process, Howard fetishizes Conan’s body; if the reader’s gaze must inevitably be drawn to the scantily-clad women running across the pages of Howard’s text, it is first drawn to Conan’s equally impressive body. As Howard explains in “The Tower of the Elephant,” clothing can’t conceal “the hard, rangy lines of his powerful frame, the broad heavy shoulders, the massive chest, lean waist, and heavy arms” (62). Valeria, the female main character of the last Conan story, “Red Nails,” also regards Conan’s body before she names him. In her eyes, Conan appears “almost like a giant in stature, muscles rippling smoothly under his skin which the sun had burned brown” (213). The use of the word “giant” is telling; Conan is monstrous in the sense that his very size sets him apart from the rest of his species, making him both singular and extraordinary. In many ways, Conan’s physicality is more interesting than the sword he carries. It would be both

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trite and beside the point to remark on his sword’s representation of his masculinity; such metonymy is obvious. Actually, Conan’s body, not his weapon, best defines the man. While Conan relies, of course, on the sword and his armor to defend his life on innumerable occasions, his weapons fail him in the story “A Witch Shall Be Born.” Crucified, released from his cross by unkind rescuers, only his barbarian constitution saves him, proving him “fit to live in the desert” (272). In a way, Conan is truly super-human; a barbarian linked to nature, he’s also stronger than other men and seemingly unkillable. Consequently, for the civilized world, Conan is visually and immediately marked as “other.” This term, “other,” derives from postcolonial criticism, and usually describes a marginalized group or individual, someone set apart from the majority point of view. As Boehmer explains, To rehearse some of the well-known binary tropes of postcolonial discourse, opposed to the colonizer (white man, West, center of intellection, of control), the Other is cast as corporeal, carnal, un-tamed, instinctual, raw, and therefore also open to mastery, available for use, for husbandry, for numbering, branding, cataloging, description or possession. Images of the body of the Other are conflated with those of the land, unexplored land too being seen as amorphous, wild, seductive, dark, open to possession [269–270].

Conan acts as the other, for both the civilized characters in the stories and the reader, who almost certainly derives from a “civilized” country. Indeed, Conan fits the definition of the postcolonial other almost perfectly — he’s defined by his body, intensely sexual, certainly instinctive — except that he’s not “open to mastery.” Conan may be partially tamed by his kingship and his increasing familiarity with civilization as he ages, but his barbarian spirit always lurks unquietly within him, ready to rise and take over at a moment’s notice. Neither is Conan easily conflated with the land, although he is certainly identified with the barbarian wilds from which he came. Cover art for the Weird Tales volumes containing “Xuthal of the Dusk” and “A Witch Shall Be Born” offer an explanation for Conan’s missing elements. Both of these volumes feature nearly naked women — and no Conan. In the former, a bound woman leans back away from her captor, the retreating body language serving only to emphasize her pointed, bare breasts and her naked legs. Her captor, another woman, wears a kind of skirt, but her torso is almost entirely naked as well. And she holds a whip, which she clearly intends to use on the other woman. As Leiber observes, “The girl-whippinggirl scenes in several of the Conan stories remind me that Howard must have early discovered what a potent sexual stimulus this particular image is,” and he acknowledges that cover art of similar situations drew readers (6). The

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female characters of the texts, then, offer an answer to the question of why Conan only partially fits the definition of the other. For the reader, and in the case of some of the cover art, the viewer as well, Conan is only half of the story. The female characters in many of the stories may serve principally as decoration and as narrative device, but they also fill an important psychological space in the stories. They’re like Conan — they’re other. Like Conan, almost all of the women in the stories find themselves poised between individual needs and social boundaries. Like Conan, these women seek freedom — sometimes literally, as many of the female characters in the stories are or have been slaves and harem members. Yet, while Conan’s relationship with civilization appears fairly clear-cut, the women in the stories experience a much more complicated rapport with a civilization that both permits their enslavement and abuse and sometimes offers qualified protection and support. Perhaps surprisingly, women play a significant role in most of the Conan narratives. Although they’re typically scantily clad, and indeed occasionally bereft of clothing altogether, these lovely ladies function as more than eye candy — although their not-so-subtle presence on the covers of Weird Tales, the original publication venue of the Conan tales, did nothing to harm sales figures. Of course, the women of the Conan tales are highly sexual and often objectified, vulnerable to rape and exploitation. But the Conan tales also include dangerous women, useful women, powerful women. Like Conan, these women and their softer sisters exist in an uneasy relationship with their societies. Conan’s rejection of civilization and its cultural mores fits his selfidentification as a rugged individual, but he is also able to defend his individuality with brute strength. In contrast, Howard’s world of free warriors, kings, and slaves seems to lack a clear place for the female characters that resist slavery, sexual or otherwise. Nonetheless, some of those women mirror Conan’s desire for individual agency and power. Like Conan, they navigate a line between social conformity and powerful corruption, but, for them, that line is much more uncertain. It should go almost without saying that the women of the Conan tales are highly sexualized. There are no mothers, grandmothers, aunts, or best friends in these tales, and only a couple of sisters of any merit, from “The People of the Black Circle” and “The Vale of Lost Women.”3 There are harem inmates, “appropriated” slave girls — as in Natala from “Xuthal of the Dusk”– rape victims and potential rape victims, and a few rampaging lesbians. Like Conan, Howard’s female characters are reduced to their bodies; but, for the women, this reduction goes even farther. Even the two strongest women in any of the Conan tales, Bêlit of “Queen of the Black Coast,” and Valeria of

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“Red Nails,” are defined by their sexuality. Bêlit, notably described by a frightened ship-master as the “wildest she-devil unhanged” (125), reasonably goes about her pirate’s life wearing only a “broad silken girdle” (127), and Conan’s first reaction to sight of her — and her breasts — is sheer, unadulterated lust, which Howard poetically renders as “a beat of fierce passion” (127). He has the same reaction to Valeria, although he’s known her for a while. With Valeria in “Red Nails,” Howard goes to some lengths to substantiate her femininity, adamantly describing her as “all woman, in spite of her bearing and her garments” (211). Women from stories like “The Frost-Giant’s Daughter” don’t require that defense. Atali, from “The Frost-Giant’s Daughter,” “lures men from stricken fields into the wastelands to be slain by her brothers” (38) through the appeal of a “naked body gleaming like ivory and her golden hair unbearably bright in the moonlight” (38). Atali’s conscious use of her sexuality to bring men to their deaths suggests a concern that women will exceed their role of vulnerable, passive object. Female objectification in the stories is most present in situations in which women are not merely raped but are clear objects of trade or conquest between men. Now more than a quarter of a century ago, Gayle Rubin’s 1975 article “The Traffic in Women: Notes on the ‘Political Economy’ of Sex” pointed out the ways in which women can function as part of an exchange system between men. These forces are clearly operant in “Black Colossus,” in which the princess Yasmela finds both herself and her country vulnerable to a predatory sorcerer. While the reader is first told that “Minstrels sang [Yasmela’s] beauty throughout the western world” (158), Yasmela’s first appearance in the story obscures her beauty in favor of sexual debasement. She’s featured not on a bed, but on her stomach upon the marble floor in the middle of an act of simulated rape. A big, black shadow hovers above her, presumably holding her down, and the sound of its voice “filled Yasmela.” In consequence, she “writhed and twisted her slender body as if beneath a lash” and “moaned and beat the marble tiles with her small fists in her ecstasy of terror” (159). Though the act is a figurative rather than a physical rape, Yasmela’s body reacts as if she were literally being assaulted. Indeed, the hissing voice clearly explains its owner’s intentions: “You are marked for mine,” it says. Promising to teach her forgotten, and apparently vile, “ways of pleasure,” the shadow vows that “The days will not be many before I come to claim mine own!” (159). Yasmela’s danger is clearly urgent and personal; an evil, possibly omnipotent, and, worse, ambiguous enemy intends to rape her. But her problem is also her kingdom’s problem, as her god Mitra recognizes. He tells her that “In one manner may you save your kingdom, and saving it, save all the world from the fangs of the serpent which has crawled up out of the darkness

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of the ages” (161). Yasmela’s concern isn’t for the world ; it’s for her naked self, vulnerable at night to psychological rape. Yet, Mitra’s comment clearly reveals that Yasmela’s person is indistinguishable from that of her kingdom. Yasmela and the land to be conquered are one and the same. Taramis, an imperiled queen in the story “A Witch Shall Be Born,” has much the same problem. At the outset of the story, she has refused Constantius’s marriage proposal, but has unwisely allowed his mercenaries into her country. Unbeknownst to Taramis, Salome, her evil and powerful and previously unknown twin sister, has joined forces with Constantius. Salome gives Taramis to Constantius to rape, but she also gives him the country. Taramis’s reaction is first to worry about her country; she exclaims that “You have betrayed my people” (262). But that queenly inclination is immediately replaced by a more realistic terror for her own safety, as Constantius seeks “a little — ah — amusement” (263) with Taramis, who forgets her people “in the face of the menace to her womanhood” (263). The scene ends with “a scream of despair and poignant agony [that] rang shuddering through the palace” (263), one of the most pitiful lines in all of the stories, because behind that lyrical line is a clearly vicious rape. That rape, though, solidifies Constantius’s and Salome’s control over the country, because in degrading and debasing Taramis, the country is also despoiled. Notably, women can also be used to punish or shame a man. In “The Scarlet Citadel,” Conan finds himself defeated and imprisoned, but he’s more worried about the “abominable threat” (94) made to him by the sorcerer who defeated him. In order to prove his control over his new kingdom and visually demonstrate his conquest, the sorcerer, Tsotha, intends to “flay [Conan’s women’s] dainty skins for scrolls whereon to chronicle the triumphs of Tsothalanti” (93). When thinking about the endangered women, Conan similarly focuses on their skin, worrying about the “Soft white hands that had caressed him, red lips that had been pressed to his, dainty white bosoms that had quivered to his hot fierce kisses” (94). Both men reduce the women to a part of themselves, their skin, which effectively fragments their bodies and their identities, making them little more than possessions to be torn apart, rather as a child throwing a tantrum will rip apart his fellow’s toy. Even in situations in which rape or torture is not a key to gaining power over a country, women are still uniquely vulnerable to sexual violence. Civilization in Conan’s world permits not only the enslavement of men and women, but the prostitution of those disenfranchised women. Olivia, the female protagonist of “Iron Shadows in the Moon,”4 has been sold into this lifestyle by her father. Her current owner pursues her through a swamp, and when he catches her, cheerfully explains that he plans to keep her “As long as

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I find pleasure in your whimperings, your pleas, tears, and writhings” (188– 189). When Conan indirectly liberates her by killing her captor in response to a private grudge, Olivia explains the indirect route by which she ended up in the sadist’s hands. “My father,” she says, “sold me to a Shemite chief, because I would not marry a prince of Koth” (190). From there, she’s traded to yet another man. Olivia’s background story is telling. She’s clearly a participant in what Rubin identifies as a “traffic in women;” her unwillingness to marry her father’s choice, a marriage that would seemingly result in some kind of advantage, trade or otherwise, to her father, nonetheless produces a monetary gain for the man. Olivia seems to have a choice: her passage to another man can result in a clearly monetary gain for her father, if she is sold, or it could produce a symbolic alliance between her father and another man, if she marries. The “choice” here is laughable, because, for Olivia, the end result is the same; she becomes someone’s property. For Olivia, the sexual nature of her captivity is particularly repugnant. Effectively, Olivia’s situation, promoted and accepted as it apparently is in civilized society, amounts to legalized rape. It also serves to marginalize Olivia as she becomes increasingly aware of her lack of a true position in her society. As Olivia ruefully admits to Conan, “Aye, civilized men sell their children as slaves to savages, sometimes. They call your race barbaric, Conan of Cimmeria” (190). Olivia acknowledges a contrast here between a civilization participant in and approving of a savage and barbaric custom, and a barbarian ethos that would never stoop to selling its children. Her awareness of the hypocritical nature of her civilized father and his world positions her at its boundaries. Moreover, her two-fold resistance to the treatment of her body as sexual goods reflects her growing resistance to civilization. First, of course, Olivia refused to marry the man her father chose; next, she willfully attempts to escape from her current owner, threatening even to drown herself— and thus destroy his property in the process. As unable as Olivia is to actually succeed in her defiance of her captor, she does join Conan at the edges of civilization. Indeed, when given a real choice — when Conan asks her seriously what she wants to do — she rejects civilization without hesitation. She announces that she will “go with [Conan], wherever [his] path may lie!” (216), explaining that he is “a barbarian, and I am an outcast, denied by my people. We are both pariahs, wanderers of the earth” (216). While Olivia’s earnest attachment of herself to Conan’s side, rather like a barnacle, might be somewhat less than a feminist rallying cry, it is radical in its repudiation of the society that created her. Unlike Conan, she is not born a barbarian; she does not have the advantage of his physical size or his linkage to nature. But, whereas Conan’s barbarian birth and body marks him as different, as other, to civilized society,

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Olivia’s choices, decisions that directly result from the treatment she receives as a woman, designate her, too, as “an outcast,” as other. Yet, clearly not all women in Conan’s society achieve that insight. Many accept the limits civilized society places over their minds, bodies, and sexualities. Livia, of “The Vale of Lost Women,” presents a particularly interesting example, because she has so clearly internalized her society’s consumerist construction of a woman’s sexuality. In many ways, “The Vale of Lost Women,” explores social construction of sexuality. It opens with an image of apparent male rape, as Livia’s gaze is fixed on “the naked, writhing figure of her brother, blood streaming down the quivering thighs” (303). Of course, Howard eventually gets around to explaining this scene as torture — but the scene itself remains erotically charged. Sexualized too is the “vale,” of the title, filled as it is with apparently lesbian women who give Livia a bit more than she had bargained for in her decision to join them. If Howard only hints at homoerotica in the beginning and end of the story, though, Livia’s use of her own body is painfully clear. She and her brother, a young scientist and magician, have fallen victim to black5 raiders, and Livia has watched his mutilation and death. Scarred into catatonic silence by that scene, Livia’s sight of the king responsible for her captivity and her brother’s death awakens her “to a sentient mold of live, quivering flesh, stinging and burning” (304). The sudden onslaught of hatred drowns out Livia’s pain and fear — simply, she wants revenge. Some degree of agency is implied in Livia’s desire to strike back against her oppressors, but her choice of action leaves much to be desired. In Conan’s world, women occasionally do physically fight back, and sometimes with a fair degree of success. The story “Black Colossus” even contains a mention of barbarian women fighting with swords as a matter of course, and Valeria, of “Red Nails,” has apparently fought off a whole series of would-be rapists. But Livia doesn’t even consider the possibility of direct action. Instead, she attempts to seduce and manipulate Conan, which says little about her ability to judge character. Livia appeals first to Conan’s racial identity, snarling that “You care naught that a man of your own color has been foully done to death by these black dogs — that a white woman is their slave!” (307). While Conan prefers blond women, Livia’s racist argument falls short of reason, since Conan has been known to “appropriate” his own girl slaves, with or without their permission, as in “Xuthal of the Dusk” Too, her argument implies that it is acceptable for white men to enslave white women, but not appropriate for black men to do so. Livia misses the point, unfortunately. Her racism is a red herring, leading her away from her real problem. In keeping with her society’s willingness to use a woman’s sexuality to cement a bargain between men,

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Livia tries to sell herself to Conan, offering him “a worthy reward ... a fairskinned virgin” (herself ) in return for the killing of her enemy. Conan quickly points out one flaw in her argument, that she does not, in fact, own her own body. Conan says, “You speak as if you were free to give yourself at your pleasure.... As if the gift of your body had power to swing kingdoms” (308). Conan’s use of the words “free” and “gift” imply that Livia seeks to merely share her body — but that’s not what she intends. Livia’s action constitutes an exchange, a trade; the price of her flesh is her captor’s death. To an extent, Conan’s criticism of Livia’s faulty logic is correct; the gift of her body would not “swing kingdoms,” but, as in the case of Olivia or Taramis, the capture or sale of a symbolic female body could result in an alliance between powerful men or a gain in power for a particular man. Livia, however, is trying to sell herself; she is not participant in an exchange between men, so her offer has no value. It does, however, correctly suggest that she has internalized her society’s view of female flesh as a commodity to be sold. Ironically, she meekly complains that “I see the absurdity of supposing that any man in this corner of the world would act according to rules and customs existent in another corner of the planet” (308). In fact, the supposedly barbaric culture in which she finds herself has acted perfectly in accordance with her own civilization; her own society might more delicately treat her as property, but she would still be a possession. As Conan points out, “If you had had men of the outlands guarding you instead of soft-gutted civilized weaklings, you would not be the slave of a black pig this night” (308). Livia’s captivity derives not from any fault of her own but from the weakness of her male guardians, who were unable to sustain their hold on their property in the face of fiercer male competition. Yet, when Conan at the end of the story decides to send Livia home — because she’s simply too weak to survive on her own — Livia sees not an insult but a boon: “Home? Ophir? My people? Cities, towers, peace, my home?” (317). Livia completely accepts her position in her own society, failing to see it reflected in what is, simply, a different kind of civilization. Conan’s reaction to Livia’s plight must be briefly addressed, for it is rife with difficulty. At first, Conan seems complicit in Livia’s racism, remarking on how tired he is of “black sluts” and arguing that he would take her “away from Bajujh, simply because of the color of her hide” (308). This is not the place to debate Conan’s or his creator’s racism — and it has already been addressed in other venues.6 Conan’s refusal to completely participate in or accept the sexual economy of women bears noting, however. The idea of a feminist Conan should evoke a rueful grin, but it’s nonetheless true that Conan’s ethical code forces him to exclaim that “I never forced a woman against her consent” (308). Too, the character is intelligent enough to see that

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accepting Livia’s price for her body would amount to rape, and he says as much: “I saw that to hold you to your bargain would be the same as if I had forced you” (316). Whether Conan’s dislike of rape derives from his own sense of freedom or the less noble fact that women have always pretty much immediately and literally thrown themselves at his feet is impossible to say. Clearly, civilization in Conan’s world puts a price on women’s heads — and the rest of their bodies. In “Red Nails,” Valeria, exasperated by the constant need to kill her would-be rapists exclaims, “Why won’t men let me live a man’s life?” (214). Conan’s reply, “That’s obvious!” (214), seems a little too banal, but he’s actually quite correct. Valeria is gendered female, not male, so civilization expects her to act according to the rules laid out for civilized women. Of all of the female characters in the Conan stories by Howard, Valeria is the least obedient and the most able to achieve independence. She’s stronger even than Bêlit, a pirate queen. Unlike Bêlit, Valeria does not throw herself at Conan’s feet at the first available opportunity, she is capable of killing most of the men — and women — who attack her, and she doesn’t fall prey to the stereotypical vice of female greed. “Red Nails,” presumably the last of the Conan stories by Howard, provides a fitting if not chronological conclusion to Conan’s relationships with women. Despite his discordant relationship with civilization, Conan has consistently sought it out. Howard implicitly envisions Conan as a social creature; he’s variously a pirate, a war-chief, a captain, a king. In order to be a leader, Conan must have someone to lead; he desires civilization even as he’s repelled by his perception of it. Throughout the Conan tales, civilized customs influence Conan, but he also demonstrates an awareness that he can maintain his own ethical system in the face of discordant traditions. He tells Livia that “The ways of men vary in different lands, but a man need not be a swine, wherever he is” (“The Vale of Lost Women” 316). Conan’s comment reveals that he can elect his own beliefs and reactions regardless of the “civilized” ways around him. While his body and his physical freedom may be confined by chains or by the demands of his kingdom, his mind, and not just his inner barbarian essence, are free. That freedom is also sought by the stronger of the women in the tales, those self-aware enough to realize that comfortable slavery is still slavery. Therefore, these women match Conan, reflecting back at him his own status as other. Together with, or combined with, one of those women, Conan completely meets the definition of the other. Thus, the character is only truly complete when shadowed by one of those women. The story “Red Nails” makes this conjunction very apparent. Valeria, like many other Howard heroines, makes her first appearance while she’s running away from something.

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Unlike their halting attempts at escape, however, hers is a controlled flight, at least to the extent that she’s prepared to defend herself. She has a horse, weapon, and, wonder of wonders, more or less appropriate clothing (apparently, all of the chain mail bikinis were sold out). Valeria also feels the need to escape because of something she has done, not something that was done to her; while at least two men have attempted to rape her in recent memory, she’s killed the latter of the two. In response to Conan’s suggestive advance, she promises to “spit [him] like a roast pig!” (215) and even Conan recognizes some danger in the possibility. Later in the story, she fights and kills ably. But Valeria’s intense strength also results in her presence in two scenes that emphasize female vulnerability — and the erotic possibilities of a bound, captive, naked female body. In the first, Valeria is the aggressor, stripping naked a woman who tried to drug her. “I’m going to strip you naked and tie you across that couch and whip you until you tell me what you were doing here, and who sent you!” (254) Valeria tells her victim, before she follows through on her graphic threat. Now, as even the American CIA recognizes, there are many and varied ways to torture someone, and the methods’ effectiveness at producing information varies wildly. In stripping her victim, Valeria demonstrates her total control over both her victim’s body and the victim’s sexuality, because her nakedness makes her vulnerable to rape. Valeria also humiliates her in the process. But the whipping doesn’t deliver sufficient bang for its buck, in the sense that, for all of the work Valeria puts into it, she gets very little information. The girl-on-girl beating reflects the usual social function of women in the tales, to fulfill male desires. For the reader, the graphic scene certainly has the potential to do just that. Ironically, at the end of the story, Valeria finds herself in the opposite position, no longer the torturer, but the tortured. Conan discovers her on an altar, “stark naked, her white flesh gleaming in shocking contrast to the glistening ebon stone” (275). Her arms and legs are stretched out and pinioned by a young man and a young woman, and she’s about to be sacrificed. After a villain attacks and slaughter ensues, only Conan, Valeria, and the woman who imprisoned her are left alive. Presumably, it would be easy for Conan and Valeria to capture the woman — Valeria has already whipped her senseless in an earlier scene, after all. But, instead, Valeria leaps upon her and kills her, stating that she “had to do that much, for my own self-respect” (281). Valeria’s comment might be interpreted as residual guilt over her lack of contribution to this final battle — but, more likely, it represents her reaction to being stripped naked and held down. In killing the woman who confined her, Valeria symbolically takes back her freedom. But the fact remains that, despite all of her strength and agency, Howard placed this consummately powerful female

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into a sexually titillating and vulnerable position for the gratification of his male readers. Indeed, Valeria herself represents a mediation between the possibilities of female agency and her own gendered identity. As Conan points out, Valeria can’t escape the simple fact of her femininity. As such, her identity is structured by her society. Like Conan, Valeria’s pursuit of freedom against her society’s wishes marginalizes her, making her other, but it also forces Howard to go to extravagant lengths to substantiate her femininity, which he does by including not one, but two female bondage scenes. If she can be subjected to such sexual humiliation, Howard implies, she must be female. Laura Mulvey, in her influential discussion of the purpose of the male gaze in film, pointed out that “In a world ordered by sexual imbalance, pleasure in looking has been split between active/male and passive/female. The determining male gaze projects its fantasy onto the female figure, which is styled accordingly” (19). Thus, what happens to Valeria is more about the needs of the reading/viewing audience than her own action or inaction. Valeria in those sexually debased moments isn’t a character in and of herself, but rather a narrative tool designed to provoke a response from the readers. Paired, Conan and Valeria represent each facet of the reader’s other — barbarian and powerful, yet also desirable and conquerable. Together, they also provide a foundation for questioning the gender ideology of the Conan tales. In Howard’s tales of Conan, two civilized forces construct both Conan and the various women as Other — the societies within the stories and the apparently civilized reader. Both Valeria and Conan reflect different aspects of the Other, and both are fully necessary to fulfill the reader’s expectations and desires of that Other. But many of their attributes are interchangeable to varying degrees; for example, in “A Witch Shall Be Born,” Conan finds himself gruesomely displayed on a cross. His body, “Naked but for a loin-cloth” (265), is prominently displayed; Howard spends several pages describing the torture inflicted upon that body and the pain that it feels. When freed, Conan eventually reacts much as Valeria did when she had the opportunity to get revenge: he kills lots of people. On display, dangled before the gaze of his enemies and the reader, Conan’s situation becomes almost indistinguishable from Valeria’s. The consequences of this likeness can be surprising. Conan himself, sword and all, appears extravagantly, exaggeratedly male, just as the women in all of their naked glory seem thoroughly female. But, as Judith Butler pointed out in the seminal Gender Trouble, drawing on the work of Foucault, among others, both sex and gender are socially constructed. Valeria and Conan are biologically female and male, even if Conan’s loincloth demurely hides what Valeria has no choice but to display. But are they socially male and

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female? The Conan stories position women as objects within societies, but also abundantly emphasize women’s sexual vulnerability. In doing so, they proffer the women to presumably male readers; as Rauch points out in a study of Western art, “As subject, the male invests the object with his libidinal wishful fantasies” (Rauch 79). In the Conan tales, the objectified narrative bodies of the women become the locus for those fantasies. But Conan’s body is also displayed, also fetishized, and also subjected to fantasy. Unfortunately for Conan, that fact puts him in a distinctly female position, for Western civilization, Howard, and the amorphous civilization of the Hyborian Age define femininity as vulnerability, as body on display. As Clover remarks of slasher films, “masculinity and femininity are more states of mind than body” (188). For the Hyborians, as Valeria demonstrated, the female is defined by her ability to be stripped naked, her body vulnerable and powerless. Conan, then, inhabits that territory more than once. Like Valeria, he can get revenge after the fact, taking back his manhood and his masculinity, but he can’t undo the subjectification of his body. He may be written male, but he doesn’t perform a male role. Ultimately, Conan’s complicated and difficult relationship with civilization reduces to two primary points. First, because of his nature, his body, and his choices, Conan opposes himself to civilized men. Yet, like a magnet, he’s constantly drawn back towards the cities and human groups that characterize civilization. In his resistance to civilization, he’s configured as the “other” to both the fictional civilized Hyborian groups and to the reader — different and desirable because of that difference. Hyborian women, already marginalized within their patriarchal societies, similarly reflect aspects of the other. Collectively, Conan and his women present a vision of the desirable other to the interested, voyeuristic reader. Secondly, however, Conan’s attraction to civilization boils down to another kind of attraction entirely. As he himself admits, Conan has two primary drives, war and sex. In war, he finds communion with men; in sex, with women. Essentially, in his relationships with his war buddies and his women, Conan repeatedly creates his own temporary, transient societies. Conan the Cimmerian, Conan the Barbarian — he’s not actually all that against civilization after all. He just wants civilization his way — or the highway.

Notes 1. This article utilizes the three volume collection of Howard’s Conan stories, published by Del Rey in 2002, 2003, and 2005, respectively. These volumes include Howard’s original tales in their order of composition.

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2. “Xuthal of the Dusk” is Howard’s original title for the story, but it was first published under the title “The Slithering Shadow.” 3. This story, unpublished during Howard’s lifetime, remained that way for a reason — Schweitzer describes it, with more than a hint of distaste, as the “worst Conan story” (52). 4. This story was originally published under the title “Shadows in the Moonlight.” 5. This story, “The Vale of Lost Women,” contains some of the most problematic — and racist — passages in Howard’s work. 6. Schweitzer, in Conan’s World and Robert E. Howard, suggests that Howard “was relatively liberal for his time and place” (27) but also points out that he viewed “Blacks as incurably savage and primitive” (28). In contrast, Ditommaso rejects Howard’s racism.

Works Cited Abusch, Tzvi. “The Development and Meaning of The Epic of Gilgamesh: An Interpretive Essay.” Journal of the American Oriental Society 121.4 (2001): 614–622. Boehmer, Elleke. “Transfiguring: Colonial Body into Postcolonial Narrative.” Novel: A Forum on Fiction 26.3 (1993) : 268–277. JSTOR. Web. July 25, 2010. Butler, Judith. Gender Trouble. 1990. New York: Routledge, 2006. Print. Campbell, Joseph. The Hero with a Thousand Faces. 3rd edition. Novato, CA: New World Library, 2008. Clover, Carol. “Her Body, Himself: Gender in the Slasher Film.” Misog yny, Misandry, and Misanthropy. Spec. issue of Representations 20 (1987) : 187–221. JSTOR. Web. July 25, 2010. DiTommaso, Lorenzo. “Robert E. Howard’s Hyborian Tales and the Question of Race in Fantastic Literature.” Extrapolation 37.2 (1996): 151–170. Print. The Epic of Gilgamesh. Trans. Andrew George. London: Penguin, 1999. Print. Herron, Don, ed. The Dark Barbarian: The Writings of Robert E. Howard. Westport, CT: Greenwood Press, 1984. Print. Howard, Robert E. “Black Colossus.” Weird Tales ( June 1933). Rpt. in The Coming of Conan the Cimmerian 151–184. _____. The Bloody Crown of Conan. New York: Del Rey, 2003. _____. The Coming of Conan the Cimmerian. New York: Del Rey, 2002. _____. The Conquering Sword of Conan. New York: Del Rey, 2005. _____. “The God in the Bowl.” The Coming of Conan the Cimmerian. 39–58. _____. “The Frost-Giant’s Daughter.” The Coming of Conan the Cimmerian. 29–38. _____. “Iron Shadows in the Moon.” Weird Tales (April 1934) as “Shadows in the Moonlight.” Rpt. in The Coming of Conan the Cimmerian 185–216. _____. “The Phoenix on the Sword.” Weird Tales (Dec. 1932). Rpt. in The Coming of Conan the Cimmerian 5–27. _____. “Queen of the Black Coast.” Weird Tales (May 1934). Rpt. in The Coming of Conan the Cimmerian 119–149. _____. “People of the Black Circle.” Weird Tales (Sept., Oct., Nov. 1934). Rpt. in The Bloody Crown of Conan 1–79. _____. “Red Nails.” Weird Tales ( July, Aug.-Sept., Oct., 1936). Rpt. in The Conquering Sword of Conan 209–281. _____. “The Scarlet Citadel.” Weird Tales ( Jan. 1933). Rpt. in The Coming of Conan the Cimmerian 83–118. _____. “The Tower of the Elephant.” Weird Tales (March 1933). Rpt. in The Coming of Conan the Cimmerian 59–81. _____. “Vale of Lost Women.” Magazine of Horror (Spring 1967). Rpt. in The Coming of Conan the Cimmerian 301–317. _____. “A Witch Shall Be Born.” Weird Tales (Dec. 1934). Rpt. in The Bloody Crown of Conan 255–301.

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_____. “Xuthal of the Dusk.” Weird Tales (Sep. 1933) as “The Slithering Shadow.” Rpt. in The Coming of Conan the Cimmerian 217–247. Leiber, Fritz. “Howard’s Fantasy.” Herron 3–15. Print. Lord, Glenn. “Robert E. Howard: Professional Writer.” Herron 135–147. Mulvey, Laura. “Visual Pleasure and Narrative Cinema.” Visual and Other Pleasures. 2nd ed. New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2009. 14–27. Rauch, Angelika. “The Trauerspiel of the Prostituted Body, or Woman as Allegory of Modernity.” Popular Narrative, Popular Images. Spec. issue of Cultural Critique 10 (1988) : 77– 88. JSTOR. Web. July 25, 2010. Rubin, Gayle. “The Traffic in Women: Notes on the ‘Political Economy’ of Sex.” Toward an Anthropolog y of Women. Ed. Rayna Reiter. New York: Monthly Review, 1975. 157–210. Schweitzer, Darrell. Conan’s World and Robert E. Howard. San Bernardino, CA: Borgo Press, 1988. Print.

Robert E. Howard’s Barbarian and the Western A Study of Conan Through the West and the Western Hero DANIEL WEISS There is no doubt of the popularity of Robert E. Howard’s most famous character, Conan the Barbarian. While analyses and scholarly collections have sporadically come out in the last thirty years, there appears to be two questions in the background of Howard studies: Why study Conan or Howard at all? And secondly, why are his characters so popular? I would argue that the second question, in part, answers the first. As icons of popular culture, we cannot ignore the popularity of Howard’s stories and characters. More specifically, Conan is a character that has endured many generations, spawned many imitators, and has transcended genres and mediums. Whether denounced as low brow (in comparison, let’s say, to J.R.R. Tolkien’s Lord of the Rings fantasy trilogy), or simply as a figure of cult interest and popular culture, Conan the Barbarian is a figure worthy of academic scrutiny.1 Conan’s endurance lies at the intersection of characteristics, ideas, and philosophies that align him with the most beloved of American genres, the western. The western is a quintessentially American genre and has held a cultural poignancy since its inception.2 In this discussion, I will examine the structure and efficacy of the western through an exploration of several western novels and how they relate to Conan and the Conan stories. Specifically, I will examine the handling of the body, justice and honor, and ideas of landscape, progress and civilization.3 To begin, Howard’s personal interests, and his geographical and historical context, constructed a framework that created an easy familiarity with both a lived western experience and an imagined one. Growing up in Cross Plains, Texas, during the oil boom (roughly from the Spindletop Strike of 1901 to newly enacted government regulations on the oil industry in the 1940s), Howard was familiar with a “variety of character types,” and the 70

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history of his region was not lost on him. Howard was also interested in frontier life and this helped shaped his worldview and fiction.4 “Howard’s wealth of knowledge concerning feuds, gunfights, Indian attacks, and range wars, as well as the more mundane aspects of frontier life, would stand him in good stead when he was later to create his many westerns” (Cerasini 4). Howard’s life in Texas was shaped by Texan history, while at the same time, he fantasized about distant lands. But his interest in western history — its influence on the American imagination — was never far from his mind.5 Ben Indick writes, “It was his [Howard’s] own land, the American West, with its very particular type of violence and romance which would appeal increasingly to Howard as he matured” (99). Howard recognized the broad appeal of the western narrative in its limning of violence, place, and identity. Howard had a unique view of the West, for he lived during a time when he could witness first-hand the West in a single temporal moment. Similarly, Howard’s personal experience can be contextualized within a larger framework of western history, and this positioned Howard as a living witness to how the West was changing. The novel of the West and its heroes embody a complex set of ideas that define individual heroism and address larger issues of the American story. As a genre within popular culture, the western is a cultural force and a powerful element in the American imagination that fulfills fantasies of escapism, masculinity, and heroism. At the same time, the western continually works and reworks issues of American history and identity to reconcile the imagined images and myth of the West with its “realities.” Lee Clark Mitchell’s work, Westerns, analyzes the western, its popularity, and its cultural resonance. He writes, “Popular culture is not simply escapist but embodies critiques of issues that cultural czars had blithely assumed were invisible to a diverted mass audience” (20). The western has reflected, revised, and created the American story — cowboys and Indians, gunfights, immigration, land use, and Manifest Destiny. In fact, more current renditions of the western and anti-western continue to reflect, affirm or revise views of the basic attributes westerns have been working out since its inception.6 At the same time, the western is not entirely about gunfights, jail breaks, Indians, and the love of the horse. Those are its images and forms. Importantly, the western is concerned with A set of problems recurring in endless combination: the problem of progress, envisioned as a passing of frontiers; the problem of honor, defined in a context of social expediency; the problem of law or justice, enacted in a conflict of vengeance and social control; the problem of violence, in acknowledging its value yet honoring occasions when it can be controlled; and subsuming all,

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These issues correspond to Howard’s Conan stories as: ideas of masculinity and the body, ideas of law and justice whose outcomes are rooted in violence, notions of progress that limns the tensions between individual free will and desire on one hand and empire and destiny and ideas of civilization and barbarism on the other (this also contains the tension between the natural world and man’s desire for economic appropriation). Through these key elements, the Conan stories originate from and intersect the western genre, and further, they define the roots of Conan’s popularity and importance in American culture. Defining Conan’s popularity, however, is not merely to state why he is a beloved figure. It is to understand the complex struggles of these issues inherent in the western that are also played out in another sub-genre, the heroic fantasy.

The Body A key characteristic of the western is its reliance on the western hero’s body. The hero’s body is caught in the spectator’s gaze and is an object that demands spectatorship. Like the body in the western, Conan’s body centers the gaze and is a way through which Conan and his adventures can be read. Description of Conan’s body frames him as an individual of difference. His physicality represents that Conan is more dangerous, larger than life, more beautiful, more wild, greater in stature, more violent, etc. than other men. These attributes are coded through body description. He is constantly described as having “smoldering gray eyes,” “black locks,” and is a “giant of a man” with “corded” muscles. Physicality focuses the body in the scopic field and construes that other attributes — justice, fairness, honor — will be coded through the body at a visual level. Conan’s body contains the codes with which he can be read. Others may possess similar physical attributes in usually lesser qualities or in fewer combinations, but Conan’s bodily descriptions map the violence that defines his moral agency and his desire to protect others. In “Xuthal of the Dusk,” “[Conan] stood like a bronze image in the sand, apparently impervious to the murderous sun, though his only garment was a silk loin-cloth, girdled by a wide gold-buckled belt from which hung a saber and a broad-bladed poniard. On his clean cut limbs were evidences of healed wounds.... At his feet rested a girl” (219). Conan frees Natala, a slave girl in a seraglio, before a massive battle kills everyone involved. Conan’s clean cut, Greek god-like descrip-

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tion stands in contrast to the baseness of his recent fighting and the oppressive landscape. More importantly, this image affirms that the focus of the body in the western and the Conan stories is about Conan as a man, not about women.7 A beautiful, near nude woman is near him, but the focus is on Conan’s body, not hers. The body defines cultural desires and cultural anxieties while it codifies these enterprises in the basic struggles of a man fighting for his life, a woman, or an idea. In Howard’s “Black Colossus,” the difference between vitality (good) and old age (evil) is also coded through Conan’s body. Descriptions such as “age-old,” “mysterious ruins,” “colossal monuments of desolation and decay,” “grim relics of another, forgotten age” (153) characterize the land with great age, and that age represents evil and decay. The ancient lands stand in contrast to Conan’s vitality. Yasmela, who desires Conan’s help, is drawn to Conan and his innate aura of youth and vigorous life. Conan takes his cloak off to clothe the naked princess who desires comfort against a nightmare she experienced. He seated himself near her on a boulder, his broadsword across his knees. With the firelight glinting from his blue steel armor, he seemed like an image of steel — dynamic power for the moment quiescent; not resting, but motionless for the instant, awaiting the signal to plunge again into terrific action. The firelight played on his features, making them seem as if carved out of substance shadowy yet hard as steel. They were immobile, but his eyes smoldered with fierce life. He was not merely a wild man; he was part of the wild, one with the untamable elements of life; in his veins ran the blood of the wolfpack; in his brain lurked the brooding depths of the northern light; his heart throbbed with the fire of blazing forests [172].

Conan’s physicality represents his ability to overcome fear produced from the unknown, and to reduce the supernatural to its base premise, which is usually grounded in fact, or at least, in flesh. If it can be cut with sword, Conan can destroy it. Yasmela fears that which she does not understand, yet Conan, who is the barbarian, fears little. That Conan’s features are “hard as steel” construe a temperament that is based, ironically, on facts, as much as it is based upon years of hard living. In this way, Conan’s body represents an uncluttered intellect, unsullied with the political cravings, irrational desires, or other distractions a civilized man suffers. Conan’s physical features code the way in which Conan acts, is perceived, and how he perceives his world. Along with description of the hero’s body is its torture, injury, and finally, convalescence. In “A Witch Shall Be Born,” the evil Salome comes to supplant her twin sister, Taramis, queen of Khauran. Believed to have died at birth, the evil twin desires to eliminate potential competition in her quest for dom-

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ination over Khauran, so Conan of the Free Mercenaries is attacked, surprised by the evil sister’s warriors, and is overcome. He is taken captive, and is crucified.8 By the side of the caravan road a heavy cross had been planted, and on this grim tree a man hung, nailed there by iron spikes through his hands and feet. Naked but for a loin-cloth, the man was almost a giant in stature, and his muscles stood out in thick corded ridges on limbs and body, which the sun had long ago burned brown. The perspiration of agony beaded his face and his mighty breast, but from under the tangled black mane that fell over his low, broad forehead, his blue eyes glazed with an unquenched fire [267].

Conan’s body and crucifixion are ironically not the image of a dying Christ. Conan will not die for man’s sins, instead, his body is idyllic and is an axiological representation of his spirit and desire for life in its basic foundations. The focus on the body in the western, according to Lee Clark Mitchell, is a dialectic of the masculine. He argues that the western contains a “persistent obsession with masculinity” (3). Though the western novel negotiates many important issues, one central to its working out of ideological struggles and American identity centers around the idea of what Mitchell calls, “making the man.” He outlines his position in this way: From the beginning, the western has fretted over the construction of masculinity, whether in terms of gender (women) maturation (sons) honor (restraint) or self-transformation (the West itself ). The western may be “a cuckoo of a genre” (in Philip French’s words), “ready to seize anything that’s in the air from juvenile delinquency to ecology,” but it is also deeply haunted by the problem of becoming a man [4].

Questions of masculinity and hyper-masculinity abound in the discussion of the western and the Conan stories. However, rather than being a criticism, “making the man” invokes foundational questions about the American character, how to read the American story, and finally, why these stories endure. The importance of Conan’s body is founded on clear edicts codified in the western novel. The meta-text of the body is one element that structurally aligns the Conan stories with the novel of the West. The body as code can be read, for instance, in Edward Wheeler’s Deadwood Dick, Owen Wister’s important The Virginian, and Vardis Fisher’s Mountain Man. The focus on Conan’s body, as seen in the discussion above, is a foundational characteristic of the western novel. It marks the physical, in terms of physicality, vigor, and sexuality, and the meta-physical, in terms of what the body maps or foreshadows within certain intra-personal and cultural contexts. Lengthy descriptions of the hero’s (or anti-hero’s) body is a strategy that represents individual codes of conduct, signals who is the hero, and impor-

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tantly, it produces desire in terms of the hero becoming objects of others’ individual desire. In the opening chapter of Deadwood Dick, the narrator describes Fearless Frank: He was about medium stature, and as straight and square-shouldered as an athlete. His complexion was nut-brown, from long exposure to the sun; hair of a hue of the raven’s wing, and hanging in long, straight strands adown his back; eyes black and piercing as an eagle’s; features well molded, with a firm, resolute mouth and prominent chin. He was an interesting specimen of young, healthy manhood, and, even though a youth in years, was one that could command respect, if not admiration, wheresoever he might choose to go [273].

This passage provides information about Fearless Frank, of course, beginning with his name. He is described as a good looking youth, which is fitting, for the West was a place of bodily rejuvenation and spiritual and financial hope. Frank is a specimen and his description notes him as something other than typical. He is what one desires to see in the western hero. In other words, if we go out West, we desire to be like Frank, or a step further, we become Frank. The larger-than-life hero and his exploits are in contradistinction to the realities of western life, but Frank is an ideal, and thus, we invest our own desires in Frank and his success. The opening scene in Wister’s The Virginian is the standard for masculinity, youth, violent possibility, and heroism in the novel of the West. “Then for the first time I noticed a man who sat on the high gate of the corral, looking on. For he now climbed down with the undulations of a tiger, smooth and easy, as if his muscles flowed beneath his skin.... A passenger remarked, ‘That man knows his business’” (2). A few paragraphs later, “Lounging there at ease against the wall was a slim young giant, more beautiful than in pictures. His broad, soft hat was pushed back; a loose-knotted, dull-scarlet handkerchief sagged from his throat, and one casual thumb was hooked in the cartridgebelt that slanted across his hips” (3). Like the quoted sequence earlier in Deadwood Dick, these opening remarks are telling in staging the individual characteristics of the hero within the broader expectations of the genre. It later becomes clear to the Wyoming newcomers that the West was a place of danger and violence. In opposition to the identity of the Virginian, the newcomers are uncertain, dusty, and naïve about their environment. But the harsh climate, lack of Eastern amenities, and deadly encounters (outlaws, crooked sheriffs, Indians, Mexicans, Mormons) are superseded by the reinforcement of an American cultural ethos that the West is something to be desired and appropriated for oneself. Difficulties aside, the Virginian is at ease and confident. While there is a kind of sexual intrusion in the spectator’s view of the

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Virginian, there is also a solicitation in the Virginian’s casual pose with his thumb hooked around his gun belt. The Virginian is an object of desire, but one not to be appropriated. He is the ideal to which all newcomers aspire to be. Fisher’s Mountain Man positions rough living in the mountains of the West with an equally rough character. The hero is a twenty-seven year old man who originally came from the East. The novel’s tone paints the West as having a harsh environment, one where only the toughest can survive. The landscape frames the hero as equally qualified as his body is displayed: He was a giant, even among mountain men of the American West. Without his moccasins he stood six foot four, and without his clothing weighed about two hundred pounds.... He admired courage above all other virtues; next to that he admired fortitude; and third among the few values by which he lived was mercy to the weak and defenseless. His passions were love of life, mortal combat with a worthy foe, good music, good food, and that quality of nature which would compel a poet to say, a hundred years later, that its heartbreaking beauty would remain when there would no longer be a heart to break for it [5].

The mountain man’s characteristics align themselves with the way Conan’s body can be read. Both bodies code “courage,” “fortitude,” and “mercy to the weak and defenseless.” In fact, this passage from Mountain Man could easily have been in a Conan story. Interestingly, the opening sequences construe a discontinuity between the mountain man’s origins against total immersion in the West: you are always a kind of alien in the West. The mountain man relates the beauty and sounds of the landscape with his eastern upbringing: “He had learned that playing Bach or Mozart arias when in an enemy country was not only good for his loneliness.... Back home and far away, his father might be playing the pianoforte” (3). While the mountain man is separated from his “own kind”— spatially through great distance, and by his eastern origins (everyone comes from somewhere else with different backgrounds)— Conan is also separated from other men. His “barbaric” values and cultural origins that many men taunt him for, in fact, make Conan the western hero. Many people in the lands Conan travels know Cimmeria only as myth or have never heard of it at all. “The north was a mazy half-mythical realm” (“Queen of the Black Coast” 127). In an interesting twist, the hero of the West is alienated by the context that creates him just as Conan’s origins alienate him from civilized men. Alienation is coded through the extraordinary physicality the western hero possesses. Physical characteristics help code the mountain man’s narrative as a western one where the body invokes a familiar set of codes and settings to the

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western genre. It is at this location that the reader recognizes the narrative formula in terms of form and content. The body reveals itself towards this end, and ultimately, the violence of the West and the physicality of the mountain man will eventually clash. The scopic view that captures the images of the Virginian and Fearless Frank structure the way in which the western highlights and codes its heroes in the same way that Howard utilized Conan’s physical descriptions. Conan’s hyper-masculine body evokes desire and functions to signal the meta-physical issues that are specific to the western hero in general.

Honor and the Means to Achieve It Another major element that links Conan and the American western hero is their relationship to honor and justice. Both Conan and the western hero have a strong sense of individual honor, and they act to uphold their sense of justice whether within the confines of the law or not. Honor is “based not on good character but on a man’s strength and power to enforce his will on others” (Nisbett and Cohen 4). Personal effrontery, insult to others, or a transgression of moral code is a call to action, accomplished through quick and decisive violence. Moral code and honor are linked, and challenges to them arise serendipitously. Random challenges interrupt a hero’s prior goal or objective, and thus, Conan continually alters his course to help those being wronged. For example, in Howard’s “Tower of the Elephant,” Conan is a young thief who partners up with the “prince of thieves” to steal rumored jewels and wealth from the tower, specifically, the Heart of the Elephant. Not unlike the many westerns whose plots center around lust for gold, land speculation, or other bounties, Conan also seeks his fortune. The prince of thieves is killed, and as Conan defeats the inner obstacles as he travels further into the tower, he encounters Yag-kosha, an ancient god, who is tortured and enslaved by an evil wizard. The enslaved god lays out his sad history, and Conan, who is emotionally moved by the dying god’s story, alters his objective in order to help Yag-kosha. Yag-kosha says, He [his captor] pent me in this tower which at his command I built for him in a single night. By fire and rack he mastered me, and by strange and unearthly tortures you would not understand. In agony I would long ago have taken my own life, if I could. But he kept me alive — mangled, blinded, and broken.... I feel the end of my time draw near. You are the hand of Fate [79].

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The manner in which Conan is to end the god’s suffering is through the destruction of the object Conan had come to claim, the legendary Elephant’s Heart jewel. Ironically, it is the real heart of the elephant god he must destroy instead of claiming the jewel. There is no wavering; Conan is decisive in helping the tortured god. “It did not occur to him to ignore the instruction given to him” (80). The western hero is a loner, alienated from his own land. He is separated from other men through his individual history and his will to assert his own moral code in lieu of individual desires. He aids the weak or oppressed who do not have the necessary strength, both literally and metaphorically, to overcome their oppression or mortal danger. In this story, Conan identifies with the alienation of the ancient god and immediately, Conan desires to help free him. This outweighs Conan’s original desire for personal wealth. Conan delivers the ancient god’s revenge to the evil wizard, and in doing so, it affirms Conan’s ideological stance: vengeance against those who oppress the weak. The hero is the ideal and desired by all byway of his seeming freedom from social constraints (regular employment, domestic responsibilities, etc); yet, in an ironic turn, the hero’s responsibilities — i.e., what makes him a hero — often limits personal freedom through his abnegation of personal desire in lieu of other individual or communal quests. The most common way Conan asserts his sense of honor is through the saving of various women. Women in the Hyborian age are not unlike those in the western: there are some who can wield a gun (Reddie Bayne in Zane Grey’s The Trail Driver, or a sword (Valeria in “Red Nails”), but more than not, they need to be saved. In Howard’s “The Vale of Lost Women,” a white hostage, Livia, is captured by a southern black tribe. Surprised to see a white man in the black kingdoms, Livia sneaks into Conan’s hut and tells him about her brother’s murder and her enslavement. Equally surprised, Conan is slow to respond. Livia impatiently says, “‘Are you but a beast like these others? Ah, Mitra, once I thought there was honor in men’” (307). While Conan had come to an opposing tribe with his own black warriors to discuss alliances, he alters his plans in the service of saving Livia. Put simply by Tina in “The Black Stranger,” “‘Conan would not harm us.... He lives up to his barbaric code of honor, but they [her kinsmen] are men who have lost all their honor” (165). Though set on one adventure, Conan’s sense of honor dictates a reworking of his own plans in order to save the girl. Conan’s moral agency originates in earlier forms of the western hero, for instance, in James Fenimore Cooper’s Leatherstocking Tales, and its hero, Natty Bumppo. Bumppo’s sense of honor, fueled by a unique moral code, guides his actions. Though reluctant to act violently, Bumppo is a “man without a cross,” an aphorism with multiple meanings including Bumppo’s belief

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that his blood is not tainted by Indian blood, or metaphysically, that he does not carry the sins of man. At the same time, Bumppo’s declaration also indicates that there is little to clutter his sense of moral agency. A cross is an intersection of difference. For Bumppo, his actions and thoughts are guided without indecision. Bumppo stands in contrast to both Indians and other white men in terms of his honor. In Last of the Mohicans, in a parlay between the British officer Duncan Heyward and the French army’s Maquis de Montcalm, Heyward is asked to have his security detail moved back beyond the meeting space. Heyward says, “‘It is not our interest, sir, to betray no distrust’” (184). Colonel Munro of the British forces will surrender Fort Henry to the French, but the French will allow the British to keep their arms and their colors (an honorable surrender). “‘Our march; the surrender of the place? / Shall be done in a way most honourable to yourselves’ [Maquis de Montcolm]” (187). However, the French either knowingly, or have no control, over the Indians led by the renegade Magua who massacres the surrendering British. This central scene of the novel, the massacre of Fort Henry, contextualizes how honor is handled by various parties, and sets the stage for the (alienated) hero to adopt a new cause. Natty Bumppo, like Conan, witnesses that honor and justice in the world at large is motivated by individual desires such as greed, lust, and power, or in affirming national or ethnic superiorities rather than in keeping one’s word. The hero’s responsibility, both for Conan and the western hero, is to delay or to completely abnegate one’s own individual objective or quest for the assumption of a random or unforeseen new objective whose center agents are some kind of individual material subject (victim) or a larger ideological injustice that must be righted (governmental enslavement or oppression, genocide, protection of civilization). Bumppo’s involvement in saving Munro’s daughters is not Bumppo’s fight, but he assumes it. After bringing Munro’s daughters, Alice and Cora, to the fort to see their father, Bumppo assumes a mission to rescue them after they are taken captive after the Fort Henry massacre. Bumppo says, “I have been on many a shocking field, and have followed a trail of blood for weary miles,” he said, “but never have I found the hand of the devil so plain as it is here to be seen! Revenge is an Indian feeling, and all who know me, know that there is no cross in my veins; but this much will I say — here in the face of heaven, and with the power of the Lord so manifest in this howling wilderness, that should these Frenchers ever trust themselves again with the range of a ragged bullet, there is one rifle shall play its part, so long as flint will fire, or powder burn!” [208].

When Bumppo witnesses an injustice, he alters his own current objective and sets a new one to right a wrong. Bumppo’s will to action is about honoring

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one’s word and upholding his sense of fairness and protecting those who have been wronged. Transgressions against honor play a direct part in the actions of Wister’s The Virginian. The conflict in The Virginian circles around two main plots: the bringing to justice cattle rustlers and the Virginian’s love for Molly. The problem with the first plot string is that it interferes with the second one. In other words, the relationship between the “wild” Virginian and the domestic school marm inherently calls into question the Virginian’s ability to continue to be who he is. Trampas, the villain of the story, leads a ring of cattle rustlers that the Virginian must bring to justice. Tension builds throughout the novel between Trampas and the Virginian, a flirtation of the coming climax at the end of the text. Reputation identifies a man and structures how others perceive him. Thus, when affronted with false allegations, the western hero needs to rectify wrongful accusations or rumors. It was now the Virginian’s turn to bet, or leave the game, and he did not speak at once. Therefore, Trampas spoke. “Your bet, you son-of-a-.”

The Virginian’s pistol came out, and his hand lay on the table, holding it unaimed. And with a voice as gentle as ever, the voice that sounded almost like a caress, but drawling a little more than usual, so that there was almost a space between each word, he issued his orders to the man Trampas: “When you call me that, smile” [21].

This famous passage suggests the ambiguity of thought and motivation as expressed through language and speech. There is “space” between the words where individual agency and cultural ideologies struggle for meaning. The slippage between what is verbalized and the meaning it attempts to communicate is solved by direct action, thus, the Virginian brings his weapon to bear. The card game takes place among other men, and in the face of being insulted, it is the western hero’s responsibility to reaffirm his position and identity, to oneself, to others, and to community. If the Virginian were to let the effrontery slide without address, not only would his position as leader immediately become lessened but it would also call into question the nature of his identity. In the Conan stories, Conan’s strategy to rectify transgressions against honor is through violence, the most direct and simplest of approaches that avoids the bricolage of verbal fencing: “‘Civilized men are more discourteous than savages because they know they can be impolite without having their skulls split’” (“Tower of the Elephant” 63). From an individual perspective, honor must be defended. More importantly, defending honor signals a dialogical process that continually defines space, juridical institution, and

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community health. In these contexts (the West or Hyborea), defense of honor through violence stabilizes and codifies these essentialist ideas that are constantly challenged. The cultural pressure to address the effrontery becomes the crux of the dilemma the Virginian faces. At the end of the novel, Trampas creates the scenario that problematizes the Virginian’s “hero function” and whether or not he deserves Molly’s love. Molly forbids him to fight and says that if he chooses the gunfight with Trampas over her, the Virginian would lose her. But the Virginian must face Trampas in order to personally and culturally earn the right to be loved by the most beautiful woman in the novel. “Perplexity knotted the Virginian’s brows. This community knew that a man had implied [the Virginian] was a thief and a murderer; it also knew that he knew it.... Could he avoid meeting the man.... Could he for her sake leave unanswered a talking enemy upon the field?” (335). In The Virginian, there is a distinction between good and evil, but as the western genre has developed, that will not always be the case.9 Often, the western hero stands outside of the law. The Virginian is not the sheriff, thus, his actions do not affirm juridical institutions. However, the West was about the law of the individual and his upholding honor and justice. In the Virginian’s killing of Trampas, order is restored and justice done, and the cultural desire to rally around both real and symbolic representations of the West withstand another test. Like the western hero, Conan clearly stands outside of the law in whatever country he occupies. He makes his own law, but abides by a strict code of fairness and justice. Mark Finn sums up Conan’s moral stance: “A singular, moral man against a horde of immoral adversaries can be found in the stories of Conan the Barbarian” (17). Conan stands quite markedly against the backdrop of outlaws, thieves, and murderers on one hand, and deceitful, transgressive and imperialistic governmental/national institutions on the other. Most often, soldiers are portrayed as weak and self serving and governments are characterized as endemically oppressive. Like the western hero, Conan is forced to break the law because the institutions and their agents are immoral and self-serving. In addition, the serendipitous nature of Conan’s adventures is a similar characteristic in the western. Adventures or dangerous situations arise without warning and without premeditation that demand immediate attention to defeat these new challenges. Transgressions to one’s honor and moral code that have little initially to do with the hero become the hero’s burden. Defense of honor and injustice is limned in an early sequence in Zane Grey’s Riders of the Purple Sage. Jane Witherspeen is trying to protect Venters from a group

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of Mormons led by the villainous Tull. Witherspeen is the heiress of a wealthy ranch, but is part of a patriarchal, fundamentalist Mormon community who refuses to accept a single woman as ranch owner or tolerate her fraternization with non–Mormons in any kind of personal way (employment of them is acceptable). Jane refuses to marry Tull, and against Mormon doctrine, remains single and the mistress of her father’s wealthy estate. Venters, once a loyal employee, is in mortal danger. Before Venters is whipped, which would affirm Witherspeen’s lack of real power and affirm the Mormon community as all powerful, a man appears out of the horizon. “Jane Withersteen wheeled and saw a horseman, silhouetted against the western sky, come riding out of the sage” (7). Like Conan often does, Lassiter appears out of nowhere, but arrives in time to rescue Venters and to uphold Jane’s sense of justice. After interviewing Jane about the character of Venters and the Mormon confrontation, Lassiter says to the Mormons, “‘Listen! ... He stays.’ The rider [Lassiter] dropped his sombrero and made a rapid movement, singular in that it left him somewhat crouched, arms bent and stiff, with the big black gun-sheaths swung round the fore” (11). Lassiter’s journey intersects the happenings between Jane and the Mormons at this random moment, and sets up the violent climax at the end of the novel where Lassiter re-balances the scales of justice. Part of the allure of the western hero and of Conan is that they have no pre-determined course. Adventure finds them. They live carefree, and in the famous declaration in “Queen of the Black Coast,” Conan says, “‘I live, I burn with life, I love, I slay, and am content’” (133). The heroes’ adventures fall upon them serendipitously in a way where lesser men could easily turn away and continue on with their own insular objectives. But the western hero and Conan choose, with few words, to undertake the rectification of injustice to others or to themselves. In this way, they are larger than life and have sustained generations of popularity through the violence they bring to bear in the service of honor and justice.

Landscape, Progress and Civilization Finally, landscape in the novel of the West and in the Conan stories play a crucial role. First, I will explore how landscape in the novel of the West is depicted and analyze its function, then draw parallels to the Conan stories: the western novel lies at the origins of Conan and the Conan stories, yet it’s their dialogic relationship that enforces and reinforces genre conventions and cultural poignancy. The novel of the West describes the landscape, but it functions in specific ways that transcend surface beauty. Like the body, land-

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scape represents more than its images. It not only defines space but also the ideological struggles in culture. The West is about landscape and American identity is tied up in perceptions of landscape, space, and human interaction with the natural world. One of the foremost elements in the literature of the West, or what Shannon Applegate calls the “literature of loneliness” is the intimate relationship between landscape and human presence.10 Texts such as Ross Calvin’s Sky Determines describe the inseparable relationship between the observer and western geography. He writes of the history of New Mexico: “History has not taken place under a roof ... [It is] the Land of Desert, Mesa, and Mountain” (3, 5). Writers including William Bevis, Mary Austin, and Ivan Doig reinforce the tradition between the intricate and necessary relationship between landscape and man in the West. The landscape of the West is the visible sign imaging the desire of movement, immigration, and immersion. Carl Brendahl writes, “The westerner finds himself accepting the landscape and indeed embracing it for physical and spiritual sustenance. Even the most imposing of surfaces- the landscapes of eastern Utah or the Dakota Badlands — seem to share a vulnerability with man while at the same time offering a visible stability” (30). One of the misconceptions of the West as it has been historically perceived (and to a large extent still is in popular culture) was that it could be represented easily. The West was a vast and varied region that differed significantly from place to place in flora and fauna, climate and terrain. However, the West was characterized in the American imagination as one whole, grandiose place where desire, hope, and destiny were equally invested. Landscape and natural space function similarly in the western and the Conan stories. A discussion of landscape imagery and its function reveals complex relationships among people, culture, and history. In the Conan stories, landscape highlights the age of the world and evidences the ephemeral quality of civilization. Landscape reflects cultural age, foreshadows danger, or signals psychological tension. Valeria, in “Red Nails,” finds that “The silence of the forest depressed her. No birds sang in the lofty boughs, nor did any rustling in the bushes indicate the presence of any small animals” (213), or that rank jungles forebode death rather than hope and prosperity: Weeds and rank river grass grew between the stones of broken piers and shattered paves that had once been streets and spacious plazas and broad courts. From all sides except that toward the river, the jungle crept in, masking fallen columns and crumbling mounds with poisonous green [“Queen of the Black Coast” 134].

Landscape reflects the evil or darkness of civilization itself; beauty is rarely registered. At the same time, landscape is important for it sets the scene of

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the coming danger and violence. In this respect, it functions like landscape in the western, and follows Mitchell’s discussion of landscape and Cooper.11 Cooper’s landscape is romantic and idealized while it stages the violence man brings against other white men, European, or Indian alike. The landscape in Howard’s “Beyond the Black River” is represented in multi-faceted and sometimes contradictory ways compared to the rest of the Conan stories. On one hand, we see the typical rendering of landscape in the Conan stories where landscape is a place of ancient age and evil, particularly when it contextualizes man against natural evolution: finite temporality against epic historicity. This familiar rendering of landscape is characteristic of Hyborea in general where Howard was concerned with the cycles of history, and thus, the landscape is marked, sometimes scarified, with the remnants of older, often, evil cultures. But landscape in “Beyond” is atypical and closely resembles that of the western. The forest intersects traditional characterizations of western landscape as a place of innocence, renewal, and hopeful expectation. Ironically, in this paradigm, the meta-text of landscape as a utopian ideal problematizes strict identification and definition. Like the traditional western, landscape in “Beyond” posits the polarization of contradictory ideas in terms of representing the other (foreigner, Indian), while the language of beauty, civilization, and progress conceals colonial aspirations that align this story with the ideological stances the western novel stakes out. “Beyond” finds settlers desiring lands that extend beyond settled areas. They desire to push into, and appropriate, Pictish lands, beyond Thunder River. “Beyond the river the primitive still reigned in shadowy forests” (54). The Aquilonians, for whom Conan scouts for, desire the Pictish lands since they are not settled according to “rules” of good land use. This ideology of determining land use by the dominant culture against other groups’ rights to continue ownership of that land, characterizes Indian displacement and removal between Americans and the American Indian. The question of land ownership and its use characterizes “Beyond” as a frontier story. First, the land has not yet been settled. There are few ancient ruins here (at least from the Aquilonians’ perspective) and the forest is, at times, described in the language of hope and desire. “The stillness of the forest trail was so primeval” (45). We can compare this to a description of landscape in Cooper’s The Deerslayer: “Wherever the eye turned, nothing met it but the mirrorlike surface of the lake, the placid view of heaven, and the dense setting of woods” (19). Landscape in the western also contains its own magic. Like the magic that binds the forest in “Beyond,” the beholder of the landscape experiences a kind of new reality, an emotional, psychological, and personal experience.12 Even in more recent renditions of the western, the land-

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scape holds a kind of magic for the beholder. In Cormac McCarthy’s All the Pretty Horses, John Grady Cole and his best friend Lacey Rawlins leave for old Mexico. Their idealized perspective of old Mexico is mirrored in the description of the land: They climbed steadily into the deepening cool of the mountains until in the evening of that day from the crest of the cordilleras they saw below them the country of which they’d been told. The grasslands lay in a deep violet haze and to the west thin flights of waterfowl were moving north before the sunset in the deep red galleries under the cloudbanks like schoolfish in a burning sea and on the foreland plain they saw vaqueros driving cattle before them through a gauze of golden dust [93].

Cole and Rawlins fail to understand that the landscape embodies a culture that was not theirs. They idealize the land in romantic overtones not understanding that it was populated by another people. Their misconception is based upon a nationalistic and imperialistic schema that dictates that the act of romantic contemplation is coupled with (albeit an unconscious) imperialistic appropriation. Cole’s and Rawlins’ misconception of the land results in their imprisonment and near death. The landscape as a central element in the western promotes the desire for its appropriation, thus, when Rawlins asks Cole, “‘You got eyes for the spread?” (138) this sets into motion a history of colonial hegemony whose basis is economic dominance. The language of economics, the meta-text of the landscape in the western, is also present in “Beyond”: The best land near Thunder River is already taken.... Plenty of good land between Scalp Creek.... The business of colonization is mad, anyway. There’s plenty of good land east of the Bossonian marches. If the Aquilonians would cut up some of the big estates of their barons, and plant wheat where now only deer are hunted, they wouldn’t have to cross the border and take the land of the Picts away from them [47].

The Picts can be viewed as Native American Indians through their descriptions, their modality of living and land use, and their treatment by the Aquilonians. They are seen in much the same way the American government viewed American Indians. Dee Brown quotes the governor of Colorado in the late nineteenth century as expressing the general attitude and policy towards Native Americans: “‘My idea is that, unless removed by the government, [Indians] must necessarily be exterminated’” (389). Extermination was the general rule. Likewise, there is little if any desire on the part of the Aquilonians to live with the Picts or to assimilate them. From the onset, they are identified as savage, Indian-like. The first Pict in “Beyond” is killed by Conan who was protecting a new comrade, Balthus. The Pict’s description is familiar to some-

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thing Cooper, Zane Grey, or Larry McMurtry might describe: “A man lay there, a short, dark, thickly-muscled man, naked except for a loin cloth” (46). In addition, the deities of the Picts — leopards, apes, and other forest creatures — are not unlike Indian deities: the bear, wolf, or eagle. Both the American Indian and the Pict desire to embody their tribal totem’s attributes. Many additional similarities exist between the Picts and the American Indian. The Picts and the pristine environment existed before civilization and civilized man just as the American Indians existed prior to other cultural hegemonies. Both real and imagined peoples took what they needed from their environments to live economically, unlike the white man whose exploits included commerce and accumulation of material wealth. This is evidenced, for instance, in the destruction of the American buffalo by white buffalo hunters.13 Picts and American Indians respectively remained separate ethnic groups with little or no assimilation into the dominant white culture. The Picts, interestingly, will remain intact as an ethnic other even after the fall of the Hyborian civilization.14 Indian tribes did not have large enough populations or the technology to protect their culture from the white “locusts.” In the early days of American history, some tribes sided with the French in the north or with the Spanish in the south or west for their own groups’ immediate benefit. Each Indian tribe tried to carve out their own space for their own tribe’s advantage, to live out their lives in traditional and resource conscious and economic ways. They did not realize that the larger population of Europeans/Americans and their diseases, technology, their overwhelming desire to appropriate land and resources, and their prejudicial and consumptive nature would lead to the eventual defeat of the Indian nations. Similarly, the Picts are separated by tribe, geography, and often, intratribal animosity. In “Beyond,” what artificially binds the Pictish tribes is an ancient magic that Aquilonian forces have great difficulty in overcoming (56). The Aquilonians face Zogar Sag, an ancient wizard whose magic (based upon a kind of language) can control beasts and men. When Conan kills Zogar Sag, the powers holding the tribes together die with him and the Picts scatter. Like the slow conquering of the Native American Indian, in “Beyond,” the Picts, in part, are defeated by their inability to maintain a cohesive alliance. Finally, the use of early American images recall the American frontier: buckskin (45), settlers (45), fort (47), Scalp Creek (47), frontier (47), wild (49), stockade (55), “There, at the fort, civilization ended” (54), aborigines (55), outpost (60), frontiersman (65), forest runner (65), scalp (67), wilderness (77), trail (79), settlements (87), cabin (91), and forest (99). Using this vocabulary as a guideline, more than likely, anyone would write a western. Interestingly, “Beyond” is considered one of Howard’s most powerful and successful

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Conan stories.15 I would argue that its success is a result of direct similarity to the novel of the West where the ideas it limns are ideas that are still discussed, struggled with, and reworked in new visions and revisions today. Unfortunately, “Beyond the Black River” is a fantasy. Much like the harsh wilderness that turned away the Bush Clan in Cooper’s The Prairie, man did not turn away from the West, nor did civilization shirk from the task of eliminating the natives in the name of progress. The last words of “Beyond” evidence this fantasy of continued “primitivism.” While drinking in honor to a fallen comrade, Conan speaks to another woodsman who declares a similar ideology Conan has believed throughout all of his stories: “‘Barbarism is the natural state of mankind,’ the borderer said, still staring soberly at the Cimmerian. ‘Civilization is unnatural. It is a whim of circumstance. And barbarism must ultimately triumph’” (100). Frederick Jackson Turner “closed” the American frontier in a metaphorical, if not real sense, in 1890. Both Howard and Cooper desired the natural world and its inhabitants to withstand the destructive forces of civilization, but progress settled the claim. Mark Schultz writes that Howard wrote as “an expression of his rage at his immediate world” (xv). Both the novel of the West and the Conan stories continue to be popular, and new story lines rework the same ideological themes for each new generation in their respective genres.

A Word on Howard’s Own Westerns This discussion has been an investigation in the origins and continuing dialogue between Howard’s Conan the Barbarian and the Conan stories, and the American western hero and the novel of the West. However, Howard also wrote his own westerns, and though they are not part of this study, some of Howard’s western stories and heroes affirm similar characteristics seen in the novel of the West in general.16 Marc Cerasini contends that, “Though comprising only a relatively small percentage of Howard’s total output, [westerns] are among his best work and Howard’s literary reputation may ultimately come to rest on these tales as much as his better known fiction” (123). It is interesting to note that Howard wrote the Conan stories at the same time he began writing his first westerns. Thus, the two are intermingled both in a temporal sense and an ideological one. Howard wrote two different kinds of westerns: traditional and comedic. His famous comedic hero, Breckinridge Elkins, is an unaware, innocent, and lucky hero. The tales have less description of landscape and lack the typical violent tension, and the hero aids other characters by accident. After nearly getting his ear shot off, Elkins says, “‘I don’t know of nothing that makes me madder’n to get shot in the ear’” (“Guns of the Mountains” 35). Howard’s

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comedic westerns are entertaining, but they function and are structured outside of the realm of the traditional western and this study though they were his most commercially successful.17 Howard’s traditional westerns feature violent tension, grim battles, laconic interactions, hardened childhoods, and ideas about a way of life ending. Howard characterizes the civilizing of the western frontier with its almost tornado-like progress similar to the traditional western account: “Where, at the magic touch of steel, new towns blossomed overnight, creating fresh markets for the cattle that rolled up in endless waves from the south” (“Knife, Bullet, Noose” 114). If Howard would have lived longer and continued to write, it is interesting, as it always is, to imagine what would be the content, importance, and continuing legacy of an increased quantity of work in the western genre, and to track the vein of its development. It is also interesting to speculate how a larger body of Howard’s westerns would have compared to his contemporaries such as the famous western novel writers Zane Grey and Frederick Schiller Faust (Max Brand), and further, to imagine what Howard’s place could have been in the broader discussion of the novel of the West.

Notes 1. “Robert E. Howard’s Conan the Barbarian and the Western” Mark Finn asserts that the Conan stories are “second only to J.R.R. Tolkien’s Lord of the Rings saga,” thus the popular and literary value between these works is closer perhaps than many realize. 2. Finn asserts that, “Conan was little more than a speed bump in Robert’s varied career” (165). In terms of the amount of writing and the different characters Howard created, Conan did not particularly stand out according to Finn. However, Conan is the character most recognizable today and the above discussion argues as to why this is the case. 3. Another theory that has been posited about Conan’s popularity worth noting is offered by L. Sprague de Camp. De Camp discusses Conan’s origins where he locates Conan in a line of other, earlier, fantasy genre type writings, or in Irish historical figures. De Camp focuses on Baron Dunsany (1878–1958) and his fantastic stories. “Among [Dunsany’s] stories are many from which stem the entire present day sub-genre of heroic fantasy, as developed in the tales of Eddison, Lovecraft, C.A. Smith, Howard, Leiber, Hubbard, Tolkien, and others” (57). Sprague suggests it was Dunsany who is at the origins of Conan and other writers. “Although he had predecessors, such as the many exploiters of Arthurian legend and the lost–Atlantis theme, Dunsany was the second writer (William Morris in the 1880s being the first) fully to exploit the possibilities of heroic fantasy — adventurous fantasy laid in imaginary lands with pre-industrial settings, with gods, witches, spirits, and magi” (60). In a very cryptic analysis, his chapter titled “Conan’s Great Grandfather,” is more about a semicontemporary writer than Conan origins. De Camp finishes his chapter by commenting that fantasy was essentially dead (late 1960s) and that Dunsany’s stories are “a priceless possession for any lover of fantasy ... [they are] the foundation of any fantasy collection” (63). I think Sprague missed the point on several fronts, though his study is dated to some degree being written in the late 1960s, in the least, his thoughts on the lack of Conan’s popularity. First of all, Conan is extremely popular in a variety of media (some not created during Sprague’s study) and is popular both nationally and internationally. 4. See Mark Finn’s chapter, “The Oil Boom,” in Blood and Thunder. Here he outlines

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Howard’s experience during the oil boom, including Howard’s personal observations and reactions to its negative aspects. “So much of [Howard’s] personal philosophy, which found its way into his fiction, poetry, and letters, was a by-product of, and a reaction to, the changes in Texas brought on by the oil booms. Robert E. Howard grew up with oil, and it was a hard-knocked childhood” (12). 5. Rusty Burke quotes from a Robert Howard letter: “I [Howard] always felt that if I ever accomplished anything worthwhile in the literary field, it would be with stories dealing of the central and western frontier” (x). 6. An anti-western is a western novel, film, etc., that limns a different picture of the West— landscape, history, etc.—than one that has been commonly constructed An example might be Cormac McCarthy’s Blood Meridian. Moreover, an anti-western often reverses, parodies, or rewrites the traditional hero, like the Munny character in Clint Eastwood’s film, The Unforgiven. 7. See Mitchell’s discussion, chapter six. 8. The crucifixion scene plays a pivotal role the 1982 film Conan the Barbarian. Nailed to the Tree of Woe, Conan’s near death sets up his being freed by a comrade and Conan’s subsequent healing aided by his love interest, Valeria. Exposed on the tree dressed in only a breech cloth, Conan’s muscled body is on display, yet, vulnerable, thus characterizing the warrior in a new context. His near death and recovery is a rebirth, and he is then able to heal and overcome the agents of Thulsa Doom. 9. Bandits as good guys began at least as early as the nineteenth century Dime Novels. However, the western genre came to a transition in Sam Peckinpah’s 1969 film The Wild Bunch where one could not tell the difference between the good guys or the bad guys. This ambiguity further culminated in Cormac McCarthy’s 1985 novel Blood Meridian. Many readers were turned off not only by the violence but also by the lack of any characters one could identify with. 10. See Applegate’s “The Literature of Loneliness: Understanding the Letters and Diaries of the American West.” Her essay is an examination of the diaries and letters of those who lived in far western America in the middle nineteenth century, in “isolation and separation — the emotional distance” in the “sage humped deserts, eerily sculpted bluffs, and darkly pocketed lava fields” (63). Through an examination of this media (diaries and letters), Applegate helps round out of fuller picture of the West with which “to examine new historical conceptions of the American West” (64). 11. See Mitchell, chapter two. 12. See, for instance, Immanuel Kant’s Observations on the Feeling of the Beautiful and the Sublime. He discusses how a viewer emotionally and visually interprets the landscape. He defines the experience as sublime: it “moves,” produces “wonder,” and is even “accompanied with a certain dread” (47). 13. Between 1874 and 1876, approximately 3.7 million buffalo were killed. It is estimated that only 150,000 were killed by the American Indian. 14. In Howard’s essay, “The Hyborian Age,” he outlines the rise and fall of the Hyborian world before and after the time of Conan. Interestingly, he writes that the Picts are one of the few peoples to survive, and that is because a foreigner (a missionary) brings the “gentle worship of Mitra” (388). The wild Picts somehow survived, but they needed the religion of the white man. For the Native American, it was the bringing of the white man’s religion that, in part, was their downfall. 15. See Cerasini (84). 16. For a further look at Howard’s westerns, see Ben Indick. 17. See Rusty Burke, page ix.

Works Cited Applegate, Shannon. “The Literature of Loneliness: Understanding the Letters and Diaries of the American West.” Reading the West. Ed. Michael Kowalewski. New York: Cambridge University Press, 1996. 63–81.

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Bevis, William. “Region, Power, Place.” Reading the West. Ed. Michael Kowalewski. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1996. 21–43. Bredahl, A. Carl, Jr. New Ground: Western American Narrative and the Literary Canon. Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1989. Brown, Dee. Bury My Heart at Wounded Knee. New York: Henry Holt, 2007. Burke, Rusty. “Introduction.” The End of the Trail. By Robert E. Howard. Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 2005. ix-xviii. Calvin, Ross. Sky Determines. Albuquerque, New Mexico: University of New Mexico Press, 1965. Cerasini, Marc, and Hoffman, Charles. Robert E. Howard: Starmont Reader’s Guide 35. Washington: Starmont House, 1987. Cooper, James Fenimore. The Deerslayer. New York: Bantam, 1982. _____. The Last of the Mohicans. New York: Oxford University Press, 1998. De Camp, L. Sprague. The Conan Reader. Baltimore: Mirage, 1968. _____. Dark Valley Destiny. New York: Bluejay Books, 1983. Finn, Mark. Blood & Thunder. Texas: MonkeyBrain Books, 2006. Fisher, Vardis. Mountain Man. Idaho: University of Idaho Press, 2000. Howard, Robert E. “A Witch Shall be Born.” The Bloody Crown of Conan. New York: Del Rey, 2003. 255–301. _____. “Beyond the Black River.” The Conquering Sword of Conan. New York: Del Rey, 2005. 43–100. _____. “Black Colossus.” The Coming of Conan. New York: Del Rey, 2005. 151–184. _____. “Black Stranger.” The Conquering Sword of Conan. New York: Del Rey, 2005. 101– 174. _____. “Guns of the Mountains.” The Riot at Bucksnort. Ed. David Gentzel. Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 2005. 31–44. _____. “Knife, Bullet, Noose.” The End of the Trail. Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press 2005. 112–122. _____. “Queen of the Black Coast.” The Coming of Conan. New York: Del Rey, 2005. 119– 150. _____. Red Nails. The Conquering Sword of Conan. New York: Del Rey, 2005. 209–281. _____. “Tower of the Elephant.” The Coming of Conan. New York: Del Rey, 2003. 59–82. _____. “The Vale of Lost Women.” The Coming of Conan. New York: Del Rey, 2003. 301– 318. _____. “Xuthal of the Dusk.” The Coming of Conan. New York: Del Rey, 2003. 217–248. Indick, Ben. “The Western Fiction of Robert E. Howard.” The Dark Barbarian. Ed. Don Herron. New Jersey: Wildside Press, 1984. Kant, Immanuel. Observations on the Feeling of the Beautiful and the Sublime. Berkeley, California: University of California Press, 1960. McCarthy, Cormac. All the Pretty Horses. New York: Vintage, 1992. Mitchell, Lee Clark. Westerns: Making the Man in Fiction and Film. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1996. Nisbett, Richard E., and Dov Cohen. Culture of Honor: The Psycholog y of Violence in the South. Colorado: Westview Press, 1996. Schultz, Mark. “Foreword.” The Coming of Conan. New York: Del Rey, 2003. Turner, Frederick Jackson. “The Significance of the Frontier in American History.” Report of the American Historical Association (1893). (10 August 2005). www.xroads.virginia/edu/ hyper/turner/chapter1.html. Wheeler, Edward. “Deadwood Dick, or The Prince of the Road.” Reading the West: An Antholog y of Dime Westerns. Ed. Bill Brown. St. Martin’s Press: Chicago, 1997. 269–358. Wister, Owen. The Virginian. 1902. New York: Pocket Books, 1956.

Canaan Lies Beyond the Black River Howard’s Dark Rhetoric of the Contact Zone PAUL SHOVLIN Ever since Howard’s work has been published and faced the prospect of republication, his handling of racial representation has been a lightning rod for editing, censoring and critical readings. While editors of the pulps probably didn’t make many (or perhaps any) changes related to depictions of race, it’s clear that by the time Howard’s work was published in book form, especially paperback form, editors such as de Camp were expunging negative racial depictions as best they could.1 As a growing and diversified fan base has begun to poke at Howard’s work from a scholarly perspective, arguments about the location and implications of Howard’s views of race in his writing have persisted. With new publications of Howard’s work that have been restored to unexpurgated “purer” versions, it is a good time to revisit and reconfigure explanations of the role of race in his work. Such research is important not only because it shines light on racial representations in the work of Howard, arguably an important American writer in terms of his impact on fantasy fiction and popular fiction, in general, but it also may point to other ways we can complicate and investigate racial representations in other pulp genres and how we can understand the times in which such representations were compelling to particular writers and readers. Early explanations of race in the work of Howard focused on an uneasiness of their implications for the work and those who read it. Often these readings were centered in apologetics, for example de Camp’s early assertions described in the words of Schweitzer: According to de Camp, and also to Howard’s own letters he was relatively liberal for his time and place [...] Howard never indulged in long racial harangues, damning everyone who wasn’t an old-time Texan. [...] However, his time and place were far different than our own. No black man was allowed to stay out past sundown in Howard’s county, let alone live there. Thus he

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Although these responses may be true, I feel like they are mobilized by critics who are mainly concerned about what the implications of race in Howard’s work are for them as a reader and fan base and him as an author they respect, rather than in investigating how racial stereotypes and representations work within Howard’s writings. I am less interested in defending Howard’s reputation by considering how racist he was or what kind of racist he was, and more interested in figuring how racial representations work in his stories and how race relates to a particular set of philosophies or a worldview his literature supports. In this case, I am interested in how different racial representations characterized in two particular stories, “Beyond the Black River” and “Black Canaan,” outline a kind of racial rhetoric as it applies to the writer’s philosophy that relates to barbarism, savagery, and by extension, civilization. Lorenzo Ditommaso in “Robert E. Howard’s Hyborian Tales and the Question of Race in Fantastic Literature”2 offers one of the first critical scholarly pieces that doesn’t merely admit that negative racial representations exist in Howard’s work and apologize for them, but tries to read their implications for the fantasy setting. Ditommaso argued that racial migration was an important part of the history of the Conan stories, that all of the countries in the Hyborian world had their own unique physical characteristics based on race (for example the blond-haired Aesir) but that critics’ focuses centered on those related to racial conflict in the real world (i.e. depictions of dark-skinned races), and finally that modern fantasy is woven from “medievalistic characteristics,” including a medievalistic worldview that when realistically portrayed includes race-consciousness and even racism. Ditomasso’s work raises some interesting points regarding how “realistic” constructions in fantasy fiction incorporate real world social constructions such as race. His arguments that touch directly on Howard’s work, though, are flawed because of his use of the Ace paperbacks, which had already been heavily edited by de Camp. And although it’s true that Conan learned to survive by identifying enemies such as the Aesir and Vanir by hair color alone, that doesn’t explain Howard’s depiction of dark-skinned races as little above animals in intelligence, sensibility, and appearance compared to white “savages” in the stories. This depiction is obviously informed by racial rhetoric of Howard’s time that influenced him. More recent scholarly work has investigated the intersection between Howard’s representations in the Conan series and Richard Slotkin’s so-called “Myth of the Frontier” which collects and organizes frontier tropes and their

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relation to American national identity. Frontier rhetorics employed racial difference as a motivation for Western settlement and the violence that settlement implied. Frontier violence served as a metaphorical means for national renewal as development occurred as a result of our ability to kill people on the frontier and steal their land. Steven Trout, in particular, looks at Slotkin’s work and draws on many other related sources to provide an overview on how the frontier myths intersect with Howard’s work as a whole, including the Conan stories. In my Master’ thesis, I used Slotkin’s tropes as a lens for a critical reading of the Conan tale “Beyond the Black River.” I argued that Slotkin’s categories of “The Logic of Massacre” and “The Last Stand” offer lenses with which one can view racial representation and violence in the story. In particular, I noted that while the Picts are more closely aligned with Native Americans, the story offers many details that locate their racial categorization more complexly as blurred between, to mobilize racist designations, red and black. I’ve argued that frontier analyses of stories such as “Beyond the Black River” might be fruitfully expanded by considering other Conan stories, which do not have as direct connections to frontier settings and action such as those in “Beyond the Black River.”3 In this essay, we might consider how the racial representations in the frontier story of “Beyond the Black River” are related to those in the story that occurs after settlement of the frontier in “Black Canaan.” The Picts of “Beyond the Black River” are based in some ways on the stereotypes of Native Americans in western fiction. Picts live in thatch and mud huts. They travel the rivers by canoe. They lie in wait and ambush unsuspecting pioneers, “when a Pict stands motionless, the very beasts of the forest pass him without seeing him” (51). They move silently in the forest. Armed with bows and arrows; they cause feathered shafts to sprout from woodsmen’s backs. This conflict between settler and savage lays the groundwork for the racial stereotyping that the story relies on to push the action forward. Richard Slotkin, in Gunfighter Nation: The Myth of the Frontier in Twentieth-Century America, argues that in times of war, a majority’s racial prejudices are mobilized to de-civilize the enemy. In the Philippine insurrection, at the turn of the century, Slotkin mentions that “if ‘Indian’ was the racial epithet for Filipinos preferred by the high command [of the American armed forces], the second most popular and the one preferred by the rank and file — was “nigger” (114). While Howard avoids that term (in the Conan corpus), a white/black dichotomy is definitely at work, at the same time that a white/red dichotomy is in play. The narration explains that “the Picts were a white race, though swarthy, but the border men never spoke of them as such” (23). This may be Howard’s attempt at drawing allusions to the racial identity of native Americans, one

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of neither whiteness nor blackness, but something else. Stereotypically, the label has been red. However, in this story, that something else is conflated with blackness. All references to the Picts paint them as black or by implication focus on their violence as specifically against whites. They are described as “dark-skinned hordes” (65), “devils of this black jungle” (43), and have “black heads” (45). In fact, Conan’s description of killing the first Pict in the story suggests the war is a racial one, “I was following a warrior who slipped over to put a few white notches on his bow” (29). Later, upon explaining why he is going through the trouble of dragging a corpse back to the fort, Conan explains, “I never liked the fat fool but we can’t have Pictish devils making so cursed free with white men’s heads” (23). The violence that the Picts commit can be seen in two ways. It can be seen as “black on white” violence as a result of the racial rhetoric that the Aquilonians employ that colors Picts darkly. It can also be seen as “red on white” as a result of the conventions that Howard uses that link it with the American western, a genre he was familiar with as a writer and a native Texan. Both ways would be familiar to readers of the time as Americans and consumers of pulp fiction awash in racial stereotypes. It’s worth observing that in the work of Howard black on white violence is portrayed in a negative light, while violence cast as red on white may be privileged, in some regards, because it is sometimes similar to that of Conan, a white barbarian. The Picts, for example, have more agency against the encroaching colonizing power of Aquilonia than the blacks of Goshen do against their former masters, who still have free rein to interrogate and torture those such as Tope Sorley, a scene which I’ll turn to shortly. The racial classification of the Picts as black (as well as red) renders their crimes against the whites unnatural (or perhaps in terms of racial rhetoric entirely natural) in that it elicits a manically aggressive reaction from the protagonists. While there is no overt mention of rape in “Beyond the Black River,” Conan and Balthus do come upon a group of Picts that has killed a male and female settler, A man and a woman lay in the road, stripped and mutilated. Five Picts were dancing about them with fantastic leaps and bounds, waving bloody axes; one of them brandished the woman’s red-smeared gown [63].

At the sight, Conan and Balthus become violently enraged. Conan’s and Balthus’s impetus are described as “an old, old racial hate,” and “[he] was afire with wrath” (63) respectively. The fact is that Cimmeria shares a border with the Pictish wilderness. It is suggested that Conan had experience with or heard stories of Cimmerian skirmishes with the Picts. The violence committed here,

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though, is against a white female. This often has a galvanizing effect on Conan. In addition to the racial aspects of the violence, the Picts, just as some of the black characters in “Black Canaan” use black magic. Simultaneously, the racially-charged violence is both natural, explained by racial politics and rhetoric, and unnatural, as a result of the dark magical power Zogar Sag and Saul Stark invoke. Slotkin argued that frontier violence committed against a colonizing power was often represented as so unnatural or depraved that action was required to be taken in response to it, leading to something he referred to as the Logic of Massacre. In Gunfighter Nation, Slotkin writes, The savage enemy kills and terrorizes without limit or discrimination in order to exterminate or drive out the civilized race. The civilized race learns to respond in kind, partly from outrage at the atrocities it has suffered, partly from a recognition that imitation and mastery of the savages’ methods are the best way to defeat them [112].

We can clearly see this happening in the Conan story in which black magic and mutilations of corpses spur further conflict with the Aquilonians and Conan. We also see it simmering in “Black Canaan,” although the thin veneer of the “normalized” historical setting of race relations attempts to constrain its impulse. In this essay, I would like to extend my work on “Beyond the Black River” by comparing it to, arguably the most contentious example of racial stereotype in the Howard corpus, “Black Canaan,” which hasn’t been explored in a like manner. Drawing on the work above and that of others, such as Don Herron, who’ve explored Howard’s views of civilization and barbarism (or degeneracy, as a negative option for either civilization or barbarism), I will scrutinize the connections among setting, racial representation, and social conflict in the Conan story “Beyond the Black River” and “Black Canaan,” a non–Conan story about a black uprising set in the deep south. While the locations and overarching events in the stories are similar, the atmosphere of the settings, the racial representation, and the impact of the events on the main characters are very different. While “Black Canaan” offers stereotypical racially offensive depictions of African-Americans, it differs from the brand of racial representation offered in “Beyond the Black River” given the protagonist’s reactions to the events (Conan remains unchanged, while Kirby Buckner is mentally scarred for life) and the differing depictions of setting (jungle versus swamp). Through a comparison of the stories, I will draw out two differing philosophies offered by Howard, both informed by race and racial stereotype, but one that is upheld (perhaps even Howard’s imagined ideal) and informed by Native American representations while the other is pessimistic (perhaps more realistic in terms

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of its portrayal of the emotional and psychic fallout racial colonization had on the oppressor long into the process of its enactment) and informed by African American representations. It’s been pointed out before that Howard wrote various stories that were stylistically similar and some that utilized similar or slightly changed plots. This is obviously the case with “Beyond the Black River” and “Black Canaan.” Rather than merely recognizing those similarities, close readings might shed light on important differences between depictions in parallel stories. Accordingly, we might start by referencing some of the similarities between these two stories as we approach the implications of the differences. Both stories are located in the same conceptual space as delineated by geographic boundaries. “Beyond the Black River” opens with action four miles east of the Black River. Conan, tracking a Pict warrior, comes upon Balthus, a woodsman newly arrived to the area. As the Pict prepares to ambush Balthus, Conan kills him and then approaches Balthus and the action proceeds. In this story the geographic limits represent a playing field for Conan, who is an independent mercenary working for Valannus, the governor of Velitrium. Velitrium, a stronghold city in Aquilonia’s Western front with the Pictish wilderness, lies beyond Thunder River to the east. The Aquilonians have begun pushing the border west towards the Black River. This area is guarded by Fort Tuscelan, a frontier outpost. The area between Thunder River and Black River and South Creek is known as Conajahara. “Black Canaan” opens in New Orleans as Kirby Buckner is warned of trouble on Tularoosa Creek by a “black crone.” Canaan, the setting for the tale, lies between Tularoosa Creek to the north, Nigger Head Creek4 to the east and the Black River to the west. Canaan and Conajahara are clearly the same kinds of places, zones of conflict between different social groups that are categorized by race and differing levels and kinds of power. The Canaan/Conajahara location in these stories can be read as a contact zone. The term “contact zone” was originated by Mary Louise Pratt in her essay “Arts of the Contact Zone.” She defined contact zones as “social spaces where cultures meet, clash, and grapple with each other, often in contexts of highly asymmetrical relations of power, such as colonialism, slavery, or their aftermaths as they are lived out in many parts of the world” (4). Pratt’s work on contact zones has been influential in critical pedagogy related to rhetoric and composition studies for theorizing classroom spaces based on the identity conflicts at work in communities as locations where perspectives can be changed for the better. The theory of the contact zone can also be useful as an apparatus for reading the location, the racial representations, the conflicts between people of differing identities, and their affects on the characters of

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the two Howard stories. Conajahara is a frontier setting in the midst of settlement. Conan himself claims “this colonization business is mad, anyway” (47). The action of Canaan occurs in the setting of freed blacks that are the descendants of slaves and still influenced by that past according to Buckner and the whites of Grimesville who refer to two types of blacks “town-niggers,” the descendants of house servants and “swamp-niggers,” the descendants of field-hands who lived in Goshen or the outskirts of the swamp (236–237). The heart of both stories lies in differently imagined contact zones that are directly related to race, settlement, and, perhaps, Howard’s philosophy or imagined worldview. While there are many similarities between the stories, the differences are telling. In “Black Canaan,” the narration comes directly from Buckner. He describes that the warning from the black woman “could have but one meaning — old hates seething again in the jungle-deeps of the swamplands, dark shadows slipping through the cypress, and massacre stalking out of the black, mysterious village that broods on the moss-festooned shore of sullen Tularoosa” (231). Conajahara and the land around Black River in the Conan story are similarly described by Valannus, Aquilonian governor of the frontier. Valannus asks Who knows what gods are worshipped under the shadows of that heathen forest, or what devils crawl out of the black ooze of the swamps? Who can be sure that all the inhabitants in that black country are natural? [57].

In addition to similar style, these representations set up Canaan and Conajahara as jungle/swamp settings, with the potential for both. Although in both stories, both jungle and swamp characteristics are offered, the “huge forest, which approached jungle-like density” is emphasized more in the Conan tale, in which gorillas and leopards figure (54). The action in “Black Canaan” takes place in the swamp with a creek “split into a network of channels threading their way among hummocks and rotting logs and moss-grown, vine-tangled clumps of trees” in which the threat of alligators figures (257). These differences align with the emotion that Howard invests each of the tales. In these stories, jungle is aligned with savagery, which Howard privileges, while swamps are aligned with degeneracy, the opposite side of the coin of barbarism, which Howard casts in a negative view. Schweitzer, in his short book Conan’s World and Robert E. Howard, cites the work of George Scithers who in an AMRA article (1959) states that the character of Balthus could have represented “Howard-as-he-was coming face to face with Howard-as-he-wished-to-be [in the form of Conan]” (qtd. in Schweitzer 40). It may make sense to consider this idea as it relates to the two

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stories, the earlier tale focused on exciting conflict on the frontier versus “Black Canaan,” which focuses on a settled area decaying in the swamp seething with racial hatred. The racial violence that occurs in “Beyond the Black River” is sanctioned by the Aquilonians and supported by Conan, both as an agent of them and also as a white man avenging Pictish acts as racially charged acts. Kirby Buckner, the protagonist of “Black Canaan” kills in self-defense and refuses to engage in the torture of a black man in order to get information, but resorts to pathos and logos which the story privileges. If Conan is an idealized version of Howard vs. Balthus, the description of Conan luring the Pictish emissary serves as an interesting counterpoint to the action in “Black Canaan.” After speaking to and killing the Pict, Balthus questions Conan’s ethics: “What did you say to the Pict?” asked Balthus. “Told him to pull into shore; said there was a white forest runner on the other bank who was trying to get a shot at him.” “That doesn’t seem fair,” Balthus objected. “He thought a friend was speaking to him. You mimicked a Pict perfectly —” “We needed his boat,” grunted Conan, not pausing in his exertions. “Only way to lure him to the bank. Which is worse — to betray a Pict who’d enjoy skinning us both alive, or betray the men across the river whose lives depend on our getting over?” [85].

In “Black Canaan” McBride and Buckner come upon a shack in which a patrol of white men have captured Tope Sorley and are preparing to torture him with a whip in order to get him to talk of Saul Stark’s plans. “Here’s Kirby!” ejaculated one of the men as I pushed my way through the group. “I’ll bet he’ll make the coon talk!” “Here comes John with the blacksnake!” shouted someone, and a tremor ran through Tope Sorley’s shivering body. I pushed aside the butt of the ugly whip thrust eagerly into my hand. “Tope,” I said, “you’ve worked one of my father’s farms for years. Has any Buckner ever treated you any way but square?” “Nossuh,” came faintly. [...] “Tope,” I said, “you know if you talk, we’ll protect you. If you don’t talk, I don’t think Stark can treat you much rougher than these men are likely to. Now spill it — what’s it all about?” He lifted desperate eyes. “You-all got to lemme stay here,” he shuddered. “And guard me, and gimme money to git away on when de trouble’s over.” “We’ll do all that,” I agreed instantly. “You can stay right here in this cabin, until you’re ready to leave for New Orleans or wherever you want to go.” [238–239].

Compared to Conan, Buckner offers a different kind of ethically minded protagonist. Although his negotiations still imply the physical threat of the men

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in the background, Buckner’s first rhetorical approach is in asking Tope if his family hadn’t always treated him fairly. Finally, as soon as Tope makes a demand, Buckner is quick to take him up on it rather than resort to violence. This characterization is very different than that of Conan’s deception of the Pict in “Beyond the Black River,” where anything goes. If “Beyond the Black River” can be read as a fantasy version of Howard’s ideal as it related to the frontier, then “Black Canaan” offers a parallel that might be read as a fantasy version of the reality that surrounded Howard, the murky life and race relations after the imagined certainties of the frontier were gone and settlement led to decay rather than the development of truly “civil” society. While Conan is a free agent in “Beyond the Black River,” Kirby Buckner has more at stake as a white resident of Canaan. In fact, though Conan ranges beyond the Black River directly in the territory of the Picts, Canaan itself is a battleground for Buckner, who travels between white and black communities, for half the story not even of his own free will, as he comes under the spell of Damballah.5 In the Conan tale Gwawela, the Pictish village, is the rough equivalent of Goshen, the black village in Canaan. Grimesville the white village in Canaan, might be read as a conflation of Fort Tuscelan and Valitrium. The name of the white village “Grimesville,” is indicative of the dark and soiled worldview that “Black Canaan,” presents, particularly indicated by Buckner’s mental state at the end of the story. It’s worth noting that in the midst of the terrible racial representation in “Black Canaan,” and in light of other critics readings of the story in which they’ve painted Buckner and the other whites as “gallant” (de Camp 176), that throughout the story, as depicted by their racial worldviews, their emotional states, the imagery of the setting, and Howard’s final vision of Buckner as marked forever by his experiences, there is no salvation in Canaan. The racially reviled and the reinforcers of stereotypical racial rhetoric are all left in the same damaged state of decay in the swamps. This is a marked contrast to the conclusion of “Beyond the Black River.” Although, Fort Tuscelan has fallen, Valitrium still stands strong, and even in the face of the lone survivor of the fort’s last words, Conan is looking forward to further violence with the Picts, who ultimately have the upper hand on the settlers. The “natural” violence of the untamed Picts on the frontier is different than the threat of violence of the settled/colonized blacks in Canaan. The often-quoted ending of the Conan story confirms this: Civilization is unnatural. It is a whim of circumstance. And barbarism must always ultimately triumph [100].

While the Aquilonian survivor of the massacre at Fort Tuscelan seems depressed, for Conan it’s just stating the obvious and, as a mercenary, after a

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little more work on the frontier, he will move on. In “Black Canaan,” though, the violent threat of black uprising and the magic of Saul Stark aren’t represented in a similar way. Grimesville, unlike Fort Tuscelan or even, ostensibly in the future, Valitrium, is there and there to stay. When Buckner tries to get Braxton to go back and warn the town, he claims they don’t need a warning because they’ll be ready. Fort Tuscelan and the settlers in Conajahara definitely need a warning and are indeed overwhelmed by the Pictish incursion. While the Picts are described as savages, they are definitely privileged agents in the setting of the jungle and the guerrilla warfare of that story. As previously mentioned, when organized they overwhelm and destroy Fort Tuscelan much as the Cimmerians did to Venarium, as described at the beginning of the story. Conan seems to even revel in the story. Balthus describes: My uncle was at Venarium when the Cimmerians swarmed over the walls. He was one of the few who escaped that slaughter. [...] The barbarians swept out of the hills in a ravening horde, without warning [...] Men, women and children were butchered [48].

In “Canaan” folks talk of the Big Uprisin’ (of 18456), much like the destruction of Venarium. “‘We don’t know,’ confessed McBride. ‘That’s why we’re all on edge. It must be an uprising.’” That word was enough to strike chill fear into the heart of any Canaan-dweller. The blacks had risen in 1845, and the red terror of that revolt was not forgotten, nor the three lesser rebellions before it, when the slaves rose and spread fire and slaughter from Tularoosa to the shores of Black River. The fear of a black uprising lurked forever in the depths of that forgotten back-country; the very children absorbed it in their cradles [236].

As Kirby proceeds to town a woman describes that I been hearin’ a drum beatin’ off toward Saul Stark’s cabin, off and on, for a week now. They beat drums back in the Big Uprisin’. My pappy’s told me about it many’s the time. The niggers skinned his brother alive. The horns was blowin’ all up and down the creeks, and the drums was beatin’ louder’n the horns could blow [242].

In other work, I’ve argued that what makes Conan special is his dual identity of being a savage, but being white, as well. Conan is successful because he can shift codes, speak different languages, blend in, pass. He can function in civilized society, but more importantly, he can engage in the kind of violence the Picts are capable of, and he can do it better. Again, at the end of the story, the bad prognosis for the Aquilonian border is a moot point, Conan is energized and ready to go get payback for the death of Balthus and the dog, Slasher. As stated previously, Buckner is left in a very different state. He describes that:

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They think to this day that a swamp negro killed Jim Braxton, after he had killed the brown woman, and that I broke up the threatened uprising by killing Saul Stark. I let them think it. They will never know the shapes the black water of Tularoosa hides. That is a secret I share with the cowed and terror-haunted black people of Goshen, and of it neither they or I have ever spoken [262].

In Regeneration Through Violence, Slotkin explores how “the myth of regeneration through violence became the structuring metaphor of the American experience” as the settlers of the New World grappled with the contact zone they found themselves in (5). In Gunfighter Nation, Slotkin writes that “the Myth [of Regeneration through Violence] represented the redemption of American spirit or fortune as something to be achieved by playing through a scenario of separation, temporary regression to a more primitive or ‘natural’ state, and regeneration through violence” (12). “Beyond the Black River” exemplifies that structuring metaphor through the character of Conan and his agency at the end, fueled by revenge. “Black Canaan” struggles against the structuring metaphor of regeneration through violence, because, in that tale, that which does not kill you does not make you stronger, but weaker. Further, Conan’s appropriation of savage violence fuels his renewal, while Buckner’s initiations into Saul Stark’s dark world and engagement in the racial conflict between Grimesville and Goshen damage him for life. An investigation into racial representations in “Beyond the Black River” and “Black Canaan,” then, offer us a window on how tropes in the American national identity relate to the work of Howard, a writer in the early part of the twentieth century from Central Texas, a contact zone of the former frontier. “Beyond the Black River” utilizes a fantasy setting that supports national myths, such as those described by Slotkin. “Black Canaan” gives a different imagined view of how Howard grappled with the colonizer becoming colonized or how myth pales in comparison to the complexity of the reality people on the border face.

Notes 1. De Camp describes this kind of editing in a piece for AMRA entitled “Editing Conan.” 2. This text is a seminal piece of research related to Howard and especially the world of Conan probably due to it being one of the first (if not the first) pieces of Howard scholarship published in a scholarly peer-refereed journal. “Scholar”ship on Howard has, for a long time, been problematic given the dedicated fan base that has constructed its own structures and mediums for developing literary and other kinds of analysis in regard to the works of Howard. They have developed their own systems of discourse, methods for constructing their ethoi, and means of constructing knowledge that often fall outside the realm of pure Academic modes for the same.

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This is one characteristic that makes the development of scholarship on Howard all that more interesting. With Howard, we are working with a figure whose writing has galvanized those outside the realm of the Academy to pursue critical analysis in a pro-agentative way that reclaims the purpose and role of scholarship democratically. 3. Cerasini and Hoffman mention “it has been pointed out that Howard used the setting of Robert W. Chambers’s Indian novel The Little Red Foot as a model for his Pictish Wilderness” and that “Beyond the Black River is a “transplanted Western” (93). 4. In “Beyond the Black River,” Scalp Creek runs north and south between the Black and Thunder Rivers. Conan demarks it as the fertile strip of land that has been initially settled by the Aquilonians as they’ve begun to colonize Conajahara. It’s worth noting the similarity between Scalp Creek and Nigger Head Creek given the different stories alternate focuses between racial representations related to Native Americans in “Beyond the Black River” and African Americans in “Black Canaan.” It’s worth noting that “black” has replaced derogative racial epithets in the names of some locations in America as people have attempted to revise the impact of racial conflict. A name such as “Black River” may be potentially racially charged, and as Howard often borrowed location names from real places, we might consider the implications of that in terms of racial politics in his stories. 5. Wikipedia lists Damballah as one of the vodu (voodoo) loa (spirits). According to the site, Damballah often takes the form of serpents. Interestingly, Wikipedia cites that this spirit featured in two of Howard’s stories, “Pigeons from Hell,” and “Black Canaan.” 6. There have been many localized fears of slave and or freed black uprisings, although I could find none for 1845. Interested readers might begin research with Alwyn Barr’s “The Texas ‘Black Uprising’ Scare of 1883’” published in the journal Phylon because it refers to an incident in Howard’s state. The fear of an uprising grew out of conflict because of the formation of an armed black militia. Very few people were actually hurt as a result. That particular incident bears little resemblance to “Canaan’s” Uprisin’ of 45, based on descriptions of actual violence. The fear surrounding the Uprisin’ of 45, though, as represented in the story is very realistic compared to fears prevalent in the south during the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries.

Works Cited Cerasini, Marc and Charles E. Hoffman. Robert E. Howard. San Bernardino, CA: Borgo Press, 1987. Print. De Camp, L. Sprague. Dark Valley Destiny: The Life of Robert E. Howard. New York, N.Y: Bluejay Books, 1983. Print. Herron, Don. The Barbaric Triumph: A Critical Antholog y on the Writings of Robert E. Howard. Wildside Press LLC, 2004. Print. Howard, Robert E. The Black Stranger and Other American Tales. Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 2005. Print. _____. The Conquering Sword of Conan. New York: Del Rey/Ballantine Books, 2005. Print. _____. Selected Letters, 1931–1936. West Warwick, RI: Necronomicon Press, 1991. Print. Pratt, Mary Louise. “Arts of the Contact Zone.” Professing in the Contact Zone: Bringing Theory and Practice Together. Ed. Janice M. Wolff. Urbana, IL: NCTE, 2002. Slotkin, Richard. Gunfighter Nation: The Myth of the Frontier in Twentieth-Century America. University of Oklahoma Press, 1998. Print. _____. Regeneration Through Violence: The Mytholog y of the American Frontier, 1600 –1860. 1st ed. Middletown, Conn: Wesleyan University Press, 1973. Print. Trout, Steven R. “Heritage of Steel: Howard and the Frontier Myth.” The Barbaric Triumph: A Critical Antholog y on the Writings of Robert E. Howard. Ed. Don Herron. Holicong, PA: Wildside Press LLC, 2004. 59–78. Print.

Statistics in the Hyborian Age An Introduction to Stylometry DANIEL M. LOOK Stylometry is the study, and often quantification, of stylistic differences in written language. Statistical techniques applied to word distributions can be used to lend evidence regarding a contested authorship, detect authorship changes in a text with multiple authors, categorize series of texts based on stylistic similarities, and other applications. There are several introductions to the field available: Holmes (1985, 1994, 1998), Juola (2008), Love (2002). It should be stated at the onset that stylometric techniques provide evidence; the techniques need to be applied carefully and should never be taken as proof of authorship. Typically, stylometric analyses are used in conjunction with more traditional methods for determining style and authorship; such as literary critiques from individuals knowledgeable regarding works by the disputed authors. We demonstrate some techniques from stylometry, in particular measures of richness, using stories written by various authors featuring Robert E. Howard’s sword-and-sorcery character, Conan. Beginning in 1932 with “The Phoenix on the Sword” and ending in 1936 with “Red Nails,” Howard saw the publication of 17 of his Conan stories in Weird Tales. An additional four stories, “Frost Giant’s Daughter,” “The God in the Bowl,” “The Vale of Lost Women,” and “The Black Stranger,” were completed during Howard’s life but were published posthumously. There were several fragments and story outlines written, but not completed, by Howard. In 1955, L. Sprague de Camp published a posthumous collaboration with Howard titled Tales of Conan. Tales of Conan consisted of four non–Conan stories written by Howard and rewritten by de Camp as Conan stories. Conan the Adventurer was published in 1966 and contained three stories by Howard (edited by de Camp) and one story began by Howard and finished by de Camp. This was to become the first (in order of publication) in a 12 volume series. The remaining 11 books in this series contain a mixture of stories written by Howard (edited by de Camp), started by Howard and finished by de Camp, written by Howard (as non–Conan stories) and adapted (to Conan stories) 103

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by de Camp, and written by de Camp and Lin Carter (with the exception of one story started by Howard and finished by Carter and a sole story written by Björn Nyberg and L. Sprague de Camp.) Of the 41 stories presented in this series, 19 were published or completed by Howard during his lifetime, 10 were rewritten or completed from his manuscripts, fragments or synopses, and six were the sole work of de Camp and Carter. L. Sprague de Camp provided a chronological ordering for these books (which Howard did not do) beginning with a teenage Conan and ending with a Conan in his 60s. The publication order does not match de Camp’s ordering; volumes 1–10 and 12 were published by Lancer between 1966 and 1968 (the first book published being volume 3 in de Camp’s chronological ordering). However, Lancer went out of business before publishing the final book, volume 11 in de Camp’s ordering. This book, Conan of Aquilonia, was published in 1977 by Prestige. Ace publications distributed and reprinted the entire 12 volume series. As such, we refer to this series as the Lancer-Ace series. We introduce several stylometrics and apply them to the various combinations of authors occurring in the Lancer-Ace series. We stress that this is not in an attempt to make arguments regarding the literary styles of Howard, de Camp, and Carter. Rather, the intent is to demonstrate these techniques and serve as an introduction to this intriguing meeting of seemingly disparate fields: English and mathematics.

Stylometry Stylometry attempts to quantify literary styles, creating a metric for style. A stylometric is a numerical value associated to a given text that, in some way, measures some aspect of the author’s style. What aspect of style, and even what is meant by “style,” should be carefully explained for each of the stylometrics; none should be thought to truly measure as broad a concept as the full style of the author. The impetus for such a quantification has often been assigning authorship to a piece whose author is either unknown or contested. An example of early authorship attribution dates from 1439 when Lorenzo Valla lent evidence that the Roman imperial decree, The Donation of Constantine, was a forgery. In 1887 Thomas Mendenhall, inspired by the mathematician Augustus de Morgan, published what may be the first paper on modern stylometry: The Characteristic Curves of Composition, appearing in the March, 1887 issue of Science. In this paper, Mendenhall examined frequency distributions for words of varying lengths. He used his “word spectra” techniques to attempt

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authorship attribution, focusing on the ongoing debate regarding William Shakespeare and Sir Francis Bacon. The debate that the works attributed to William Shakespeare were penned by someone else dates back to the mid– 19th century, with Sir Francis Bacon being a common candidate for “true author.” The arguments for Bacon’s authorship of Shakespearean works include historical arguments, stylistic arguments, and ciphers that Bacon supposedly inserted in the works identifying himself as the true author. Mendenhall’s results did not support Bacon’s authorship. However, as was pointed out in C.B. Williams (1975), Mendenhall failed to take into account certain “genre differences” that may have affected his results. In 1964, stylometry was applied to the authorship attribution of the disputed Federalist Papers. The Federalist Papers were published between 1787 and 1788 to support the ratification of the United States Constitution. At the time of publication, the authors were kept secret. It was determined later that the papers were written by Alexander Hamilton, John Jay, and James Madison, each of whom claimed their share of the papers. However, 12 papers were claimed by both Hamilton and Madison, putting their authorship in question. Mosteller and Wallace (1964) used the frequency of appearance of function words to determine authorship. (For example, the function word “upon” occurs an average of 3.24 times per 1,000 words in the known works of Hamilton, but only 0.23 times in the known works of Madison.) In the end, Mosteller and Wallace attributed all 12 papers to Madison, a conclusion agreeing with prior scholarly work by historians. Mosteller and Wallace were very careful in stating that this was an application of statistical techniques and was not intended to serve as authoritative evidence regarding authorship. Stylometry once depended on the exhausting job of reading the text noting word frequencies by hand. There are now many programs freely available online ( JGAAP, KWIC, SCP, etc.) that can create word counts and analyze certain aspects of texts saved in an electronic format. Further, the Guttenberg online library contains many free electronic texts; these require very little preparatory work to analyze. Although there are still problems, audio books can be transferred to text documents via speech-to-text programs and books may be scanned into text documents using an optical character recognition (OCR) tool. That writers have literary “fingerprints” allowing authorship attribution may seem dubious on first encounter. Zipf ’s Law is a good starting example of unconscious trends. George Kingsley Zipf observed (Zipf, 1932) that there is a relationship between the rank and number of occurrences of a given word, where the word appearing most often has rank 1, the word appearing second most often is rank 2, and so on. Zipf ’s Law states that rank 2 words will

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appear roughly 1 ⁄ 2 as often as rank 1 words, and rank 3 works 1 ⁄ 3 as often. We take Wn to be the number of occurrences of the nth most frequently used word (so the word/words of rank n). Zipf ’s Law states that in a given piece of writing, W1 should be roughly 2W2. In Figure 1, each point represents the full text for one of Robert E. Howard’s Conan stories; the x-axis representing W2 and the y-axis W1. This graph uses all 17 of the Conan stories published during Howard’s lifetime as well as Howard’s “The Vale of Lost Women” and “The Frost-Giant’s Daughter.” As we can see, the points suggest an approximately linear relationship with slope 2.25; meaning that Howard uses his most common word roughly 2.25 times as often as his second most common word. Further, the correlation coefficient, R2, is equal to 0.9932, implying a nearly perfect linear fit. The reason Zipf ’s Law holds for most languages is not known, but several theories have been advanced. Cancho and Sole (2003) suggest that Zipf ’s Law may arise because neither the speaker nor the listener using a particular language want to work any harder than necessary for understanding, and this leads to a distribution of effort that gives Zipf ’s Law. Another interesting relationship between word distributions and a seemingly unrelated field was proposed by British statistician Sir Ronald A. Fisher.

Figure 1: W1 versus W2 for Howard’s Conan works.

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R.A. Fisher devised a model predicting how many new species of butterflies might be discovered as butterfly hunters continue to return to an area with many species. Clearly, the number of new species decreases as the number of trips increase; the most species will be discovered on the first trip, fewer on the second as some of the sampled species will have been discovered on the first trip, and so on. During the 1970s, the American statisticians Bradley Efron and Ronald Thisted reasoned that this technique could be applied to word frequencies. If we consider a used word to be “caught” and words not used to be undiscovered species, then catching a new species is similar to using new words. This idea was first explored in Efron and Thisted (1976). Efron and Thisted (1987) applied this technique to an anonymous poem attributed to Shakespeare. This technique was later criticized by Robert Valenza (1991). Valenza showed that the poem in question and the ascribed Shakespeare poems used for comparison did not form a large enough sample of writings for these tests to be accurate. Valenza’s findings did not invalidate the test described, but instead brought to question the particular application and interpretation. We examine several variables that measure richness of writing style. In particular, Honoré’s R, Hapax Dislegomena, Yule’s K, the type-token ratio, and Zipf ’s ratio. Rather than an in-depth discussion of each, we state the formulas and discuss intuition where appropriate. Although we create a decision tree based on these measures of richness for the samples studied, this is for demonstration only. Measures of richness have been shown to be of marginal value when used to determine authorship (Hoover, 2003). Even if measures of richness were of use in attribution, the results need to be carefully interpreted; an author’s current work may be stylometrically distinct from older works using any of these markers and the same may be true of two works by the same author that are from different genres. As such, we offer little in the way of interpretation of our results; rather, we check for statistical distinction among the author groups using our measures of richness. After, we discuss multivariate techniques that can be used to combine our variables concluding with a brief discussion of techniques that are used for attribution. To clarify what is meant by (statistically) distinct for our variables we use a permutation bootstrapping technique combined with ANOVA and pairwise t-tests using the Holm-Bonferroni adjustment, introduced by Holm (1979). To understand this, we should first review the basics. Statistical tests of the kind we use take data from multiple populations (here, multiple authors) and generate the percent chance of seeing results similar to, or more extreme than, our data if there is no difference among the populations (i.e., if the authors are not distinguishable via these measures). This percent is called the p-value.

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To garner a better understanding of these concepts we begin with a short discussion of the most common, and intuitive, distribution: the normal distribution. Many variables from nature follow a normal distribution: heights, weights, temperatures, measures of chemicals/minerals, etc. Variables following a normal distribution, when plotted, assume the form of a bell-shaped curve. The important characteristics of a normal distribution are given by its mean (average) and standard deviation, where the standard deviation captures the spread of the data. Figure 2 depicts the normal distribution with the mean 0 and the standard deviation 1, denoted N (0,1). The percentiles shown below the graph are used to determine the probability associated with particular values. For example, since 95.45 percent of the data lies between -2 and 2 (so, within 2 standard deviations from the mean), we conclude that only 4.55 percent of the data lies outside of this interval. These percentages can be used to determine the likelihood of observing values as extreme or more extreme than a given value. For example, if the

Figure 2: The Normal Distribution N(0,1).

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height of the average woman in the United States is 163cm with a standard deviation of 10cm, then approximately 99.73 percent of this population has heights between 133cm and 193cm and only 0.27 percent of the population have heights below 133cm or above 193cm. Hence, women with heights equal or greater to 193cm, or 6ft 4in, comprise only 0.27/2=0.135 percent of the population. This idea forms the basis for creating p-values when testing hypotheses. When a population is believed to have a normal distribution with an unknown scaling factor, we often replace the unknown parameter with an estimate based on the data available. (For example, we may not know the underlying standard deviation for our population but we can obtain an estimate via sampling.) In many cases, the distribution for the parameter then follows a t-distribution, which is similar to a normal distribution with heavier “tails.” The t-distribution was introduced in 1908 by William Gosset, a chemist working for the Guinness brewery in Dublin, Ireland who published under the name “Student.” One form of the Student’s t-test is used to test the hypothesis that two populations have the same means (this hypothesis is known as the null hypothesis, while the negation is the alternate hypothesis). Essentially, a two-sample t-test takes two groups of data and, using each of their means and standard deviations, determines the likelihood that the populations from which the samples arose have the same means. A common application is determining whether a treatment (such as a fertilizer or drug) has an effect. For example, in determining the effect of a chemical on the growth of an animal population we may create an experiment where we give a group of the animals the chemical and leave the remaining animals (our control group) untreated. Even if the chemical had no effect, we would not expect the two groups to be identical in size due to natural variation. If we see a larger overall body-weight for the treated animals, can we know whether it is due to natural variation or the treatment? In truth, we can never know for sure, but a one-sided t-test can lend evidence. Here, one-sided t-test generates a p-value that gives the probability that the difference in mean weight between the treatment and control group is at least as large as was observed, with the chemical group specified as having the larger weight (hence onesided), if the chemical didn’t have an effect. Hence, a low p-value gives evidence that there is indeed a difference between the two populations as it is very unlikely to have observed the results we obtained if there were no difference between the treatment and control groups. In general, we say two populations are significantly different (with respect to a given variable) if we obtain a p-value less than 0.05. In our case, a p-value less than 0.05 could mean that the authors are

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indeed distinct with respect to the variable(s) in question, but we could receive significant results even when using only one author if the samples are from different genres or different locations in the author’s career. For our purpose, we have a measure of richness as our variable and several different authors forming our groupings. Each author has several writing samples, each of which has a value for the given measure of richness. We consider two authors stylometrically distinct with respect to a given measure of richness if the data yields significant differences when tested. We should also note that a p-value greater than 0.05 is not without use. A p-value of 0.25 still suggests differences among the authors, although it is too high to be considered statistically significant and should be interpreted with caution. If the p-value is too close to 1, there is little information that can be gleaned; we cannot make the positive statement that the authors are identical with respect to this measure. The two-sample t-test is used to obtain a p-value when comparing two populations. However, in many instances we want to compare more than two populations. For example, if we are testing several doses for a medication. A standard statistical test for determining if there are differences among various groups with respect to a variable is Analysis of Variance (ANOVA), which, basically, generalizes the t-test. Here, the null hypothesis is that there is no difference among the means of the groups. If the null hypothesis is true, then the groups are not distinguishable given the observations and just happen to be randomly associated with a given group. For each of our five variables we have four authorship combinations. Hence, a test similar to ANOVA should be performed on each variable with the authors forming the different groupings. The test statistic that underlies this method is the F-statistic. Essentially, the F-statistic looks at the variation of group means relative to the variation of the individual observations within the group. One may think of this as comparing the between-group variation to the within-group variation. If there is no difference among the groups, the variation among the groups should not differ from the variation without grouping. In the typical ANOVA, the distribution of this ratio follows F-distribution, also known as the FisherSnedecor distribution (after R.A. Fisher and George Snedecor). An F-distribution is depicted in Figure 3. This distribution differs from the normal distribution in several ways, most notably it lacks symmetry about the mean. Rather, the distribution has a longer “tail” to the right of the mean. If the distribution has a longer tail to the right we say it has positive skew, longer to the left is negative skew. Unfortunately, ANOVA makes an assumption that the standard deviations within the groups is equal. As we do not know that this is the case we will modify the standard ANOVA using a permutation bootstrap technique

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Figure 3: F-Distribution.

to replace the F-distribution. We note that this modification works even if the standard deviations are equal. This modification falls under the general category of resampling and is performed by calculating an F-statistic for the original data, F0 . We then create new bootstrap samples by sampling without replacement from the original data and the test statistic is calculated for each of these new samples. We do this many times; in our case 1,000, generating test statistics F1 through F1000. We obtain a p-value using We only count those values greater than F0 because the F-distribution only has one tail and it is to the right of the mean. If the null hypothesis is true, we should not be able to distinguish between the original data and the permuted data. We do this for each of our 5 measures of richness. For a particular variable, a significant p-value implies that there is a distinction somewhere among our authors with respect to that variable. The name permutation bootstrapping arises because we are creating new data sets from our original data set (hence, bootstrapping) via permuting the original data. This method evolved from work by R.A. Fisher and E.J.G. Pitman in the 1930s; it has only become an easily performed technique with the advent of computers due to the difficulty in creating the new data sets by hand. We refer interested readers to Edgington and Onghena (1995) for a more detailed exposition. Given significance, the next step is to determine where the difference lies (i.e. which author pairs are distinct). To this end, we use pairwise t-tests (in particular, Welch t-tests) with the Holm-Bonferroni adjustment. Due to the prob-

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abilistic nature of p-values, we cannot simply test all of our authors against each other. We have 4 authors, implying that there are 6 pairwise combinations. For each pairwise t-test we run, we increase the chances of at least one Type–1 error, which is rejecting the null-hypothesis when it is indeed true. The HolmBonferroni adjustment is used to keep the overall Type–1 error rate at the 5 percent level. To perform the adjustment, we arrange the six p-values by size. The smallest p-value is compared to 0.05 ⁄ 6 ≈ 0.0083. If the p-value is less than the adjusted significance value, we consider the relevant pair statistically distinct and we move to the second smallest p-value, comparing it to 0.05 ⁄5 = 0.01. If significant, we continue comparing the kth ordered p-value to 0.05 ⁄k stopping when we fail to achieve significance. Author A is distinct from author B with regard to a specific variable if (1) permutation bootstrapping detects a difference among the 4 authors for this variable and (2) the pairwise p-value for authors A and B is less than the adjusted significance value. We do this method for each of our 5 stylometrics. This comprises our univariate testing, where we use only one measure at a time. After exploring our five measures of richness independently, we briefly discuss multivariate techniques. Multivariate techniques take all 5 variables into consideration at once, using combinations of the variable-values. In particular, we construct a decision tree using our 5 variables and we discuss further techniques. At this point, it is useful to again remind the aspiring student that it is unwise to use stylometric techniques independent of more traditional methods such as, for example, reading the works in question. As David Holmes (1998) states: [Stylometry] certainly does not seek to overturn traditional scholarship by literary experts and historians, rather it seeks to complement their work by providing an alternative means of investigating works of doubtful provenance.

Measures of Richness The measures of richness we focus on deal with the frequency distribution of word appearance. Hence, we take into account the length of a given text (N ), the number of distinct words appearing in the text (V ), the number of words that appear exactly j times (Vj ), and the number of occurrences of the first- and second-most common words, W1 and W2 , respectively. Various measures of richness can be derived using these values. In particular, we examine the type-token ratio (T ), Honoré’s R (R ), Hapax Dislegomena (H ), Yule’s Characteristic K (K ), and Zipf ’s Ratio (Z ). The four particular authorship combinations we look at are: works written by Howard (HO), non–Conan works written by Howard but later adapted as Conan stories by de Camp (AD), works started by Howard but completed by de Camp and Carter (FD), and

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works written entirely by de Camp and Carter (DC). Although each category represents an author-combination, for ease of reference we refer to categories as our authors. For our tests, we created a corpus for each of our four authors; the corpus being a document containing all works by the relevant author. Each corpus was then divided into smaller subsections (between 2000 and 6000 words in length), yielding 31 samples for DC, 82 for HO, 61 for FD, and 13 for AD. These samples were processed using the Simple Concordance Program, SCP. SCP calculates Yule’s K directly with the remaining statistics calculated from the values of W1 , W2 , V, N, and the various Vj as given by SCP.

Type-Token We cannot use V alone as a measure of richness as it is highly dependent on N. The simplest way to take text size into account is to scale V by N. As such, we use V / N, the type-token ratio (where each different word is a type, and each individual word is a token). This is an extremely simple and limited measure first studied by Thompson and Thompson (1915). Thompson and Thompson were using the type-token ratio in an attempt to determine the size of an author’s lexicon based on a study of their type-token relationship. The type-token ratio is easily interpreted; a value of 2 ⁄ 9 means that for every 9 words we expect to find 2 new words. By our metric, rich texts have values close to 1 (a value of 1 would mean that no words were used more than once) while texts that are not rich have values close to 0. Although the type-token relationship is scaled by text size, the lower bound for the type-token ratio is still restricted by the length of the original text. For example, the seven-word (grammatically correct) sentence “Buffalo buffalo Buffalo buffalo buffalo buffalo Buffalo buffalo.” has a type-token ratio of 1 ⁄7. This represents the lower value for richness (by this measure) for seven-word samples. However, a sample with 700 words can (conceivably) have a lower typetoken ratio (we do not recommend testing this claim). The type-token ratio still gives information, however, especially if our text samples are roughly equivalent in size and we are careful with the interpretation. In Table 1 we display the average type-token ratio along with the standard deviation for the four authors. Average T SD of T

DC 0.339 0.023

HO 0.333 0.034

AD 0.323 0.018

ED 0.319 0.021

Table 1: Type-Token Ratio.

Using the Holm-Bonferroni comparisons we find significance between Howard’s original writing (HO) and the writings edited by de Camp (ED).

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Honoré’s R The words which occur exactly once, the Hapax Legomena, form the largest class of words in a given text. As A.Q. Morton (1986) remarks: The once-occurring words convey many of the elements thought to show excellence in writing, the range of a writer’s interests, the precision of his observation, the imaginative power of his comparisons; they demonstrate his command of rhythm and of alternations. The potential of once-occurring words as an indicator of authorship seems obvious, as a group they display so much that appears characteristic of the individual and the choices which must be made in composition.

Making the natural assumption that there is a fixed maximum vocabulary would imply that the number of hapax legomena would increase with text size, assume a maximum, and then decrease, approaching 0 as N approaches infinity. Hence, to use hapax legomena effectively we use V1 , N, and V. Honoré (1979) suggests a variable, R, which takes these into account:

We refer to this value as Honoré’s R. Honoré’s R tests the tendency of an author to choose between using a word used previously or a new word. In the extreme cases where each word is used exactly once we have V1 = V and R is infinite and when no word appears exactly once then V 1 = 0 and R = 100log(N ). Note that this value also increases without bound as N increases. Hence, authors can have a high R value either by having a V1 /V close to 1 or by having a large number of words in the piece. Having R increase with N makes sense as it scales for the difficulty in using words exactly once as the number of total words increases. We can interpret R as a measure of richness; the higher the R-value, the richer the text. In Table 2 we display the average value of Honoré’s R along with the standard deviation for the four authors. Average R SD for R

DC HO AD ED 1091.784 1071.020 1080.371 1047.415 74.042 65.184 73.699 57.192 Table 2: Honoré’s R.

Here, we find significance between the original works of Howard (HO) and those works as edited by de Camp (ED).

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Hapax Dislegomena Words occurring exactly twice form the hapax dislegomena. Sichel (1986) studied the characteristics of hapax dislegomena, finding that the proportion of twice occurring words increases quickly as N increases, then stays approximately constant for an interval of N-values before approaching 0 as N tends towards infinity. We have stability for the proportion of twice occurring words when 1000 < N < 400000. For our samples 2000 < N < 6000, so we should have stability in the proportion of twice occurring words, V2 / V. One possible explanation for the near constant values for V2 /V for an author is that a form of equilibrium has been reached. As N increases, many words will change from twice-occurring to thrice-occurring; hence lowering the proportion. However, as this is happening, words are also changing from once-occurring to twice-occurring, increasing the proportion. It is possible that, for N in our range, the number of words lost is, proportionally, the same as those gained. Table 3 summarizes the values found. Average H SD for H

DC 0.145 0.018

HO 0.148 0.012

AD 0.142 0.010

ED 0.149 0.011

Table 3: Hapax Dislegomena.

Here we find no significance among our author samples.

Yule’s K George Udny Yule (1944) was a British statistician who began applying statistics to the study of literary style late in his career. Yule was born in 1871 and had a prolific career in the field of statistics. In 1931, Yule suffered from a heart attack that left him semi-invalid, slowing his flow of publications. However, in 1944 Yule began investigating literary style. In Yule (1944) a measure of richness now called Yule’s K was introduced:

Here, S1 = N and . This was shown by Miranda-Garcí and Calle-Martín (2005) to be equivalent to:

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This is a size-independent measure of the frequency at which an author repeats words; the higher an author’s K-value, the more likely that author is to repeat words. This formula is not as confusing as it may appear at first glance. The term is the sample probability estimate for token i, hence squaring this term gives the probability of sampling this token twice (assuming independence). Multiplying this by Vi , the number of tokens occurring i times, gives an expected value on the repeat-rate of the Vi . We then sum these up for all tokens and standardize by the sample token count, V. Table 4 summarizes the values found. Yule’s K Average SD

DC 127.957 18.828

HO 116.201 13.328

AD ED 126.166 115.555 18.246 14.343

Table 4: Yule’s K.

Here we have significance between Howard’s writing (HO) and those edited by de Camp (ED) as well as those stories adapted by de Camp (AD).

Zipf ’s Ratio George Kingsley Zipf was an American linguist born in 1902. Zipf (1949) noticed many interesting ratios ranging from word-distributions to the size of cities. Although Zipf ’s Law for the first- and second-most frequent words states that W2 / W1 , which we call Zipf ’s Ratio and denote by Z, should be approximately 2, this ratio still varies from sample to sample and is used as one of our variables. Stylistic interpretations of Zipf ’s Ratio may be possible, but we use it only as another statistic gleaned from the literature. The stylistic interpretations involve sentence structure as this ratio is measuring the usage of “gluing words”; those words most popular in a text that serve as stop/start words and are used to connect concepts rather than impart meaning. Table five summarizes the values found for this stylometric. Zipf ’s Ratio DC Average 2.156 SD 0.364

HO 2.274 0.315

AD 2.523 0.385

ED 2.315 0.313

Table 5: Zipf ’s Ratio.

Using this measure, the works of de Camp (DC) are significantly different than those edited by de Camp (ED) as well as those adapted by de Camp (AD). Further, those works written by Howard (HO) are significantly different than those edited by de Camp (ED).

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Hence, if we consider all 5 of our measures we can find statistical distinction between the following pairs: HO and AD, HO and ED, DC and AD, DC and ED. Using univariate techniques we did not have statistical distinction between the pairs HO and DC or AD and ED. However, although there is no univariate distinction, we may be able to distinguish the authors by combining the variables into a multivariate technique. Further, the variable H yielded no significance, but we include it in the multivariate techniques as it may be useful when coupled with other variables.

Multivariate Techniques Multivariate techniques use multiple variables in tandem in an attempt to increase the distinction among authors. Unfortunately, Hoover (2003) demonstrated that many measures of richness behave counter-intuitively when used in this manner. However, these methods are still useful when suggesting differences that can subsequently be investigated using other, more reliable, methods. We discuss 3 multivariate techniques: cluster analysis, principal component analysis (PCA), and decision trees. We describe all 3, but for our data only the decision tree provided results worth presenting. Cluster analysis is a way to visualize the relationship of our authors with respect to multiple variables at once; typically 2 or 3. The process is simple: we create a scatter plot with the axes representing the variables and each point representing a particular sample. Samples with similar values for a particular variable will appear in close proximity to each other along the axis representing that variable. If there is a strong enough distinction, it is often possible to visually group authors. With the appropriate variables this method can be used to aid with authorship attributions. Even with variables not well suited for attribution (such as our style variables) this method can be used to suggest similarities, which can then be explored via more trustworthy methods. A principal component analysis, PCA, takes a number of, possibly correlated, variables and creates new, independent, variables known as principal components; each a linear combination of the original variables. The principal components are ordered by how much of the variation among the groups are explained by the given component. It is not uncommon for the first 2 or 3 variables to explain a large (70 percent to 90 percent) amount of the distinction among groups. Hence, we many use the cluster analysis technique with the principal components as variables. The PCA cluster-analysis maximizes the distinction among our authors and the respective variables, often leading to a clearer clustering. The downside is interpretation. If we

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wish to make statements regarding why two authors are clustered closely, we need to understand the variables in question. With PCA the meaning of each of the components is obfuscated as each is a linear combination of the original variables. The usefulness of PCA analysis grows as the number of variables increases. A decision tree is a device to help distinguish samples. As mentioned before, our variables are not suited for the task of attribution. However, we created a decision tree for our various authors as an example. To use a decision tree, imagine we have an unattributed piece that we know was written by one of our 4 authors. We calculate the variable values for the piece and then follow the decision tree, ending with a potential author. For our samples and variables, the decision tree has a classification rate of 74 percent, meaning that 74 percent of the time, if we start with one of our author samples, we can accurately determine the author using this tree. Our decision tree was created using the statistical software R and is presented in Figure 6.

Conclusion This work is meant to demonstrate a few of the basics from stylometry. There are many stylometrics that have been explored in the literature, each with their strengths and weaknesses. Fucks (1952) explores the average syllables per word along with the distribution of n-syllable words. Yule (1938) discusses sentence-length as a variable, specifically with applications in authorship attribution. However, although this stylometric provided results that agreed with other techniques, Smith (1983) found that the evidence provided is not strong enough to stand on its own. However, this author does not recommend using any method on its own, so using sentence lengths is still a viable option as a starting point. Further, sentence length can be subject to the style of the editor, which may obfuscate the preferences of the author with this variable. Another aid for attributional studies is the use of “marker words.” For example, if there is a disputed piece that is known to be written by one of a collection of authors, the known works by these authors can be used to sift out words with relative high-frequency by one author and low-frequency by the remaining authors. These words are known as marker words. Given a large enough collection of marker words, one can search for these words in the disputed piece lending evidence for authorship. This idea is central to the variable Delta introduced by Burrows (2001). For a review of many of these (and other) stylometrics, we

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refer the interested reader to Holmes (1985, 1992, 1994), Juola (2006), and Love (2002). There are many interesting undergraduate projects that arise from this field. An undergraduate Computer Science student could write a program to generate values for stylometrics from a text file or to simulate the bootstrapping adjustment to ANOVA, potentially making the process virtually hands-off, allowing the student to select texts with the program dividing the texts into samples, calculating specified variables, performing the statistical tests, and reporting the significant author combinations and variables. Further, as the field of stylometry relies on digitized versions of texts and current OCR programs, while steadily improving, are still unreliable (especially if the text is in poor condition), any work to improve the process of digitizing texts would be of great value and interest. Stylometry gives students of statistics ready access to data that can then be examined with the relevant statistical techniques themselves being studied. As this is a new field, an earnest student could study some of the more advanced techniques and apply them to a wide range of works previously not examined in such a manner. This would work especially well if coupled with a literary study of the texts using stylometry to help determine which texts to study in-depth. The theoretical aspect of various stylometrics can be studied independently. What are these variables measuring and how do they work? Which statistical tests work best if we look at a specific variable? A student interested in authorship attribution will need to look beyond this paper for applicable stylometrics, but those stylometrics are often no more difficult than those studied in this work.

Figure 6: The Decision Tree.

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Works Cited Brainerd, Barron. “On the Relation between Types and Tokens in Literary Text.” Journal of Applied Probability 9.3 (1972): 507–18. Print. Burrows, John F. “Questions of Authorship: Attribution and Beyond.” Computers and the Humanities 37 (2001): 5–32. Print. Cancho, Ramon Ferrer, and Richard V. Sole. “Least Effort and the Origins of Scaling in Human Language.” Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America 100.3 (2003) 788–91. Print. Edgington, Eugene and Patrick Onghena. Randomization Tests 3rd Edition. New York, NY: Marcel Decker Inc. 1995. Print Efron, Bradley, and Ronald Thisted. “Estimating the Number of Unseen Species: How Many Words Did Shakespeare Know?” Biometrika 63 (1976): 435–47. Print. Fucks, Wilhelm. “On Mathematical Analysis of Style.” Biometrika 39.1 (1952): 122–29. Print. Holm, Sture. “A Simple Sequentially Rejective Multiple Test Procedure.” Scandinavian Journal of Statistics 6.2 (1979): 65–70. Print. Holmes, David. “The analysis of literary style-a review.” Journal of the Royal Statistics Society Series A 148.4 (1985): 328–41. Print. _____. “Authorship Attribution” Computers and the Humanities 28.2 (1994): 87–106. Print. _____. “The Evolution of Syometry in Humanities Scholarship.” Literary and Linguistic Computing 13.3 (1998): 111–17. Print. _____. “A Stylometric Analysis of Mormon Scripture and Related Texts.” Journal of the Royal Statistical Society Series A 155.1 (1992): 91–120. Print. Honoré, A. “Some simple measures of richness of vocabulary.” Bulletin of the Association of Literary and Linguistic Computing 7.2 (1979): 172–77. Print. Hoover, David L. “Another Perspective on Vocabulary Richness.” Computers and the Humanities 37.2 (2003): 151–178. Print. Juola, Patrick. “Authorship Attribution.” Foundations and Trends in Information Retrieval 1.3 (2006): 233–334. Print. Love, Harold. Attributing Authorship: An Introduction. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2002. Print. Miranda-García, Antonio, and Javier Calle-Martín. “Yule’s Characteristic K Revisited.” Language Resources and Evaluation 39.4 (2005): 287–294. Print. Morton, A.Q. “Once. A Test of Authorship Based on Words which are not Repeated in the Sample.” Journal of the Association for Literary and Linguistic Computing 1.1 (1986): 1–8. Print Mosteller, Frederick, and David L. Wallace. Inference and Disputed Authorship: The Federalist. Reading, MA: Addison-Wesley, 1964. Print. _____. Applied Bayesian and Classical Inference: The Case of the Federalist Papers. Reading, MA: Addison-Wesley, 1964. Print. Sichel, Herbert. “Word frequency distributions and type-token characteristics.” Mathematical Scientist 11 (1986): 45–72. Print. Smith, M.W.A. “Recent Experience and New Developments of Methods for the Determination of Authorship.” Association for Literary and Linguistic Computing Bulletin 11.3 (1983): 73–82. Print. Thisted, Ronald, and Brad Efron. “Did Shakespeare Write a Newly Discovered Poem?” Biometrika 74.3 (1987): 445–55. Print. Valenza, Robert J. “Are Thisted-Efron Authorship Tests Valid?” Computers and the Humanities 25.1 (1991): 27–46. Print. Williams, C. B. “Mendenhall’s Studies of Word-Length Distribution in the Works of Shakespeare and Bacon.” Biometrika 62.1 (1975): 207–12. Print. Yule, George Udny. “On Sentence-Lengths as a Statistical Characteristic of Style in Prose, with Application to Two Cases of Disputed Authorship.” Biometrika 30.3 (1938): 363– 90. Print.

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_____. The Statistical Study of Literary Vocabulary. Cambridge, MA: Cambridge University Press. 1944. Print. Zipf, George K. Selected Studies of the Principle of Relative Frequency in Language, Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press. 1932. Print. _____. (1949) Human Behavior and the Principle of Least Effort. Cambridge, MA: AddisonWesley. 1949. Print.

Appendix: List of Works Zipf ’s Law Graph Published during REH’s lifetime: Phoenix on the Sword, Tower of the Elephant, Scarlet Citadel, Queen of the Black Coast, Black Colossus, Shadows in the Moonlight, The Slithering Shadow, The Pool of the Black One, Rogues in the House, Devil in Iron, Jewels of Gwahlur, Beyond the Black River, Shadows in Zamboula, Red Nails, People of the Black Circle, Hour of the Dragon, A Witch Shall be Born Published after REH’s death: Vale of the Lost Women, Frost-Giant’s Daughter

Complete List of Works Analyzed H: A Witch Shall Be Born, Beyond the Black River, Black Colossus, Devil in Iron, Gods of the North (Frost-Giant’s Daughter), Hour of the Dragon, Jewels of Gwahlur, People of the Black Circle, Phoenix and the Sword, Queen of the Black Coast, Red Nails, Rogues in the House, Scarlet Citidel, Shadows in the Moonlight, Shadows in Zamboula, The Pool of the Black One, The Slithering Shadow, Tower of the Elephant, Vale of the Lost Women DC: Black Tears, Conan of the Isles, The City of Skulls, The Curse of the Monolith, The Thing in the Crypt ED: The God in the Bowl, Rogues in the House, Red Nails, Jewels of Gwahlur, Beyond the Black River, The Tower of the Elephant, The Slithering Shadow, The Pool of the Black One, The People of the Black Circle AD: Hawks over Shem, Flame Knife, Road of Eagles

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Part Two: The Cultural Conan Arnold at the Gates Subverting Star Persona in Conan the Barbarian NICKY FALKOF1 When the Austrian actor, one-time bodybuilder and former Mr. Universe Arnold Schwarzenegger began his political career in the U.S., he became commonly known by a pair of epithets that conjured up notions of strength, decisiveness, invincibility and hypermasculine power: first “Conan the Republican” and later, as Governor of California, “The Governator.” These witty nicknames reference Conan the Barbarian (1982) and The Terminator (1984), both iconic roles for Schwarzenegger that were first aired in eponymous films made in the early 1980s. Despite their similarities, though, these are texts that perform very different ideological work. This chapter will consider Conan the Barbarian as an anomaly within a cinematic oeuvre that has been put into political service. I will examine the narrative and conceptual content of the film in context of what we might call a Schwarzeneggerian canon, illustrating how the world of Conan subverts certain generic formulae without, however, taking on the mantle of ideological sabotage that might have accrued to such a project. First, though, we must consider what Schwarzenegger’s non–Conan films can illustrate about the fluidity between Hollywood and politics. According to Gary Indiana, “The US is unique among advanced nations in its cartoonlike educational dogma of America’s unblemished history of noble intentions, global altruism, heroic vigilance in pursuit of universal justice” (x). “The Governator,” perhaps more than any other recent player, reveals the fictionalized underpinnings of this powerful myth of national moral superiority. Schwarzenegger as star and Schwarzenegger as politician are inextricably intertwined. Like Ronald Reagan before him, Schwarzenegger deployed his onscreen persona to create a political modus operandi that smoothed his path to electoral victory, in effect making the move from fictional reality to political reality. Although the characters he has played on screen have not always followed the code of the American hero, they have nonetheless combined to create an aura of “toughness,” a version of masculinity as both compassionate 123

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and powerful that fulfils the narrative requirement for the leader-as-malehero so vital to American political mythology.2 It is this long-standing trope of the political leader embodying the decisive, active and physically effective qualities of the typical national hero that was utilized by Schwarzenegger in his campaign for office. Richard Dyer writes, “The star phenomenon emphasises the kind-of-person the star is rather than the specific circumstances of particular roles” (Stars 65). The “kind-ofperson” that Schwarzenegger was understood to be had, by his 2003 electoral victory, long transcended the specificity of individual roles. His stardom was available for political use precisely because it was embedded in his recognizable physical self rather than referring to a particular film. The central importance of the Terminator series to his persona had been tempered by his run of comedy cinema during the 1990s, developing into what Michael Messner calls the “kindergarten commando” (467), combining the toughness of his 1980s hard bodied action characters with the engaging, child-friendly compassion of Kindergarten Cop (1990) and Junior (1994). Explicit references were made throughout the campaign to his cinematic history, a blatant conflation of fictional star image and real, politically ambitious, human being. Many show business personalities have made the move from performance to politics; what sets Schwarzenegger apart in this company is the immense power of his star persona and his overt use of it throughout his period in office.3 Understanding this connection between performance and power is important for a number of reasons, not least because it illustrates the enormous affective potential of popular cultures to foster and entrench dominant power structures, in this case translating the white male hero directly from screen to office.4 This essay is not primarily about how Schwarzenegger utilized his onscreen self to create an equally attractive political identity.5 What it is, rather, is an initial meditation on a series of texts that combined to create this identity followed by an analysis of the filmic oddity that is Conan the Barbarian. It is my contention that Conan is an unexpectedly subversive text, that it upturns the conventions of both blockbuster Hollywood and the Schwarzeneggerian universe. I am not suggesting that the film contains the possibility of a leftist or progressive message like, say, the anti-corporate agitating of Total Recall (1990).6 The opposite, in fact; rather than presenting alternatives to power structures, rather than questioning hegemonic monopolies, Conan ignores or fails to see the injunctions implanted by the master narrative. I will show how the film sidesteps or explicitly upsets these narrative injunctions and homogenized depictions of gender and race. The very whiteness of Conan is in question throughout the mise-en-scène, but despite the

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possibilities of this refusal or misreading of the dominant ideological demands of conservative Hollywood, the film does not admit the possibility of an alternate political scene. Conan, in short, upsets dominant narratives but without questioning the hegemony they entrench; rather, that hegemony is entirely disavowed.7 This reading will allow me to consider what the film does within Schwarzenegger’s oeuvre, illustrating, in turn, the usually ubiquitous presence of the homogeneous cultural depictions it refutes, refuses or ignores.

The Hero’s Progress But let us begin by thinking about the cultural construct “Arnold Schwarzenegger,” a globally recognizable face and, perhaps more apposite, body, whose progress from an obscure Austrian village to one of the most powerful political positions in the U.S. has been nothing short of stratospheric. In his speech to the Republican National Convention before his election in 2004, Schwarzenegger “presented himself as the incarnation of American superiority, the living evidence that ‘working hard and playing by the rules’ ... could take a person anywhere in freedom’s land” (Indiana 60). His entry into politics drew heavily on one part of the national immigrant mythology whereby the only barrier to success is one’s own ability. This romantic notion is obscenely inverted in the U.S.’s treatment of and xenophobic response to economic migrants from elsewhere in the Americas but nonetheless retains its powerful emotional drive both in Hollywood and in socio-political discourse, where the assumption of a level playing field informs debates on everything from taxation to healthcare.8 Schwarzenegger effectively utilized this important nationalist narrative to depict himself as “the American dream’s apotheosis” (Indiana 16). This act of rewriting/reconstructing the self has been an ongoing Schwarzeneggerian project, from his bodybuilding introduction to America as the Austrian Oak, a name that was soon naturalized as “The Oak,” emphasizing his physical effectiveness rather than the foreignness that initially defined him (Murray 200). Indeed, it is an evocation of the success of his undertaking that Schwarzenegger, despite the thickness of his Austrian accent, is no longer understood as being an outsider. He has been nativized: his persona aggressively emphasizes his position as embodiment of the American dream in stark contrast to the experience of other migrants who speak English with heavy accents. Jane Hill, for example, explains the intense anxiety experienced by native Spanish speakers who find themselves the objects of something of a moral panic around their “mangling” of the English language (684). This linguistic freedom may well be a consequence of Schwarzenegger’s racial identity.

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As a “white” immigrant, he is not subject to the same injunction of erasing his history as the “non-white” immigrant who is expected to speak perfectly if she speaks at all. However, as we will see with regards to Conan, before the construction of his monolithic public identity was set, Schwarzenegger’s implication in the tropes of whiteness could sometimes be problematic. Schwarzenegger’s career, then, has created a star persona that is the expression of a number of American mythologies. Along with Sylvester Stallone as John Rambo, he was instrumental in creating the iconic hard-bodied hero of the 1980s, whose almost freakish physique and minimal speech made him a perfect object of recovery from the anxious forms of masculinity that characterized 1970s America, inflected by the disconcerting experiences of Vietnam and Watergate as well as the rise of feminism, equal rights and the Stonewall movement.9 But the man who eventually became California governor was far more than this, more than just what Yvonne Tasker calls his “spectacular body” (1993). The child-centered narratives mentioned above introduce compassion and paternal feeling to his persona, and in later films he is intelligent, urbane and metropolitan. Witness the change from the mud-covered army grunt of Predator (1987), abandoned in an unnamed jungle to fight off a supernatural menace with nothing but his wits and his pectorals, to the sophisticated spy of True Lies (1994), conversant with tango and Sumerian art, as comfortable in a dinner jacket as hanging out of a helicopter. In Junior, he is a doctor who wears glasses, signifying intellect and education. His milieu has changed from the jungle of Predator and the gritty urban streets of The Terminator to the rarefied confines of the laboratory, the domesticity of the suburban home and/or the cultured locale of the international elite. By 1994, when True Lies was made, Schwarzenegger had long been a global superstar and projected a recognizable image. That film’s financial success is illustrative of how dramatically his persona had changed. Audiences uncritically accepted the idea of an actor who had once been conceived of as an incoherent muscle man playing roles that required elegance as well as wit, or necessitated the complex internal ambiguities of Quaid/Hauser in Total Recall. Frank Grady writes, with reference to the character played by Vanessa Williams in Eraser (1996), The success of the Arnoldian formula has now become so commanding that the chief qualification even of a damsel in distress is her willingness to abandon — erase — her own history. Doing the right thing means not only becoming a new person, long a traditional move in our exceptionalist and self-help-addicted culture, but also denying you were ever anybody else in the first place [53].

Within his career, then, as well as within his political characterization, Schwarzenegger rewrites himself, forgoes his history to embody the ideas of

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the American dream, going from voiceless and defined by the body, traits that are more common to the immigrant and to manual labor practices, to eloquent, well-dressed in a suit and tie, performing a public role. This is the “self-made man” writ large. Schwarzenegger connotes not just the tough American hero but also the success suggested by the possibilities of the supposedly classless American meritocracy. In a triumph of star persona, this Austrian immigrant with his murky family history of Nazi involvement, his questionable gender relations,10 his thick accent and his excessive musculature has become an “all–American guy.” His powerful alliance with the mythologies of his adopted home means that Schwarzenegger is understood within the culture to be prototypically white. Although these tropes have often been subverted, reinterpreted and outright ignored, in general, and particularly in the 1980s and 1990s when his acting career was at its peak, it was a white hero who rode into the sunset after saving the day, a white president who climbed into a fighter jet to take on the alien invaders in Independence Day, a white subject who was unconsciously constructed as the recipient of the benefits of the structure of the American dream.11 Writers like Richard Dyer (White) and Ruth Frankenberg discuss the ubiquitous invisibility of being white, the way in which white is not raced, not a color, understood to be “normal.” Non-white people are black, or Asian, or Native American; white people are “just people.” While there are notable problems with this perspective — Sara Ahmed, for example, points out that whiteness is only invisible for those who inhabit it — it is nonetheless extremely useful for an understanding of narrative codes of nationalist discourse in the global North. Within both mainstream Hollywood and American political dialogue, white heterosexuality is the norm against which every other is defined. Schwarzenegger’s use of the myth of the American dream entails an arrangement of the self as an everyman; and that everyman is, within this context, always and necessarily white. As we will see, however, Conan fails to embody the necessary tropes of whiteness and as such brings into question the dualistic fallacies of race.

A Barbarian Quest How, then, does Conan the Barbarian fit into this cinematic account? What does it do, or rather fail to do, to Schwarzenegger’s history, and what can be learned from it? Most of his films “reflect the same narrow set of themes, the same ‘messages,’ the same conflations of virtue with the cleverly triumphant deployment of physical strength and ‘strong leadership’ in service to ‘the right

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idea’” (Indiana 33). A quick glance at Schwarzenegger’s filmography will show two distinct types emerging: the violent, dystopian science fiction of Terminator, Predator, Total Recall, Running Man (1987) and End of Days (1999); and the ironic, genre-aware, set-in-the-present action/comedy of True Lies, Last Action Hero (1993), Junior, Kindergarten Cop and Twins (1988). Conan, however, is different. It does not fulfill either of these functions, neither framing the star as a tormented individual in a Manichean universe forced to utilize the capacities of his enlarged body to fight for good, nor as a self-aware postmodern hero capable of harnessing the conventions of Hollywood in the service of narrative. While Conan is clearly the “hero” of this tale in the sense of being its primary protagonist, he is an adventurer rather than a rescuer, not tied to any greater polis than his loosely aligned band of thieves. There is no sense that his vendetta against Thulsa Doom ( James Earl Jones) is intended to liberate the slaves of the snake cult or to end its evil influence. His is an entirely personal quest, spurred by the desire for wealth and then metamorphosed into an urge for vengeance for the deaths of his father and tribe and his own experience of being sold into slavery. Conan is a hero in the sense that he is brave and powerful and always, eventually, wins his fights. He is not, however, a hero in the perhaps more classical Schwarzenegger mode that requires the protagonist to be a savior of the weak. This is the first way in which we can see the differential between Conan the Barbarian and the sorts of cinema that combined to create the persona of the “Governator”: the film does not, in Gary Indiana’s terms cited above, operate in service to the nationalist American “right idea.” Conan is not an altruist; he is a solipsist.12 The plot itself illustrates the difference between Conan and the more typical Schwarzenegger hero. Grady points out “his films’ obsession with the manufacture and remanufacture of identity” (53), an obsession that is missing from Conan, where the heroic identity is never interrogated. Conan is the lost child of a lost tribe but his quest is not about the search for a solidified self. He goes from slave to gladiator to free man to, in the final voiceover, a “king by his own hand,” without ever considering questions of the self, identity, subjectivity. The issue of motivation is similarly opaque when compared to other Schwarzenegger characters. The Terminator’s very existence is in the service of a mission. Total Recall ’s Quaid repudiates his original self, evades the manipulations of his enemies and joins the resistance on Mars. Harry Tasker in True Lies is a secret agent who actively affects the terrorists’ plans with his involvement. Dutch in Predator is a professional soldier who has been given a mission by the army. Even Dr. Alex Hesse in Junior has a specific purpose: to further the cause of fertility research.

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Conan, on the other hand, is surprisingly passive, in narrative terms at least. First he is sold into slavery as a child, then turned into a gladiator as an adult, then taken to an eastern land, coded as the Orient — in Hyborian geography, either Vendhya or Khitai — and eventually freed by his master. None of these developments are a consequence of agency or choice or power. Although he is nominally driven by his quest to find the snake-headed standard of the warriors who killed his father, he is easily distracted. Progress on the journey is only made with the assistance of others. He encounters and liberates Subotai (Gerry Lopez) who takes him to the city and helps him find his way around. Subotai suggests that they rob the tower of the snake cult, and, on the way there, they meet Valeria (Sandahl Bergman), who has the same idea but with a better plan. She organizes the pair of friends and tells Conan to acquire the eye of the serpent, and it’s only while following her instructions that he encounters Thulsa Doom’s standard and thus the impetus to continue his journey. After their successful plundering of the tower, the band of thieves are brought before King Osric (Max von Sydow), who hires them to get his daughter back from Thulsa Doom. The previous scene sees the trio celebrating their ill-gotten gains in a tavern, so much the worse for wear that Conan, upon being confronted by Osric’s men, slumps comatose to the floor, and Valeria waves her sword around ineffectually before collapsing alongside him. Although Conan has just encountered the sign he has been searching for, he is too distracted by wealth and entertainment and his new love affair with Valeria to bother with his quest. It is only Osric’s demanding the rescue of his daughter and Valeria’s reluctance to obey that spur him back into action. While Conan is unquestionably a man of action, defined by his enormous physique, imperviousness to pain and skill with a sword, he is also buffeted by the winds of fate. He never controls the narrative. Each new step in the process of tracking down and killing Thulsa Doom is spurred by someone else’s knowledge or desire. Although this could be said to mimic classical quest structure, where the hero continually encounters advice and assistance along the way, there is a sense in which Conan must be constantly reminded of his purpose. Although his body makes him an effective hero, he lacks the moral purpose needed to spur the pursuit ever onwards. After he infiltrates the snake cult and is found out as an “infidel,” Conan is brought before Thulsa Doom, physically tortured by the ubiquitous pair of henchmen and left lying in agony on the ground. Thulsa Doom interrogates him majestically, at which Conan emits a strangled cry explaining his desire for revenge. Despite his obvious passion, the hero sounds like nothing more than a child, his constrained physicality and the desperate high pitch of his voice pitted against Doom’s sonorous tones and powerful movement. The

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journey is revealed to have been, at least emotionally, in vain; there is less satisfaction for the hero in revenging a series of deaths when the murderer has no recollection of them. The driving force of Conan’s life was nothing but a brief moment’s caprice for the men of the snake cult. It is his own experiences of the cult’s evil ministrations that finally make Conan truly single-minded, truly determined to have his revenge. Only after he is tormented and crucified does he become a wild-eyed, implacable warrior, finally the author of his own fate. He matures from boy to man, becoming an active agent in charge of his own destiny. But he does not heed Valeria’s warning and so she pays for his action with her life. If the callow Conan of the first part of the film is lacking the agency and drive that make a typically admirable Schwarzeneggerian hero, then the cold and enraged Conan of the second half fails in the qualities of heroism because he sacrifices his lover to his desire for revenge, and also because it took a threat to his own security to spur him into action. He does not ride against Thulsa Doom to save the princess or destroy the evil empire but rather to pay back the damage done to him personally. His revenge is selfish, his action self-motivated.

Wild Women Grady writes that “concepts of masculinity and the construction of gender in the postmodern body” are questions that “any film featuring the former bodybuilder Schwarzenegger necessarily invites” (44). Schwarzenegger’s excessive masculinity concurrently opens the cinematic spectacle up to speculation about the role of the female. We have seen the way in which Conan-as-hero differs from the more ideologically unified canon of Schwarzeneggerian characters; Conan’s relation to the heroine and her position within the film are also ambiguous. Although she is primarily constructed as a love interest, Valeria is as accomplished with a sword as Conan is, and a better thief. Unlike Terminator’s Sarah Connor (Linda Hamilton), though, she cannot be thought of as a “feminist” character.13 After their meeting with King Osric, Valeria begs Conan to abandon the quest, to remain with her and make their romance the center of his world. This appeal to domesticity fails and she wakes the next morning alone, abandoned by her lover. Despite this betrayal, though, Valeria follows Conan into the wilds, where she and Subotai find his broken body crucified to a tree. Indefatigable, Valeria refuses to give up on her lover and demands that the old man, the tale’s narrator, calls down the spirits to bring Conan back to life, insisting that she is willing to pay whatever price may be

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demanded. Her promise is exacted from her after the rescue of the princess and the destruction of Thulsa Doom’s orgiastic hideout, when she is killed by one of Doom’s snake arrows. Despite her strength and skill, then, the quasi-maternal self-sacrifice in which she gives up her own life to restore Conan to his makes it impossible to think of her as a feminist construction. Nonetheless Valeria’s character is unmistakably subversive when considered alongside Conan’s. She actively saves his life twice: first by fighting off the demons that want to spirit him to the nether regions after his death and second by returning from the afterlife herself to rescue him from a fatal blow from one of Thulsa Doom’s henchmen. Both of these actions are attributed by the narrative to the feminine potency of her romantic love; there is a repressed alternate meaning here, though, in which Valeria is actually stronger than Conan. She can save him but he cannot save her. Rescuing the loved object is one of the stated duties of the hero. Conan fails at this but Valeria succeeds. Even though she dies in the process, her success serves to cast his failure in an even stronger light. Within what we are calling the Schwarzeneggerian universe, the hero is brave and victorious. The female character, if there is one, may be brave too but she is also secondary and must learn her skills from the male hero. Even Sarah Connor, who becomes an emblematic tough woman, is just a normal suburban girl until she is taught how to survive by Kyle Reese (Michael Biehn) and a succession of lovers. Valeria upsets this balance by being as physically effective and powerful and more morally admirable than Conan. According to Indiana, “Women [in action cinema] achieve personhood by becoming warriors — in other words, men — while the harsh exertions of men equip them with breasts, usurping one of the biological functions of women” (62). As with so much about the film, this common formulation does not quite fit. Valeria is indeed a warrior, but she is a nobler warrior than her male counterpart and as such cannot be said to simply “become” a man. Nor does Conan usurp her feminine function; her maternal sacrifice ensures that she retains access to her biological purpose at the same time as she usurps his heroic injunction to save others. Valeria’s character is not the only place in the film where codes relating to gender play out in a way that is odd, unexpected, not in keeping with the usual sequential imperatives of Hollywood. Conan the Barbarian can easily be read as a standard cinematic narrative of fathers and sons in which the loss of the hero’s patriarchal progenitor drives and fuels the action. This perspective is borne out by the repeated emphasis on the phallic power of the sword. The film opens with Conan’s father inducting him into the mysteries of steel and showing him the skills involved in forging a weapon. Even here, though, at

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the very start of the film, the apparently stereotypical placing of gender is questioned; we see both women and men involved in the world of making weaponry. What would usually be the sacred heartland of masculine endeavor is actually a place where both genders work side by side. After young Conan’s tribe is attacked by the snake cult, Thulsa Doom himself steals the metonymic sword that Conan’s father made. It is only after his release from slavery that Conan recovers from this loss. He finds himself in a cavern in the rocks populated by the desiccated skeletons of long-ago kings and acquires an even better sword, one that has been gifted to him by Crom, his tribe’s god and a more potent father than the lamented biological parent. In the aforementioned scene after his capture by Thulsa Doom, Conan howls, “You killed my father! You killed my people! You took my father’s sword!” It is notable here that father and symbol of father recur while there is no specific mention of the murder of his mother, even though at the start of the film the audience is shown the horrible moment when Thulsa Doom strikes her head from her shoulders to test that self-same sword while the young Conan is holding her hand. After his resurrection, during the fight amongst the stones, Conan finds himself face to face with one of Doom’s two henchmen. He swings his mighty weapon and slices the latter’s sword in half, then hacks him to death. Only afterwards does he realize that the sword he destroyed was the same one that was taken from his father. His superior masculine power, divinely granted, has overcome not only his enemies but also the symbolic threat emanating from the omnipotent Oedipal father. At the culmination of his quest, Thulsa Doom tries to stay Conan’s hand by claiming paternity on the basis that his actions have made Conan a hero, have given form to his life. “My child,” he says. “For if I am not your father, who is?” But this spurious appeal fails and, in a mighty swing of his own patriarchal steel, Conan finally kills his enemy. All of these repeated tropes of the father-son axis may well suggest that Conan the Barbarian is, like so many other action films, about the hero’s search for his missing father, but the final analysis suggests something different.14 Like many aspects of this film, the place of the maternal within the narrative diegesis is less clear-cut than it seems. Conan’s mother is a spectral presence throughout. Although dialogue and plot explicitly mention the imperatives of patriarchal god, father and phallic-symbolic-potent sword, the mother nonetheless reappears obliquely within its framework. First there is that glimpsed vision of her face at the fireside during the forging of the initial sword followed by her binding of its handle, a female presence unmentionably but unmistakably involved in the creation of the film’s ur-symbol. During the plundering of the village and the scene of her death, the mother too bears

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a carven sword in defense of her child. Despite the film’s repetition of the phrase “my father’s sword” these moments suggest that the mother has at least some stake in the sword and in the symbolic tribal power it manifests. Then there is the reappearance of Valeria from the afterlife during the fight at the stones; it is only the intercession of this nurturing female, the one who made the maternal sacrifice of self for lover-son, that allows Conan to continue fighting and to eventually shatter his father’s stolen sword. Most potent is the final death of the enemy. During his earlier capture by Thulsa Doom, Conan yells incoherently about the murder of his father; no mention is made of his mother. When he finally comes upon his nemesis atop the snake tower, Doom tries to use paternal arguments to sway him from his course. The nature of the quest itself, the killing of a potentially paternal figure to avenge the death of the father, seems unquestionably to make this an Oedipal story of fathers and sons. But despite this repeated paternal theme, when the time comes for Conan to kill Thulsa Doom he does so by swinging the flawless sword he was given by his other father, the god Crom, in an arc, and beheading Doom. The camera cuts between close ups of their two faces — Doom’s, repeating “my son, my son,” and Conan’s, horrified but gifted with a dawning realization — and then cuts to a similar shot of the princess, staring shocked at the unfolding scene. The camera pulls away, we see the crowds and the temple, then there is a close up of the sword and a cut back to Conan’s face and then to Doom’s. We see the beginning of Conan’s motion, hear a thwack and the sword crashes into Doom’s neck. This sequence of ponderous close ups on the faces of the killer and the one who will be killed, the actors’ slow movements, the camera’s engaged gaze at the sword itself, the sense of inevitability, the dawning realization in each character’s eyes, is enormously reminiscent of the killing of Conan’s mother, beheaded by Doom with his father’s stolen sword after a series of slow close-up cuts between their faces. These echoes, of the beheading, the use of the steel phallus and the filming technique, suggest that despite his protestations about his father, it is actually Conan’s mother who is here avenged. Although the overt narrative insists that this is a story about fathers and sons, unconsciously it seems to be all about his mother. Conan the Barbarian is, then, a somewhat unexpected text in terms of gender as well as in the character of the hero. Like other stories that revolve around the recognizable Schwarzenegger star image, it professes to be about masculinity and muscles, with women filling a secondary and expositionary role. But the unusually potent and powerful love interest and the unspoken but always felt maternal absence serve to illustrate that there is more to Conan’s women than this, that the excesses and slippages of the narrative have inad-

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vertently created a space where the action movie female has escaped from her narrow confines and gained an agency that her sisters in the Schwarzenegger universe can only dream about.

Race and the Barbarian We have seen, then, the way in which Conan the Barbarian fails to conform to the semiotic codes of the Schwarzenegger universe in the case of both the construction and moral mandate of the hero and the unexpectedly potent position of the feminine. Perhaps the most glaring example of the film’s failure or refusal to read or perform the injunctions of traditional Hollywood hegemonic discourse is within the area of race. Many of Schwarzenegger’s more intelligent or well-plotted films exhibit stereotypical and distressingly retrogressive depictions of the racialized nonwhite “other.” Predator pits the “good” black character Mac (Bill Duke) against the “bad” Dillon (Carl Weathers), articulating but also counter-balancing fears of blackness. Dillon is educated and well-spoken but works against the other men, a willing slave of the unscrupulous government. Mac is an uneducated fighter, a tough guy, defined by his body, one of the team. They are opposed by their appearances: Mac has darker skin, thicker lips, a shaved head. He looks wilder, sweats more. His appearance is savage in contrast to Dillon, suave, lighter-skinned, better-dressed and -spoken. The black man who gets to wear the marks of whiteness — education, literacy, civilization, status — is bad, while the black man who is defined by his body rather than his mind is good.15 Terminator 2 conflates these two subject positions — the good black man who knows his place and the bad black man who doesn’t — into one body. The scientist Dr. Miles Dyson ( Joe Morton) is the man responsible for inventing Skynet, the system that will eventually allow the machines to wipe out humanity. After Sarah Connor and the Terminator convince him of this truth, he turns his back on technology, destroying his research and his laboratory. The film’s only black character is forced to reject the education and skills that allowed his entrance into the realms of power and perform an act of physical and intellectual self-sacrifice to remedy the danger caused by his “uppity” and treacherous knowledge. Benny (Mel Johnson Jr.), the cab driver in Total Recall, is a mutant who befriends Quaid but then turns out to be a betrayer working for the evil overlord Cohaagen (Ronny Cox). He is gruesomely dispatched by Quaid with a “giant phallic drill”; this finale “offers multiple parodies (or perhaps only invocations) of racist myths about black male sexuality” (Grady 51). The Arabic villains in True Lies are entirely unsym-

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pathetic. Their leader Salim Abu Aziz (Art Malik) makes a taped promise to bomb American cities in retaliation for the deaths of women and children caused by U.S. forces in the Middle East, but despite this clear statement he is portrayed as a maniacal, motive-less murderer, his ideology and the reactive nature of the threat he poses swamped in a sea of shots of gun-wielding terrorists yelling incoherently.16 The film’s only other significant non-white character is Juno Skinner (Tia Carrere), an exotic, Orientalized beauty whose amoral desire for money makes her the diametric opposite to Jamie Lee Curtis’ housewife, whose sexuality is confined to the monogamous realm of marriage and only engaged outside the home through manipulation or against her will.17 Hill writes, Why, if nearly all scientists concur that human “races” are imaginary, do so many highly educated, cosmopolitan, economically secure people continue to think and act as racists? We know that “apparent irrationalities” seldom turn out to be the result of ignorance or confusion. Instead, they appear locally as quite rational, being rooted in history and tradition, functioning as important organizing principles in relatively enduring political ecologies, and lending coherence and meaning to complex and ambiguous human experiences [680].

The social function of racism, in this reading, is to make sense of the world. Creating a notion of “them” helps to solidify a sense of “us,” of who we are, of what our status is. The “minoritisation” of a people, writes Homi Bhabha, “must be seen for what it is: the ‘other side’ of the phantasy of the national ‘people-as-one’ which disturbs the democratic dream” (202). The majority of Schwarzenegger’s films, if they engage with people who are read as being non-white, do so in a racist way, in a way that assumes certainties about these people that are based on their pigmentation not their personhood. Conan, however, does something different. This is not, as I have said, because the film fosters a progressive or anti-racist message; rather it seems to fail to “read” race correctly, or even to see it at all. Nowhere is this racial blindness more graphically manifested than in the character of Thulsa Doom himself. The pasts of Conan and Valeria “are a pastiche of the Mongol Empire, the Rome of Tiberius, Arthurian legends and the planet Krypton” (Indiana 62). There is also a hefty dose of the Viking in this mix: Conan refers specifically to a Valhalla into which one must earn entry. All of these milieus have fictional configurations that will be recognizable to the historically or cinematically literate spectator. None of them are particularly hospitable to blackness. The choice of James Earl Jones to play Doom is, then, an awkward one. His is the lone black face in the entire film with the exception of a trader seen briefly in the market town. But, crucially, although there is only one featured character who is black and this within an

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environment in which blackness could legitimately be seen as a subject for comment, Jones’ raced identity is never engaged with. The film seems eminently capable of ignoring the fact that he can be read as differently raced to everyone else on screen, although it is fair to assume that this would be apparent to most audiences. It is almost as though the actor with his remarkable presence has been hired without anyone noticing the inconvenient fact of his racial difference from the other players. Almost, but not quite: for, in a bizarre stylistic choice, the film makes small attempts to not only ignore but also to erase the signs of race. Jones’ hair is ironed completely flat and cut in the same bowl-like shape as his extremely Caucasian henchmen’s. He has been given a pair of colored contact lenses that turn his eyes an entrancing blue.18 This well-known black actor is thus given the physical significations that would mark a white person, the eyes and hair of one of his Nordic underlings. He is almost re-raced, given a new designation so that he will fit into the miseen-scène. I reiterate that there is nothing progressive about this; but the very desire to erase or reconfigure his race rather than to mark him always-already as a black character is enormously different to the tendencies exhibited by most of the Schwarzenegger canon. According to Dyer, “As long as race is something applied only to non-white peoples, as long as white people are not racially seen and named, they/we function as a human norm. Other people are raced, we are just people” (White 1). Yet in this case it is blackness that vanishes, that is not seen by the camera or by the narrative. Blackness never attains the invisibility that accrues to whiteness in Dyer’s formulation. It does not become ubiquitous and thus unmarked/unnoticed; rather it is erased, removed as a possible subject position because it does not fit within the confines of the narrative. Jones’ star image, his negotiable, powerful persona, has outweighed the considerations of what is usually a raced identity. Mainstream Hollywood codes itself within homogenizing injunctions of racial specificity. The film’s failure or refusal to enact these can be seen most potently in the central character of Conan himself and his awkward, unsettling embodiment of the apparent tropes of whiteness. Earlier in this essay I examined the way in which Schwarzenegger, in order to reconceptualize his identity from immigrant to all–American everyman and personification of the most cherished national myth, had to place himself firmly within the realms of whiteness. The roles he plays go from physically to mentally enabled. As his command of English improves, he plays characters who exhibit more intellect and education.19 He begins to wear suits, he shows himself to be conversant with high culture. He takes on all the markers of sophisticated white western society. Although he is still metonymically defined by his spectacular body

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and retains access to the toughness that it connotes, used to great effect in his campaign for governor, the star persona with which his American career began, that of a successful and physically powerful bodybuilder, has been tempered, made subtle. Gail Bederman writes extensively on the powerful conceptual linkages between whiteness and civilization in the late 19th century: “The white man was a metonym which simultaneously denoted a male of European ancestry and the advanced civilisation of which he was a member” (50). She illustrates the way in which the white man permitted himself the best of both worlds. He was allowed to possess the powerful body that characterized the colonized or working-class subject (she gives the example of middle-class fascination with prize fighters), but it was understood that the price of entry into civilization was for him to oppose these urges, to conquer the primitive demands of the body and maintain a self-control that gave him a moral mandate to stand over women, workers and non-whites (12).20 This unbreakable bond between whiteness and civilization, the mastery of the body by the mind, is echoed in Schwarzenegger’s progress from actor to politician. In conquering the dominance of the body for which he became known, in bringing in what Grady calls compassion to his persona, he mimics the journey of the paradigmatic white man whose entry into civilization is a consequence of his transcending the urges of his (nonetheless powerful, primitive and masculine) body. Schwarzenegger, then, is profoundly read as being white and thus as connoting civilization. And this is precisely what makes Conan the Barbarian such a jarring text. Conan is physically white. He is described as a “Northman” by the narrator and makes reference to Viking culture, placing him within an ethnicity that could best be described as Nordic, one of the versions of whiteness that was, in the 19th century racial science that bequeathed us many of our commonly held ideas about “race,” a primary bearer of a “true,” originary whiteness. But Conan and his heritage signally fail to embody many of the expected connotations of whiteness, understood as a consequence of and condition for civilization. We can see the way in which the film detaches whiteness from civilization in a comparison between Conan and the Eastern-coded characters and settings in the film. We first encounter this mystical other when Conan, still a gladiator and a slave, is taken to “The East” by his master, who wishes him to learn more advanced fighting skills. Again, there is no sense here of the film being progressive or avoiding the pitfalls of racist consciousness. The scenes set in the east are lavish, ornate, exotic and exhibit all of the visual clichés associated with orientalist stereotyping. Nonetheless, this sequence marks the first time in the film that we see anything resembling architecture, art or literature. The

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oriental potentates live in elaborate buildings. We are told that Conan is given access to poetry and philosophy for the first time (not that his exposure to them seems to have any effect on his character or judgment). Compare this elegant, metropolitan setting with Conan’s own provenance: the village of his birth was a collection of fur-draped huts rather than buildings, destroyed by Thulsa Doom’s troops in the work of moments. Literacy, education and sophistication, the usual marks of civilization, are reserved not for the white man but for the oriental, and it is the white man’s world, as can be seen in the film’s very title, that invokes associations of barbarism and primitivism. The Orientals are the sole bearers of culture here. Despite their excessive otherness, they have access to many of the attributes that more usually accrue to the centralized, invisible, indivisible body of the white man. The film’s treatment of Conan’s tribe is similarly ambiguous in its racial codings. Early on, after the forging of the emblematic sword, the camera pulls back to show a long shot of the mountains where the village is situated. This shot is accompanied by a soundtrack of music that is noticeably non–European, featuring the gentle bells and twanged strings that more often accompany images of, for example, China. This is in contrast to the majority of the film’s soundtrack, the leitmotif of which sounds distinctly European. Whether intentional or not, this choice of sound has the effect of underscoring the foreignness, the exoticism, of Conan’s home village. This setting, the soundtrack seems to suggest, is as mysterious, as exceptional, as different as the other bizarre locations in the film, from the confusing city to the majestic spires of Thulsa Doom’s stronghold. Although we know that Conan and his people are “white,” their milieu fails to bear any marks of whiteness. They have neither the markings of civilization nor the recognizable domesticity that would allow the audience to identify with them as the ‘normal,’ the invisible, the basic form of society to which everything else is foreign. On the contrary, Conan’s people are just one tribe among many. The film fails to perform the invisibility of whiteness, fails to make it ubiquitous. The majority of people that we see may be said to be racially white but they fail to enact the requirements of the unified, civilized, homogenized society upon which the idea of whiteness actually rests. And, then, finally, there is the question of Conan himself. As I explained above, Schwarzenegger has been able to forgo the punitive disapproval cast on other types of heavily accented non-native speakers by virtue of his provenance as white and European. There is, however, a telling moment of anxiety around his linguistic skill within the film. When he first encounters Subotai tied to a rock, he asks, “What are you doing here?” to which the latter replies, “Dinner for wolf.” The need for Subotai to speak in patois, to illustrate that

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he has a less than perfect command of English, seems to be a response to the fact that both men have heavy accents. Debasing Subotai’s language to the pidgin seems to confirm Conan’s use of and thus ownership of English, at least in terms of the linguistic status between the two of them. Once the film has dealt with this thorny question of whose the central language is, it seems, as with the blue eyes of Thulsa Doom, to forget the necessity of continuing this ideologically-inflected characterization. This is the only time when Subotai speaks in less than full sentences. In the rest of the film he seems to be completely proficient in English, far more so than Schwarzenegger. The effect of this grammatical proficiency is to suggest that the lingua franca is not Conan’s language and thus, again, that this is not his place, he is not a member of the central group, he is not a white man in a white man’s world. Even his eventual rise in status brings with it a concurrent awareness of being out of place. The narrator tells us that Conan becomes a king. This recalls his earlier meeting with King Osric who, we are told, was “once a powerful Northman like my lord.” The film’s final shot of an aged Conan sitting alone and morose on his throne also strongly recalls Osric. And yet we were told early on that Osric is known as “the Usurper.” Thus the man with whom Conan is most closely aligned is one who stole his position, who was not born to it. This is not the civilized white man’s mandated, unquestioned rise to power but rather the wresting of control by force, that same force that needs to be repudiated for civilization to be born. I am not suggesting that Conan is somehow not white. Rather, within the mise-en-scène of Conan the Barbarian, no one is “white,” just as James Earl Jones is not “black.” The centralizing, invisible qualities of whiteness do not manifest here. The film ignores or fails to see the way in which race is constructed within the narrative codes of Hollywood. It permits its players to fall outside these narrow structures, and when it does invoke race, as with the oriental characters, it provides them with a more generous and wider understanding of their roles and societies than is usual in mainstream action cinema. Because of its act of repetitive pastiche and its B-movie aesthetic, or because it is ideologically barren, more concerned with pleasure-in-looking than with meaning, Conan the Barbarian manages to overstep most of the injunctions attendant upon the cinematic depictions of black people and white people.21

Conclusion Within this essay I have tried to illustrate the way in which an actor and now professional politician successfully altered and utilized his powerful international star image as “Arnold Schwarzenegger” to create an identity that was

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complicit with his ambitions and with the cultural mythology of American nationalist consciousness. Conan the Barbarian stands in stark contrast to this act of rewriting. In this case, the film has been more powerful than the star’s persona. Conan fails to conform to any of the standard behavioral traits of the Schwarzeneggerian universe. Its hero acts for personal enrichment and vengeance, its women do not know their place and its ideas of blackness and whiteness are fluid to say the least. But despite all of this, Conan subverts dominant paradigms without ideological cause. It does not suggest an alternate master narrative or a progressive world view; indeed not, for this is a universe where, as Conan says, the greatest joy in life is to “crush your enemies, see them driven before you and hear the lamentation of their women.” Strength and force are paramount here. The wit, the control, the sophistication, the compassion that Schwarzenegger’s star persona developed as his career progressed towards government have no place in the life of Conan. Even the Terminator, another iconic character defined by body, learns humor and humanity in T2. Conan stands alone within the Schwarzenegger cosmos. With its gleeful violence, its hybrid origins, its absence of ideological content save the importance of fighting and winning, it refuses to conform to the heroic standards that characterize his other films. While the path from Terminator to Governator is clear and explicable, Conan the Barbarian maintains its awkward refusal to be co-opted into Schwarzenegger’s myth, and thus, concurrently, into the myths that underpin the pervasive and dangerous potency of the dream of the white American hero.

Notes 1. I am grateful to Sara Orning and Sarah Lewis-Hammond for providing invaluable suggestions on early drafts of this paper. 2. The effects of the injunction upon the leader to embody the fictional-cinematic hero can be seen in Reagan’s explicit invoking of popular culture at the height of his popularity, referring to his country as the “A-Team among nations” ( Jeffords 2) and telling a press conference after the release of hostages from Lebanon, “I saw Rambo last night. Now I know what to do the next time this happens” ( Jeffords 28). This tendency can also be seen in the profusion of action films that feature the president as protagonist: witness Air Force One (1997), starring Harrison Ford as a U.S. leader who fights hand-to-hand with the terrorists who hijack his plane, or Independence Day (1996), where Bill Pullman as president overcomes his emasculating indecision and returns to his fighter plane to take on the alien invaders. 3. The wrestler Jesse Ventura, for example, was governor of Minnesota between 1999 and 2006, while child star Shirley Temple became a U.S. ambassador to Ghana. 4. In a bizarre twist of cultural fate, Schwarzenegger post-politics is finding his image reingested by the world of entertainment: he recently revealed plans for an animated kids’ cartoon called The Governator, based loosely on his political career and expected to spawn a film series and other spin-offs (Dredge). The muscled Hollywood hero has, it seems, come full circle.

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5. For an excellent analysis of how cinematic and political roles collided in Schwarzenegger’s campaign for and term as governor, see Messner’s “Masculinity of the Governator.” 6. As Frank Grady points out (44), though, the radical possibilities of Total Recall are severely undermined by the presence of the action hero and the violence he engenders. 7. Conan is by no means the only action film to fail to read, translate or embody the dominant cinematic codes without showing any interest in a progressive alternative. The Australianmade Mad Max (1979) and The Road Warrior (1981) illustrate by opposition the homosexual taboo in Hollywood blockbusters. The first film contains a clear example of anal rape: a young man runs howling away from the scene of a crime, buttocks covered in blood. Both films feature villains who have intimate relations with other men. Young lovers on chains, expressions of same-sex affection and erotic suggestions abound. The third installment Beyond Thunderdome (1985), which also starred U.S. pop star Tina Turner, completely exorcised these elements. Its enormous popularity in the U.S. suggests that this “foreign” film series had successfully learned to speak America’s language, a language in which homosexuality is only permitted as the punchline to a joke or as teasing in hetero-bonding between male characters. 8. In 2010, for example, Arizona governor Jan Brewer signed the U.S.’s toughest immigration law. This makes the failure to carry immigration documents a crime and gives the police broad power to detain anyone suspected of being in the country illegally, in a move that was roundly criticized for encouraging racial profiling and targeting Hispanic migrants and citizens. 9. Vietnam and Watergate, Robin Wood writes, did not undermine confidence merely in a single government but in “the entire dominant ideology centred on patriarchal law; the crisis in ideological confidence ... [called] into question the authority not only of the symbolic fathers... but of the internalised ‘father’..., the guarantor of our conformity to the established societal norms” (1). 10. In 2003 the Los Angeles Times published an article in which “six women who came into contact with Arnold Schwarzenegger on movie sets, in studio offices and in other settings over the last three decades say he touched them in a sexual manner without their consent” (Cohn, Hall & Welkos). Despite the potential for scandal, Schwarzenegger’s gubernatorial bid succeeded and the allegations were dismissed as innocent misbehavior on “rowdy” film sets. 11. Will Smith, one of the stars of Independence Day, was perhaps the first black actor to genuinely transcend race and acquire the status of heroism. That said, his persona in films like Men in Black depends on a sort of witty, street-literate wise-cracking that is instantly recognizable as being attached to black American popular culture. Smith managed to bypass the stereotyping concerns of the black man in action cinema but took some of the recognizable tropes of blackness with him. 12. It could be argued that the Terminator, the role with which Schwarzenegger is the most associated, also does not fulfill the heroic injunction. However the ideological project of its sequel T2 largely involves a rehabilitation of the character, who is humanized and turned into an appropriately dependable father figure for the young John Connor. The Terminator goes from killer to savior, abandoning its original purpose and taking on the mantle of protective, self-sacrificing paternal hero. 13. Although the Connor character has been read in this way by many critics, there is another sense in which she repudiates the post-biological feminism of writers like Donna Haraway, whose “Cyborg Manifesto” posits a version of being a woman that is not dependent upon the possibilities of the female body, what she calls the “attractive nothingness of the Great Womb,” the penalizing, biologizing, essentializing motherliness that archetypes of womanhood are always reduced to (177). In The Terminator Connor becomes empowered and enabled by the important son she will eventually bear. It is only her maternal nature that permits her ownership of the “masculine” behavior required of an action hero. Her agency is a consequence of her biology, of her drive to fulfill the heteronormative imperative. Motherhood, socially desirable and socially sanctioned as woman’s highest goal, becomes her defining feature and driving force. In Terminator 2, as Sherrie Inness points out, she has lost touch with that maternal nature by becoming too tough. She is castigated by the narrative for her

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failure to nurture John and needs to be re-educated about her role by the same machine that was first sent to kill her. It is thus deeply problematic to read her actions as emblematic of a feminist consciousness. 14. Terminator 2, as mentioned above, is deeply concerned with the father-son relationship, but this recurs too in action/adventure films like the Indiana Jones and Star Wars series. 15. Predator 2 (1990) also manifests an interesting racial topography, given that its hero, Lieutenant Mike Harrigan, is played by the black actor Danny Glover and the action is transposed from the jungle to a ghettoized urban setting featuring a mostly black populace. The predator itself is crowned with suspiciously dreadlocked “hair” that mimics the dreadlocks of King Willie and the other Jamaican gangsters who terrorize the ghetto. The protagonist, meanwhile, spends the film clothed and often wearing a jaunty little hat, suggesting that it is the adoption of the trappings of civilization — i.e. middle class whiteness — that permits his entry into the realms of heroism. 16. The film’s credits include a nod to the U.S. Department of Defense for proving technical assistance. This, along with over 14 other feature films made in the same period, suggests that “the Pentagon seems to condone these Arab-bashing ventures” (Shaheen 177). 17. For a more extensive discussion of the complexities of race in 1980s action cinema, see my article “‘I’ll Be Black’: Race and Technophobia in 1980s Action Cinema.” 18. These mystifying eyes change to Jones’ normal brown during the scene of Conan’s interrogation, likely due to a production error. 19. The adult Conan does not speak until 24 minutes into the film and even then his dialogue is kept to the bare minimum, with fight scenes or ponderous ritualized activities taking the place of speech, presumably to disguise the still sometimes indecipherable thickness of Schwarzenegger’s accent and his less than perfect grasp of his adopted tongue. 20. For a related examination of the powerful linkage in British imperial culture between the topical triad whiteness-hygiene-purity and the idea of and imperative to import civilization, see Anne McClintock’s Imperial Leather. 21. This is not to suggest, however, that Conan is unaware of cinema history or that it operates in a contextual void. Two powerful intertexts illustrate that the film is very much conscious of its progenitors. Firstly, the final confrontation between Conan and Thulsa Doom, with James Earl Jones’ repetition of the trope “I am your father,” is an unmistakable reference to his momentous turn as the voice of Darth Vader in The Empire Strikes Back (1980). Secondly, and more subtly, the catchphrase, “Do you want to live forever?,” repeated by Valeria during the trio’s most daring acts and then in her return from the underworld, echoes the lyrics to the theme tune of Pumping Iron, the 1977 documentary that first brought Schwarzenegger to U.S. attention, which begins, “Everybody wants to live forever.”

Works Cited Ahmed, Sara. “Declarations of Whiteness: The Non-Perfomativity of Anti-Racism.” Borderlands 3.2, 2004. http://www.borderlands.net.au/vol3no2_2004/ahmed_declarations.htm. Bederman, Gail. Manliness and Civilisation: A Cultural History of Race and Gender in the United States, 1880—1917. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1996. Bhabha, Homi K. “Anxious Nations, Nervous States.” Joan Copjec (ed), Supposing the Subject. London: Verso, 1994. Cohn, Gary, Carla Hall & Robert Welkos. “Women Say Schwarzenegger Groped, Humiliated Them.” Los Angeles Times, 2 October 2003. Dredge, Stuart. “Arnold Schwarzenegger launched animated series The Governator.” Guardian.co.uk, 4 April 2011. Web. Accessed 14 April 2011. Dyer, Richard. Stars. London: BFI Publishing, 1986. _____. White. London: Routledge, 1997. Falkof, Nicky. “‘I’ll Be Black’: Race and Technophobia in 1980s Action Cinema” in Celestino

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Deleyto & María del Mar Azcona (eds.), Generic Attractions: New Essays in Film Genre Criticism. Paris: Michel Houdiard Éditeur, 2010. Frankenberg, Ruth. White Women Race Matters: The Social Construction of Whiteness. Minneapolis, MN: University of Minnesota Press, 1993. Grady, Frank. “Arnoldian Humanism, or Amnesia and Autobiography in the Schwarzenegger Action Film.” Cinema Journal, 42.2 (2003), pp. 41–56. Haraway, Donna. “A Cyborg Manifesto” in Simians, Cyborgs and Women: The Reinvention of Nature. London: Free Association Books, 1991. Hill, Jane H. “Language, Race, and White Public Space.” American Anthropologist 100.3 (1998), pp. 680–689. Indiana, Gary. Schwarzenegger Syndrome: Politics and Celebrity in the Age of Contempt. New York/London: The New Press, 2005. Inness, Sherrie. Tough Girls: Women Warriors and Wonder Women in Popular Culture. New Haven: Yale University Press, 1998. Jeffords, Susan. Hard Bodies: Hollywood Masculinity in the Reagan Era. New Brunswick: Rutgers University Press, 1994. McClintock, Anne. Imperial Leather: Race, Gender and Sexuality in the Imperial Conquest. London & New York: Routledge, 1995. Messner, Michael A. “The Masculinity of the Governator: Muscle and Compassion in American Politics.” Gender and Society 21.4 (2007), pp. 461–480. Murray, Thomas E. “The Language of Bodybuilding.” American Speech, 59.3 (1984), pp. 195–206. Shaheen, Jack G. “Reel Bad Arabs: How Hollywood Vilifies a People.” Annals of the American Academy of Political and Social Science 588 (2003), pp. 171–193. Tasker, Yvonne. Spectacular Bodies: Gender, Genre and the Action Cinema. London: Routledge, 1993. Wood, Robin. “’80s Hollywood: Dominant Tendencies.” CineAction! 1 (1985), pp 2–5.

Filmography Air Force One. Dir Wolfgang Petersen. Perf Harrison Ford, Gary Oldman, Glenn Close. 1997. Conan the Barbarian. Dir John Milius. Perf Arnold Schwarzenegger, James Earl Jones, Max von Sydow. 1982. Eraser. Dir Chuck Russell. Perf Arnold Schwarzenegger, Vanessa Williams, James Caan. 1996. Independence Day. Dir Roland Emmerich. Perf Will Smith, Bill Pullman, Jeff Goldblum. 1996. Junior. Dir Ivan Reitman. Perf Arnold Schwarzenegger, Danny DeVito, Emma Thompson. 1994. Kindergarten Cop. Dir Ivan Reitman. Perf Arnold Schwarzenegger, Penelope Ann Miller, Pamela Reed. 1990. Predator 2. Dir Stephen Hopkins. Perf Danny Glover, Gary Busey, Kevin Peter Hall. 1990. Predator. Dir John McTiernan. Perf Arnold Schwarzenegger, Carl Weathers, Kevin Peter Hall. 1987. Terminator 2: Judgement Day. Dir James Cameron. Perf Arnold Schwarzenegger, Linda Hamilton, Edward Furlong. 1991. The Terminator. Dir James Cameron. Perf Arnold Schwarzenegger, Linda Hamilton, Michael Biehn. 1984. Total Recall. Dir Paul Verhoeven. Perf Arnold Schwarzenegger, Sharon Stone, Rachel Ticotin. 1990. True Lies. Dir James Cameron. Perf Arnold Schwarzenegger, Jamie Lee Curtis, Tom Arnold. 1994. Twins. Dir Ivan Reitman. Perf Arnold Schwarzenegger, Danny DeVito, Kelly Preston. 1988.

“Hot Avatars” in “Gay Gear” The Virtual Male Body as Site of Conflicting Desires in Age of Conan: Hyborian Adventures JAMES KELLEY In her 2006 essay “Games and Gender,” Diane Carr lays the groundwork for analyses of the roles that gender and other identity categories play in shaping a player’s experiences with computer games. Carr writes that “a variety of simultaneous ‘reading positions’ are open (or closed) to different players. As yet these offers and the manner in which they might mesh with different aspects of player subjectivity (in particular contexts) remain underinvestigated” (165). The particular contexts to be explored here are two online game forums —The GayGamer.net Forums and the Age of Conan Forums— at which players share their range of “reading positions” and their differing views on the male avatars, the visual representations of the male characters that the players create, manipulate, and admire in the course of playing the massively multiplayer online role-playing game Age of Conan: Hyborian Adventures (Funcom, 2008). Section 1 of this essay reviews recent popular and academic references to Age of Conan, and Section 2 discusses the methods and limitations of the grounded theory approach used here to analyze the posts at the two internet forums. Section 3 looks at the character creation and outfitting options in Age of Conan, and sections 4 and 5 present the results of the grounded theory analysis of the forum posts. The final section revisits the popular and scholarly references that were reviewed in the first section, determining which references seem best supported by the results of this grounded theory analysis.

Popular and Academic References to Age of Conan At least two representations of the massively multiplayer online roleplaying game Age of Conan: Hyborian Adventures (Funcom, 2008) in the popular media suggest that the game appeals to its player base because it serves 144

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as a Freudian defense mechanism of sublimation. In participating in the game, so these popular sources suggest, the players are engaging in hours of online play to compensate for dissatisfaction with and lack of success in their real world lives. In a 2008 episode of the television sit-com The Big Bang Theory, the wimpy science geek Sheldon (known in-game as “Sheldor the Conqueror”)1 introduces his attractive neighbor Penny to Age of Conan. Because her life has been full of frustrations — she has not had sex for six months, we are told, and was recently passed over for a raise at work — Penny embraces the online game as a welcome distraction. In the beginning stages, the “noob” Penny wants to choose boots for her newly created avatar based on their color rather than on their in-game properties, but as she masters the gameplay in Age of Conan and restyles her virtual self as “Queen Penelope,” her real-world girlishness quickly disappears: she neglects her hair, burps, and wears a baggy, stained sweatshirt. When Sheldon’s roommate, Leonard, confronts Penny about her all-consuming passion for Age of Conan, he explains to her the mechanism of sublimation: “If a person doesn’t have a sense of achievement in their real life, it’s easy to lose themselves in a virtual world where they can get a false sense of accomplishment.” The very name of this episode (“The Barbarian Sublimation”) asserts that Age of Conan might serve as a means to channel realworld frustrations or inadequacies into online successes. Similarly, J.B. Stanley’s less well-known mystery novel The Battered Body has two references to adolescent boys playing Age of Conan. As the more extensive of these references illustrates, the online game serves here, too, as a release from the boys’ real-world frustrations (they have recently been outwitted by a “mystery girl”). The passage reads: “Grow up,” Scott had answered sulkily. “That’s it. Don’t know what they meant by saying that, but it made us pretty mad.” “Yeah!” Francis had nodded in agitation. “We had to go home and fight a bunch of virtual bad guys just so we could get back in the holiday spirit.” “Thank goodness for Age of Conan.” James had clapped them fondly on the back. “And I don’t think this mystery girl is done toying with you, so stay sharp and focused. Don’t let her get the better of you two. You’re better than that” [161].

The diagnosis of online gaming as sublimation of real-world frustrations or inadequacies has found expression in more than one scholarly work. In Online Multiplayer Games, William Simms Bambridge characterizes the Robert E. Howard stories on which the virtual world of Age of Conan is based as representing “the extreme in [the author’s] vicarious compensation for real-world deficiencies, the ultimate in escapism.” He suggests a connection between

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these stories and any number of massively multiplayer online role-playing games: “We may well ask to what extent today’s multiplayer online games are also escapist, versus legitimate exploration of an emerging new reality.” Bambridge goes on to note: “Ironically, the violence in multiplayer online games may represent the liberation of rage that has been suppressed by civilization, using the most civilized of technologies to unleash primitive forces” (18). Geoff King and Tanya Krzywinska propose that the very setting of video games such as Age of Conan may help serve these dual goals of escapism and the “liberation of rage”: The long-ago, far-away fantasy context and the provision of an environment marked as potently “uncivilized” provide players with a license for indulging — playfully — in what might otherwise be unconscionable acts. Games that deploy this barbaric context offer a fantasy escape from mundane existence, behavioral restraint or alienation. Rhetorics of “liberation” of this kind are often used by players describing the pleasures of such games [176].

Another source, Ryan G. Van Cleave’s Unplugged: My Journey into the Dark World of Video Game Addiction addresses the topic of escapism taken to the extreme. It names Age of Conan, alongside 15 other “MMOGs and the like,” as “working at the minds of people everywhere in vampire fashion” (158). Other sources approach online gaming in general (and Age of Conan, in particular) from a broader range of perspectives. In chapter three of Reality Is Broken: Why Games Make Us Better and How They Can Change the World, for example, Jane McGonigal cites Age of Conan as a negative example to illustrate her understanding of online gaming as a form of work; the game Age of Conan, she writes, was initially built to allow the maxing out of character levels to occur much too early and too easily and thus would disappoint most players, who want “as much satisfying work as possible.” Also related to claims of player disappointment with Age of Conan are Torill Elvira Mortensen’s statements in Perceiving Play: The Art and Study of Computer Games. Here she writes: “We are likely to see a ‘vacuum of meaning’ as players seek for other qualities in a game, beyond the fairly simplistic interest in new technical solutions.” She goes on to observe that, in the case of Age of Conan, this vacuum of meaning “can be filled by art” (157), by which she means the richly detailed graphics that are often praised in reviews of the game and in the online posts by players themselves. However, one page later, Mortensen refers disparagingly to the inability of Age of Conan’s “eye-candy and a few different combinations in button-use” to “capture the attention of gamers” (158). Finally, in an extension of the topic of “eye-candy” in the game, Karen Boyle discusses in Everyday Pornography the instance of player outrage over the shrinking breast sizes of female avatars in Age of Conan. She reads the instance

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as an example of the failure of online games to function as utopian spaces for identity exploration. After citing earlier publications that praise online games for the opportunities they afford players to safely try on new identities and sensibilities, Boyle counters that such utopian exploration may not be the norm in online games such as Age of Conan. She asks, “how much is about embodiment and exploring identity through a free construction of outward appearance and how much is it about controlling a sexualized virtual body?” (95). Writing more generally about representations of the male body in popular culture, Anthony Easthope includes Conan the Barbarian in a list of icons that ultimately serve as narcissistic representations of the ideal self: “From David to Tarzan and on to Superman, Captain Marvel, He-Man, Action Man, and Conan the Barbarian, the young male body is used to present not just the self as it is but as he would like to be, not just the ego but the ego ideal. .. So the pleasure of the usual representation of the male body is narcissistic” (53). Age of Conan has thus received little specific attention, and few of the sources reviewed here address questions of gender and sexuality in Age of Conan. More generally, when studies do address questions of gender and sexuality in online games, the focus has been mostly on female gamers, female avatars, and heterosexual identities. Nonetheless, at least two studies appear useful at the start of this present analysis. Diane Carr observes that while games often limit the expressions of nonconformist gender and sexual identities, players can bend or work around this limitation: it “has not stopped fans from ‘reworking’ the characters’ gender, sexuality and relationships in their creative outpourings” (166). Similarly, Jonathan Alexander writes that “some sexual norms, particularly heterosexual norms, are reproduced in many games as part of their basic narrative structure, and gay gamers show us the possibilities and strategies of resisting such norms and opening up a space for thinking differently and more diversely about sexual expression and intimacy” (169). These references provide a variety of ways to approach Age of Conan and will be revisited toward the end of this essay. Some of these references may prove more applicable than others to the results of the grounded theory analysis at the heart of this essay.

Methods and Limitations This essay uses a simplified grounded theory approach to examine the various ways in which players talk about representations of the male body in the online game Age of Conan.2 This analysis focuses mostly on material posted

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between the full launch of the game in late May 2008 and the release of the first expansion pack, Rise of the Godslayer, in early May 2010. Two years of posts (2008–2010) at two internet forums devoted to online gaming (the Age of Conan Forums and The GayGamer.net Forums) were searched for a range of key words and phrases — including “male body,” “male toon,” “male avatar,” “gay,” and “custom”— that appeared anywhere in threads that also included reference to the game Age of Conan or to the Robert E. Howard character of Conan. A review of the initial search results generated several new search terms — including the words “hot” and “hair” as well as the phrases “gay gear” and “gay armor”— that were used in a second round of searches. The results of these searches were archived and subsequently “coded” (systematically annotated) for notable key words, phrases, or small ideas — called “incidents.” These incidents were then grouped alongside related incidents in other posts into every-growing clusters or categories, here called “concepts.” Through this process of coding and comparing large numbers of posts by large number of players across two online forums, overall patterns can be discerned in the ways in which players post publicly about the male bodies that they create and manipulate in the online world of Age of Conan. In grounded theory, these overall patterns are often called “emerging themes” because they emerge from the data; they are not imposed from above. In the coding process, what matters is not the exact phrasing of each concept but rather the grounding of the concepts in the data itself. The concepts (and, in turn, the themes that emerge from them) grow out of the incidents; they are not imposed from above by the researcher who collects, organizes, and interprets the data. A strongly subjective element is always present, of course, and one strength of grounded theory is that it prompts the researcher to ask innovative questions and develop unique approaches to the material with the goal of “creat[ing] new order out of the old” (Strauss and Corbin 27). In order to avoid forcing the data to fit some preconceived notion, the researcher should consider all data and ideas that are encountered in the study and reject nothing outright. The researcher should also reflect on her or his own biases and remain willing to reconsider the manner in which she or he has been organizing and interpreting the data. The coding process is labor-intensive and recursive. The researcher usually reads and codes the entire sample of data more than once, as recommended by Robert C. Bogdan and Sari K. Biklen, and constantly reconsiders the significance of individual pieces of data as the researcher moves back and forth through the sample. This process of ongoing reconsideration is part of what is called the constant comparative method. A brief example of the coding process follows, with the concepts given in italics.

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In a short discussion thread at the Age of Conan Forums with the title “Gay,” lsuperbeasto complains in the brief, opening post: “Everyone in this game looks gay not like a warrior hook us up with some better gear” ( July 2, 2008). Even this one-line post can contain multiple incidents. The incident “looks gay” can be marked and tentatively grouped under the concept Gay (appearance), and the opposition of “looks gay” and “not like a warrior” can be grouped under any number of interconnected concepts, including Masculinity and Gender/sexuality. Finally, while the closing call for “better gear” does not present a specific solution, it may nonetheless be grouped under the concept What players want (better gear). A brief reply to the original post reads: “I just want pants for my character. Is that too much to ask!? Heavy Armor needs pants please. Pants! Pants!” (ninechrome, July 2, 2008). These repeated pleas for pants can be grouped under the concept What players want (pants) and the phrase “Heavy Armor needs pants” can be grouped under Heavy armor (definition) or perhaps simply under Heavy armor needs pants. A second brief reply to the original post includes the statement “Just about all Roman soldiers were lovers as well. It provided a greater sense of unity during battle” (Whitezero, July 2, 2008). This statement, although perhaps based on a flawed recollection of the ancient Greek idea in The Symposium of an “army of lovers,” can be grouped under History and, because it challenges the original poster’s opposition of “gay” and “warrior,” under the concept Stereotype of male homosexuality (challenged). A third, longer reply to the initial post about “gay” gear reads: This is Age of Conan, not Age of Fashion. More focus on bloodshed, less on your wardrobe eh? And you call the characters gay *rolls eyes* You sure are quick to find “gayness” everywhere, huh? Could I borrow that gaydar? :) Honestly, the Greeks ran about with nothing on in the Olympics. Could we please concentrate on the sport? [freneticfangs, November 16, 2008].

The terms “Age of Conan” and “Age of Fashion” signal an attention to whether or not the game is staying true to the Setting of Howard’s fictional world on which it is based, and the reference to ancient Greece can be coded as an incident belonging under the concept History. The implied questioning of the original poster’s own sexuality (“And you call the characters gay”) and the eye-rolling are instances of Irony or Sarcasm and may also be grouped under the concept Stereotype of male homosexuality. Rather than countering the previous poster’s stereotype of gay men as unfit to be warriors, this poster may be perpetuating the very same stereotype, insinuating that the original poster, because he appears more interested in his wardrobe than in bloodshed, is likely to be at least a little gay himself. A brief comparison between the instances in these posts to the “Gay” thread and incidents in posts in other, often much longer threads on the Age

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of Conan Forums, illustrates how some or all of the incidents identified above can be grouped into larger clusters (the concepts) that ultimately contribute to one or more emerging themes. For example, requests for pants rather than kilts for male avatars appear frequently across multiple threads at the Age of Conan Forums, and these requests are frequently paired with discussions of history and setting. Posters regularly argue over the historicity of specific types of armor, and at least one poster uses a term similar to “Age of Conan” and “Age of Fashion”— namely, “Age of Scotland”— to make sarcastic comments about how much of the armor designed for male avatars includes kilts — or “skirts” and “dresses,” as they are derisively called in posts throughout the Age of Conan Forums: “Everyone wears skirts in this game, it’s like Age of Scotland or something” (Enrogae, “HoX armor,” June 9, 2008). The references to the nude athleticism of the ancient Greeks and to a Roman army of lovers also can be seen as instances of a trend at the Age of Conan Forums for discussions about the “look” of the male avatars to become long, off-topic, and frequently poorly informed debates about (among many other things) whether or not homosexuality is “natural,” the relative merits of Christianity and communism, or the sexual practices of ancient Sparta and Alexander the Great. The goal of this grounded theory approach is not to account for every statement made at the two online game forums examined here, and off-topic debates are simply dismissed here as off-topic.3 This project addresses the more specific question of what the posts at these forums have to say about the look of the male avatar in the game Age of Conan. Several limitations were clear from the start of this project. For example, as illustrated in the eye-rolling post quoted above, forum posts are often brief and/or marked with varying levels of irony or humor, making them sometimes challenging to interpret. Further, there is no guarantee that the material posted to a forum offers complete and accurate accounts of a player’s views or experiences. No attempts were made to identify the posters by real name or demographic (e.g. gender or age), to contact the posters for further information, or to authenticate the claims made in the posts. While women constitute a sizeable and growing share of online gamers, there is a strong, general sense that Age of Conan remains the realm of the male, perhaps even that of the adolescent male. Among the hundreds of comments on the YouTube video “Roleplayin’ Episode 4: Anomaly (AOC Machinima),” for example, is frequently repeated praise for one line in the video that marks Age of Conan as a space where boys play: In the video, one player asks a second player how he knew that a third player with a female avatar was in fact male, not female: The second player replies matter-of-factly: “This is a video game, not an easy bake oven.” On video games in general, Gary Cross similarly argues in Men

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to Boys: The Making of Modern Immaturity that some of the most passionate gamers are likely to be men who behave as if they were adolescent boys: “To be blunt, adult men obsessed with video games are in a state of arrested development because they can’t see the difference between a toy and an adult pleasure” (123–24). This essay assumes that the majority of the online posts examined here are written by men and, when the gender of a particular poster is not clear, may use the pronoun “he” to talk about posts by that author. A further limitation is that online discussions offer an incomplete picture of how gamers actually perform online. As Diana Carr observes, the meaning of the avatar in a video game is open to different and changing aspects of the player’s subjectivity: “While a partial account of an avatar’s meaning is possible, the actualization of the avatar and its traits will vary from player to player and even session to session. A player might ‘read’ the avatar as an attractive, annoying or amusing character one moment, only to become absorbed manipulating it as a tool the next” (165). Also, highly active gamers do not necessarily participate at the same level on game forums as they do in the game itself. A complete account of what avatars mean to gamers would require extensive interviews as well as investigations of the full range of in-game interactions among players as well as between individual players and the environment of the game. A final limitation lies in the relative size and nature of the two forums. The GayGamer.net Forums contain a small number of posts compared to sprawling threads on the Age of Conan Forums. The Age of Conan Forums also appear to be more heavily moderated, and posts that are seen as demeaning to a group (including lesbians or gay men) are not officially tolerated. In some instances, the raising of questions of interest to lesbian and gay male players — such as questions about the existence of in-game quests with queer content — may be construed as being irrelevant to game play and perhaps even as being an instance of “trolling” (purposefully seeking to create online conflict). Either conclusion may prompt the moderators at the Age of Conan Forums to delete specific posts or to close the thread in question. Even with these limitations, a search of the two online game forums has provided a pool of data of several hundred posts by nearly as many gamers that can be analyzed for recurring incidents, concepts, and emerging themes.

Character Creation and Character Equipment As part of its pre-release marketing of Age of Conan, Funcom opened the community portal community.ageofconan.com in 2006. This community

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portal presented updates on game development, such as the early post titled “Creating your own Character.” This post explains that the character creation process would present the player with a “myriad of choices” for character customization and allow the player “to sculpt and customize the appearance of your alter-ego,” the avatar, in any number of ways: When tweaking the body, you can choose to have an abstract slider going from thin to obese and muscular, and you’re able to select anything in between. You can also go into an advanced mode, scaling different body parts like the chest/breasts, the thighs, the legs, the arms, the stomach and even your “arse.” You’ll be able to add body hair, different kinds of tattoos, scars and many other elements that will make your character unique. And remember: Making someone look picture-perfect is not always the goal. In Age of Conan you can create a character that wouldn’t necessarily win a beauty contest! Ultimately, you decide what sort of character you want to role-play.4

The post emphasizes customization, individualization, identification, and ownership from beginning to end. For example, the post’s title speaks of creating “your own character” (rather than simply “your character”), the post makes heavy use of the pronouns “you” and “your,” and the post ends by stating that “you will begin your virtual life together with thousands of other unique players” (“Creating your own Character”). Character creation in Age of Conan has incorporated a wide range of the promised customizable options, including body tattoos and paintings, but the male body types have little variety. In the character creation process, a triangle slider allows for adjustment of the male avatar’s shoulder width, waist width, and overall muscle mass (the points of the triangle are named Muscular, Big, and Thin), but no matter which settings are chosen, the resulting male body is always muscled and defined. The player’s choices at the body creation stage of male avatars thus seems limited to determining just how muscled the body will be. There is no opportunity to create the promised thin or obese body type, only the muscular. (Another promised feature — the option to add body hair to the avatar — also has not found its way into the game’s character creation process. As demonstrated in a later section of this essay, the absence of male body hair has caused dissatisfaction among some players.) For all the promise to allow players to “make your character unique,” the actual range of male body types is limited. Even with these limited options, however, there is a wide amount of disagreement about how male bodies should be represented in the game. Once the player has created an avatar and enters the starting location of the game, a strip of beach outside of the port city of Tortage, the player is presented with multiple opportunities to acquire new “gear,” including armor

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and weaponry, with which to equip the avatar. The gear can be acquired from slain enemies, shops, or other sources, and a good amount of online discussion details where and how particular items can be acquired. Gear has a wide range of colors, shapes, textures, and other distinguishing characteristics, and the forum posts repeatedly suggest that armor and other gear is valued by players at least as much for its appearance when worn by the avatar as it is for its ingame properties (e.g., the protection or boost to specific statistics that it affords). Thus, the player may dress the avatar in what he sees as effective gear even as he criticizes the look of that gear in posts on the internet forums. For example, one poster writes: “I’ve been running around in a shirt and what usually looks like a skirt since Tortage. I welcome the day I find a Robe with better stats than what i’m wearing. I would even, and I think I am not alone here, be happy with PANTS (and pants that didn’t include a skirt OVER them)” (enrogae, “HoX armor,” June 9, 2008). Elsewhere, another poster writes about using only pieces of a complete set of armor: “the only ones with good stats are the shoulders and the legs ... but the legs just look so damn gay, i don’t think is worth it” (BigDonsalieri, “LvL 80 Armor set?,” June 19, 2008). The forum comments about the overall look of the male avatars in Age of Conan thus often address both the body of the avatar and the look of the gear with which he can be outfitted.

“Hot Avatars”: Discussions at The GayGamer.net Forums The posts at The GayGamer.net Forums do not present entirely unanimous views about the male bodies in Age of Conan, but they do agree strongly on one topic: what the posters clearly enjoy about the game Age of Conan are the “hot avatars.” In the thread “Age of Conan — Just FYI — GLBT guild resurrected,” no fewer than four players comment on this element of the game. Yolk writes: “men in loincloth, visceral combat, snakes / what more do you people want????” (March 20, 2009). Northstar comments that Age of Conan “seems such a g*y friendly game, with half naked men running around beating each other up ... maybe i’m weird but that’s hot” (November 23, 2009). TarotMage agrees: “Northstar, you are right — AoC [Age of Conan] is a very gayfriendly game. A well-made male AoC alt is a thing of beauty” (November 23, 2009). A fourth player, Butchmor, writes: “I love the avatars! I suppose it’s one of the attractions to me...” (March 20, 2009). In other posts in the same thread, Butchmor continues: “I often think that I play just to enjoy the sexy men running around in the game” (March 22, 2010) and “one reason I have switched over [from World of Warcraft] to AoC as my primary game is

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because it is more based on skill than gear (well, that and the hot avatars, the luscious graphics, and the more adult atmosphere)” (April 7, 2009). In other threads, posters at The GayGamer.net Forums agree. In the thread “The Fabulous Age of Conan Team,” Erving comments favorably on the “hot guys” (April 10, 2009), and Hyde notes that, in the game, “everyone is hot!” (April 11, 2009). To offer a final example, elikal explains in a third thread what he has liked most about Age of Conan even as he expresses his continuing dissatisfaction with some elements of the game: “Ya know, visually I had always loved AoC. I liked the setting and my blonde barbarian hunk running through the nice sceneries” (“Re-Review: Trying out Age of Conan again,” July 10, 2010). At least two players post images of their hottest avatars to The GayGamer.net Forums, and one or more players create gay-themed backgrounds for their avatars. The brief background that Butchmor69 creates for one of his main Age of Conan characters, Kveldulfr, fuses the traditional coming out story (as an adolescent in a village, Kveldulfr had always known that he is different and was marginalized because of that difference) with tales of adult sexual exploits (“I am currently spending my time in many of the big cities. I have found many muscular guardsmen open to my affections and they are a welcome distraction to the questions constantly in my mind”) (Butchmore69, “Clan of the Evening Wolf : Home : Age of Conan (AOC) Guild Site at GuildPortal”). In a number of other games, gay players are able to create lasting gay content within the game, such as through a player-created “mod” that introduced a gay male romance into the script of Neverwinter Nights. The inability to modify the game itself and to create lasting gay content within Age of Conan may prompt gay male players to create collective gay content alongside the game through posts at this forum and elsewhere. The posts at The GayGamer.net Forums do not always agree, of course, and one point of disagreement concerns the appearance of the armor for male avatars. In the opening post to the thread “Sexiest Armor in a MMO,” pb1285n writes: “Women get all the attention. What MMO do you think has the sexiest armor for men? Even though it wasn’t my favorite [game], I have to say Age of Conan” (September 10, 2009). Other players would seem ready to do without the armor altogether, if the game mechanics permitted (unarmored avatars are at a disadvantage in virtual combat, as the in-game armor provides “buffs” that often include both physical protection and increases to combat-related abilities). For example, Butchmor strips his avatars down nearly as far as the game will allow before capturing their image as screenshots, which he then shares on the forums (see Figures 1 and 2), and TarotMage posts that he would prefer invisible armor that did not conceal the nearlynaked body of his male avatar:

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Hey, let’s be honest — even with its scantily-clad females, the world of Conan was extremely homoerotic.5 Even in the midst of the most savage of battles, Conan would have next to nothing on. Maybe if the game came with the option to have the avatar wear the armor but give the player the choice not to show it (thereby keeping the armor buff ) it would go a long way in capturing the true “feel” of Conan’s world. As it was when I left, the armor really detracted from the game [“Age of Conan — Just FYI — GLBT guild resurrected,” Oct. 17, 2009].

Figure 1: Frontal shot of the avatar Kveldulfr posted by Butchmor, “Age of Conan — Just FYI — GLBT guild resurrected,” The GayGamer.net Forums, March 9, 2010.

Figure 2: Rev Rear shot of the avatar Wolfbear posted by Butchmor, “Age of Conan — Just FYI — GLBT guild resurrected,” The GayGamer.net Forums, March 9, 2010.

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Recurring statements at The GayGamer.net Forums of appreciation for the display of male skin in the online world of Age of Conan run counter to the trend on the Age of Conan Forums, where players frequently post that they would prefer for their male avatars to show less skin, not more. There is also disagreement among the posts at The GayGamer.net Forums when it comes to questions of gay male visibility in the game. This disagreement is seen most clearly in the discussions of which guild names are suitable to the game. Guilds are in-game associations formed by players through their avatars; members in a guild often adventure together in the world of the game, socialize informally, or participate in raids against other guilds. Some of the past and present guilds for gay male players at Age of Conan have had names that evoke a sense of the masculine or hyper-masculine (e.g. “Sacred Band of Thebes” and “Clan of the Evening Wolf ”) while others play on the rainbow symbol of gay pride (e.g. “Prism Blade” and “Rainbow Mafia”). Other GLBT guilds in Age of Conan have included “The Black Rose,” “Two Spirits,” “Taint,” and “Hyborian Rights Campaign” (echoing the real-world Human Rights Campaign, which lobbies for LGBTQ equality). Most of these guilds have been unable to maintain a stable membership and have fallen away. At least one poster dislikes the name “Taint” because of the possible implication that homosexuality is a blight, and other posters more generally reject overtly gay-themed names, such as “Rainbow Mafia.” Writing in the thread “One Big Aion Discussion — Rainbow Mafia Rules!,” aim2game states that he prefers gay guilds that “aren’t named with neon letters” ( July 7, 2009). In a second post, he adds: “I find that ‘Rainbow’ anything announces that you are gay and I would much rather be in a guild that isn’t so visibly ‘gay.’ ... Plus I am also a bit more into roleplay and I prefer guild names to fit into the MMO” ( July 8, 2009). Nexus similarly finds the name “Rainbow Mafia” out of place in games such as Age of Conan: “I don’t think that I would join a guild with that name because I’m an RPer. And that name just doesn’t sound right for an actual guild in an embattled world” ( July 8, 2009). In another thread, Mai_09 writes, likely with humor, “Rainbow Mafia? Tht is soo lame ... we have to sound intimidating and powerful!!” (“Age of Conan Cimmerian Server PVP guild,” Feb. 15, 2009). Lucrece reflects on this disagreement among the players, posting: “There are many gay men out there who don’t want to be perceived by their straight male peers as some parade queer. Gay men are ashamed of the rainbow flag because it solidifies an outsider identity instead of being a mainstream jock, or ‘one of the guys.’ I dislike the notion, but it’s more prevalent than you would believe” (“One Big Aion Discussion — Rainbow Mafia Rules!,” July 8, 2009). Concerns about gay visibility are reflected in the proposal of yet another guild name in the thread “Age of Conan — Just

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FYI — GLBT guild resurrected.” SilverFern proposes the guild name “The Bath House” and writes that while it may be thematic, it may also be too “in your face” (April 25, 2010). TarotMage agrees and suggests a more subtle naming strategy, one that references the only openly gay NPC in the game: “That way only the player who knows about him being gay also knows the guild name’s hidden meaning” (April 26, 2010). Even with these points of disagreement, the posters seem to maintain a friendly, supportive, and often playful tone — for example, bluemagi, the organizer of the “Rainbow Mafia” guild, continues to have friendly exchanges with the posters who criticized his guild’s name — just as the posts feature recurring comments about how the GLBT community is diverse and how differences should be respected. The antagonism commonly found on the larger Age of Conan Forums is not widely evidenced at The GayGamer.net Forums.

“Gay Gear”: Discussions at the Age of Conan Forums The word “gay” is often used today to mean “stupid” in all sorts of contexts that have no clear connection to minority sexualities, and the Age of Conan Forums are no exception. In the short thread “Say It Before You Gay It,” for example, Grilledgnome complains that game changes are not always announced before they are implemented by the developers: “Before you nerf [i.e. weaken] an ability like stealth or turn an item from blue into ... green and make it gay, Let us know so we don’t feel cheated/lied too. Yall gonna lose customers doing that” (May 23, 2008). Here, the verb “gay” in the title phrase “Say It Before You Gay It” may be roughly synonymous with “ruin through the implementation of unwanted changes” and may have no clear connection to male homosexuality. In many other posts at the Age of Conan Forums, however, “gay” is frequently used in negative comments on the physical appearance of the male avatars in Age of Conan: the male avatars look gay because they have no body hair, their outfits look gay because they are too brightly colored or show too much skin, and so on. The bodies and gear of the female avatars, by contrast, are never said to look “gay.” Their look is rarely criticized, and they are frequently referred to on the Age of Conan Forums as looking “hot” or even “hawt.” There is no challenge at the Age of Conan Forums to the view that “chick” armor should “show a little skin” and be “more revealing” than the armor for the male avatars (Cashes, “Tier 3 Raid Gear Concept Art,” May 27, 2009) and little sustained challenge to the view that male armor, when it looks too much like female armor, is “gay.”

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The Age of Conan Forums thread named “Gay Armor” garnered 93 posts within three days (March 31 through April 2, 2009) before it was closed by forum moderators. Tunturi, the original poster, writes: “Not bashing homosexuals here, but what the Hell is up with the armor styles in this game. Sure the armor looks great on female toons, but my male Guardian looks like a drag queen with the armor from the new ... dungeon.” Tunturi observes that other armor in the game “is also very homosexual looking.” He reasons that “its safe to assume that 90 percent of the guys who play this game are not homosexuals, so why was the armor designed to be homosexual looking?” He concludes: “Tank armor should be similar to the armor in 2004 movie King Arthur ... Instead we look like we should be on a gay pride parade...” (March 31, 2009). A number of respondents challenge Tunturi’s use of the term “homosexual looking” and his equation, in a followup post, of “homosexual” with “feminine.” Four posters criticize Tunturi’s characterization of the armor as “gay” and argue that it is his own fault if he is bothered. Two of these posters even imply that Tunturi himself might be at least a little gay: harrisben101 writes, “The way something looks is interpreted by individuals, so I recommend you take a long hard look at your own gay fearing ways. Or you could stop wearing your gay armour, there’s always that” (March 31, 2009). Similarly, Maikko writes: “You know who else spends too much time complaining about fashions ... gay guys” (March 31, 2009). Other threads do not consistently present this same type or intensity of criticism. The challenges in this thread may be unusually frequent and strong because Tunturi may have goaded the other players some 30 minutes after his original post by insinuating that players who did not immediately post in agreement with him might themselves be gay. In a follow-up post, he writes: “Guess my estimate of the male population of this game not being gay was way off ... guess a lot more gay guys play this then I thought...” (March 31, 2009). Still, many respondents to the “Gay Armor” thread agree with the original poster’s assessment. For example, Sweetscreams writes: “Well i use to have cool clothes untill funcom decided too turn me into a purple homo power ranger” (March 31, 2009). For borsok, “there are some specific combinations of armor that do come out flamboyantly homosexual” (March 31, 2009). In two posts, caveowl writes sarcastically: “I think that set is soooooooooo ... fabulously divine ... it goes so well with my very long sword” (March 31, 2009) and “Man ... you look like the Lord of the Gays ... like Gay McGaylord. Is Liberace still alive ... who is designing this stuff RuPaul?!? Nice legs ... do you shave them?” (April 1, 2009). To offer a final example, Skorpion writes:

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Skorpion’s desire for “more masculine” armor for the male avatars —“armor to actually cover more of the body”— is widely shared across the Age of Conan Forums. The armor designed for specific character classes are the targets of close scrutiny and of charges of appearing feminine or even “gay.” The three character classes falling under the soldier archetype — the Conqueror, Dark Templar, and Guardian — are able to wear the heaviest armor in the game, and the criticism of the gear designed for these classes focuses primarily on the large amount of skin that shows. Many players would like to do away with the kilts, which in their posts they derisively call “skirts” or “dresses,” but they have a number of other points of criticism as well. In the thread “Conq PVP 6–10 Gear Shown Ingame,” Bigcase posts that he is “so sick of skirts” (February 2, 2010), and mathieulombardi agrees: “I’m just not happy with those conq[ueror] legs. It’s like more skirts again” (February 4, 2010). In a separate thread, lordof walmart complains about the upper body armor for Conquerors: “one of there sets has a ****ing belly shirt” (“When will they fix our Ardent Fire set?,” June 24, 2008). Commenting on the armor for the Dark Templar class, Bodzin writes: “I bet it looks better on girls” (“Tier 3 DT armor in 1.06 article?,” December 4, 2009). Finally, in the “Guardian suggestions” thread, the original poster dislikes both the Guardian’s “skirt” as well as its helm, writing that it “look[s] like some homo cap” (Craigus10, January 28, 2009). ozHerbo similarly wants to get rid of the “super gay ... gear” (February 24, 2009) and writes that “the chest piece looks like something you’d wear to a gay bar. It’s like ‘here, please slash me in the guts so my insides fall out oh and btw I like men’” ( January 28, 2009). A poster in another thread, “Tier 3 Raid Gear Concept Art,” also criticizes the Guardian armor. Tyga wants less bling and more coverage for his male avatar: “the guardian gear needs to not be so LAME! I hate our short skirt and all the openings in our armor. ... Lose the gold color, give us a bigger shield and make us look like we are wearing full plate!” (September 23, 2009). The players’ regular requests for “full plate,” “full body armor,” and “heavy armor” generally are a request for full coverage of the male avatars’ legs. When Superconan asks that “full body armor” be added to the game, he means “no skirts!” (“*PETITION* Full Body Armor,” June 19, 2008). Averiel agrees in the same thread and attempts to balance the wish for

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full-length pants with respect for the setting of the online world of Age of Conan: The PC skirts are one of the biggest visual detractors about the game for me, mostly because they look like denim mini-skirts re-done with a ringmail/leather texture.... Why not have something like pants with molded, frontal thigh plates held on with leather straps? Something like greaves — which were crafted at least as early as 1000 B.C.— for the thigh. Wouldn’t this be a decent compromise for those who want a pants option, without going so far as having medieval knights running about? [June 25, 2008].

Elsewhere in this thread and in numerous other threads across the Age of Conan Forums, posters express their desire to replace the kilts, skirts, or “these lame dresses” (MetalJeff, “Metallic Armor! Happy now?,” June 14, 2008) with pants. The criticism of the gear for the Ranger, Necromancer, and Assassin classes is less intense, but here, too, are posts that call for doing away with the “gay gear.” In the thread “6–10 PVP,” posters complain about various pieces of the Ranger class armor, particularly the helmet, kilt, and boots. bmanzara writes: “the gear is gay bottom line” (March 18, 2010) and “its gay no matter how you slice it, gayyyyyy” (March 18, 2010). One poster replies: “my toon is female i guess thats why i don’t really care that much” (Ngoc, March 18, 2010). The armor for the Necromancer class is the topic of criticism in the thread “Necro PVP Gear Pictures”: “I’m gonna come right out and say it, that gear looks... FAAAABU-LOUSSSSS! (Read: F-ing Gay)” (Darklune, September 14, 2008). Finally, in the thread “Assassin T3...,” Sarcasmo complains that that the assassin outfit isn’t sinister enough; it looks “gay” (April 30, 2009), and Jnoh wishes to do away with the “Hyborian-era Chip n Dales [Chippendales] gear” (May 21, 2009). The sharpest and most sustained criticism is leveled against the armor for male avatars of two classes restricted to the Stygian race, a decadent human civilization of Howard’s invention that is closely modeled on the ancient Egyptians. In designing the armor for both female and male avatars of the Stygian race to show large amounts of skin, the game designers may have struck a nerve among many players. The posted comments on the armor for the Tempest of Set (or TOS) class and the Herald of Xotli (or HOX) class both include repeated assertions that the male armor appears to have been designed for female bodies, not male, and thus looks “gay” on the male avatars. In the thread “Level 80 Tempest Screenshots!,” Kaegyn writes that some of the Tempest of Set armor “looks straight gay on males. You should see the chestpiece” ( June 20, 2008) and posts an image (in a file named “gaytos.jpg”) of a male avatar who, although dressed in full gear, has a chest that is largely bare. Similarly, in the thread “Pic of the TOS PVP GEAR lvl 10,” Zindrix

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does not like “all the female intended skin showing through the [male] armor” (September 16, 2008), and sothis writes sarcastically that the armor makes his avatar “look like a gay porn star and the pope at the same time” (September 17, 2008). In the original post in a third thread, “TOS T1 Epics Look Horrible,” dolmstead writes that the chest armor “basically looks like nothing so your entire chest basically looks naked.” He goes on to list his numbered desires or demands, including: 2. We do not want stuff that makes us look naked, if u design it for a female then the males need a separate graphic. 3. I want pants not a farkin dress and not a skirt. ... 4. I want a shield with a unique graphic that matches my ... armour set and not some graphic that matches nothing.... 5. I hate the purple crap you have been giving us for armours stick to the grays/black/brown/gold etc. colors no bright ass rainbow crap ... ( July 5, 2008) In a follow-up post, dohnstead writes that the male avatar’s armor “looks like it was designed for a female, its a dress with no top how gay does that look on male characters” ( July 5, 2008). The replies regularly agree with dohnstead’s assessment and reinforce the notion that the female and male avatars should have differently designed gear. HeraTheGodess writes that “male characters should have a slightly different graphic” ( July 5, 2008). Rezzer posts: “Looks great if you have a female ToS...feel sorry for those of you with a male toon wearing a dress” ( July 5, 2008). Stencil maintains that the female avatar’s chest, not the male avatar’s chest, should be the one that is all but bare: “The male one shows nipples this is obviously a problem as it should be the other way around” ( July 5, 2008). The “same graphics on males,” Electric writes, “looks extremely gay. Extremely” ( July 6, 2008). siblack88 posts: “it ought to be different for Males” ( July 7, 2008). Finally, kaivaerun finds that the armor “looks pretty good on my female ToS IMO... Sucks if you rolled a male one” ( July 7, 2008). Sets of armor for the Herald of Xotli, which often feature bright colors or which might expose even more of the male avatar’s upper body, do not fare much better at the Age of Conan Forums. In the thread “When will they fix our Ardent Fire set?,” leviathan777 posts: “i almost have a full [Ardent Fire] set, and it lookED sick, after this newest patch our awesome looking armor takes on a more gay look with kilts and rainbow stripes around gloves, they seriously made us look like gay fags, as before we looked awesome, way to go funcom ... epic fairy gear” ( June 23, 2008). Talm agrees; exaggerating the scope of the recent changes, he writes that the armor “turns bright pink with

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big purple swirls ... also, there is pink particle effect above your head it spells the word ‘I AM A GAY FAIRY’” ( June 24, 2008). The thread “HoX Armor” documents two years of discontent over a set of Herald of Xotli armor for male avatars. The posters generally agree that the current gear does not look evil enough for such an evil class. One sore point is the male avatar’s pair of “blue ballet slippers” (Flamefallen, March 8, 2010). The posters also have strong reactions against a proposed new look for armor for the Herald of Xotli male avatar that includes a chest harness rather than chest piece and that thus leaves most of the upper male body uncovered. Replies to the proposed new armor include the question “Why in the world would you want to look like a gay porn star?” (Krazed, June 9, 2008) and the statement “So you want armor that looks like gay bondage gear” (Ishum June 9, 2008). The Barbarian stands out as the one class for which showing a lot of skin on the male avatars is not regularly denounced as feminine or “gay”; rather, the near-nakedness is often desired as a demonstration of raw, male power.6 In the thread “Tier 3 Raid Gear Concept Art,” one poster writes that he wants “more actual armor [for the Barbarian class]..., we’re showing a lot of skin” (Bjornulfr, May 21, 2009). Altaire replies that showing skin is fine for the barbarian but that subtler colors are needed: barbarians are “supposed to not need a lot of armor and should show their muscles. But they need cooler armor that isnt a bright blue or something like that” (May 22, 2009). KyoTe44 agrees: “I dont think wearing a **** ton of armor on a Barb makes sense, you should be pretty damn naked, What i would like to see is some fur yes, give like a fur loincloth ... i want my barb to look more naked the more badass he is. If i wanted to wear armor id be a Guard[ian], Im a barb for a reason, cause i wanna fight naked” (May 25, 2009). Further discussion of what a male Barbarian should or should not wear can be found in the thread “Barbarian T2 PvP Set...”; here, Roargathor posts an image of a barbarian in full armor along with the complaint: “Please tell me this is not what we barbs get. I don’t understand how this can be a Barbarian set. Am I the only one who doesn’t approve?” ( January 28, 2010). The original poster is not the only one to disapprove. Kosef refers disparagingly to the armor set as “a bright yellow suit” ( January 28, 2010), and in response to another poster’s favorable comments about the image, Zonian replies: “Really? I gotten question your masculinity in this case. I have nothing against yellow as a color, but not for a sword wielding male barbarian. It just looks plain gay.... Barbarian armor covers up way too much too. Think of Conan. ... Like I said before, a real barbarian only needs a single sock” ( January 28, 2010). Zonian finds ample support in the replies of others, two of whom com-

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ment that the image looks “more like a flamboyant Liberace Barb than an actual Conan Barbarian” (EatSteel, January 28, 2010) or like a “metrosexual barbarian” (Esoteric214, January 28, 2010). However, one poster takes Zonian to task. “LOL what’s with the homophobia?,” Thutkemi replies: Got issues with your masculinity and feel the need to thump your chest on a forum about an in-game costume? ... I still don’t get why guys take such issues with kilts and tassets in this game, which were perfectly acceptable garments for men for centuries. I still think it’s a bit silly that gear is so skimpy for barbs, especially the Cimmerian ones. I think they should have different skins for different climates, so the current gear for Stygia, where you want to be cool, while when you’re in Aquilonia and Cimmeria, you dress more appropriately for the climate. I mean, it’s pretty funny to see a scantily clad dude running around in the snows of the Eiglophian Mountains ... [January 28, 2010].

Thutkemi’s post stands out in this thread not only because it questions the posturing of a previous poster but also because it answers the question of whether or not the armor for male avatars reveals too much or too little by taking into account the full range of locations (the complete setting) in the online game. Gear that is fully appropriate to one climate, the poster argues, may seem wholly out of place in another. KyoTe44’s and Zonian’s call for naked or near-naked Barbarians finds further discussion in the immensely popular thread “Male Nudity!,” which garnered 203 posts from May 22, 2008 to July 13, 2008. The posts show a strong, unexamined belief that the in-game audience for sexualized male bodies is female: no fewer than 22 posts contain clear statements along these lines, and no posts address the possibility of same-sex interest in the male avatars. The original poster, ElusiveMoose, writes: “I just hope a few other of our AoC ladies will /sign this so I know I’m not the only one!” (May 22, 2008), and the final post ends in a statement of support “for the ladies ... /signed” (ChampionSteel, July 13, 2008). In between are recurring statements of the need for absolute equality in the levels of nudity in the game, frequently including in their posts phrases such as “fair is fair” or “make it equal,” as well as support for adding male nudity “for the ladies” or “for ... pleasing the opposite sex.” One important gesture toward equality, according to many posters, would be the incorporation of male bulges. If during character creation the breast size of the female avatar can be adjusted, so the argument runs, then fairness requires that the bulge size of the male avatar be equally adjustable. No fewer than nine posters show discontent or discomfort with the missing parts on the male avatar, a sentiment captured in Solaris’ brief post: “I rolled a Man, not a neuter” ( June 1, 2008). A recurring analogy in this thread and

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elsewhere on the forums is that of the Ken doll. In the “Male Nudity!” thread, for example, derella finds the male avatars to be “flatter in the groin than a Ken doll” (May 22, 2008), and darkumbra writes that “the Ken doll look is just freaking sad” (May 26, 2008). In another thread, SerialKiller writes: “I dont want to look at Barbies running around. I like to see real women (meaning they have all their woman parts). Same for male characters, they should have junk instead of looking like a ken doll” (“Quests with Homosexual Content,” July 24, 2008). The negative references to the Ken doll — and, in the post quoted immediately above, to Barbie — may call to mind the earlier YouTube video reference (“This is a video game, not an easy bake oven”) and may signal a discomfort with the similarities between the conventionally girlish practice of dressing up dolls and playing make-believe with the adolescent and/or adult male gamer’s practice of creating, dressing, and manipulating a male avatar in the online game Age of Conan. Seven posters in the “Male Nudity!” thread also want the opportunity to add chest hair during character creation. This spontaneous addition to the discussion echoes the desire for body hair on male avatars that occasionally surfaces in other threads. See, for example, the following two comments posted elsewhere at the Age of Conan Forums: “I would like to add hair to my legs and armpits. My male toon looks gay all smooth shaved.” (Roccopaws, “Veterans Rewards: Add appearance changes,” September 28, 2009) and “If you’re going to make me wear a kilt/skirt, I want some hair on my legs dammit” ( Jerricko, “*PETITION* Full Body Armor,” June 19, 2008). There is an uncharacteristically high level of self-identification of the posters’ genders in the “Male Nudity!” thread, and in the posts that are authored by self-identified male players, the support for the inclusion of male nudity in the game is sometimes accompanied by the poster’s disavowal of gay male desire alongside the widely shared idea that male nudity would be only “for the ladies.” One such post reads: “I’m a guy and I agree with this we need equality and a bulge / butt showing for the lady players (and no im not gay...)” (Artillis, June 8, 2008). A second reads: “Not that I want to see dongs or anything, but I think this would be hilarious. I mean, we get to see titties, right? Let the ladies see our dongs. It’s only fair” (Ipecac, June 13, 2008). There are also at least two instances of open hostility toward the incorporation of full male nudity in the online game. In both instances, male nudity is equated with male homosexuality. ancient75 replies to the original post with two words —“Gay faggot” (May 27, 2008)— and GremlinWolverine’s nearly as brief reply seems to suggest that there is already enough, if not too much, sexualizing of male bodies in the online game: “I suppose the gay as[s] Gigolos in the brothels weren’t enough?” (May 30, 2008).

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Hostility toward the recognition of queer desires already present within the game is also evident in the thread “Quests with Homosexual Content.” This immensely popular but short-lived thread received 241 posts within a one-week period ( July 22–28, 2008), before selected posts were deleted and the thread was closed by forum moderators. A few posters respond to the original poster’s question by identifying possibly gay, lesbian, or bisexual characters in the game, and two posters — the first identifying as a lesbian, the other as a “huge homo”— contribute after the original poster received a number of negative comments. Their posts validate the original inquiry and confirm their own interest in the topic. The first poster writes: i’m glad this was posted because now i feel like i’m not the only one that noticed it.... Gay people rarely get any kind of decent recognition in anything, especially games, considering gamers are always dropping faggot and gay to demean other players. for fear of getting ripped to shreds by the next posters, i just want to point out that I don’t feel like gay people need special recognition, at least i don’t feel strongly that way about myself. it’s just something you notice when it’s never there like anything else so of course it’s something one may want to point out [Jayfer, July 24, 2008].

The second poster writes: I am a huge homo, I love finding all the queer content in the game. Why? Because homosexuality is a reality, and I am tired of games that completely ignore it, yet acknowledge other sexual preferences. Why does homosexuality have to make an appearance in games? The same reason anything else does: because it is real — and if you ignore it you are completely insane. We’re not playing super happy [insert religious or other non-homo friendly organization] adventure island where we can ignore aspects of humanity [Eden99, July 24, 2008].

The original poster, Crunchomatic13, offers a similar explanation in a followup post: “My motives are not devious or underhanded — I’m simply curious as to whether or not anyone else has come across any gay content in the game that I may have missed. As a gay male, I obviously like to keep my eye out for it...” ( July 23, 2008). The trend among the responses to this search for “Quests with Homosexual Content” is strong criticism of both the original poster and the desire to identify queer elements in the game Age of Conan. Some of the critical posts are brief. For example, DarkBlightHH quips: “I want more pedophile quests. Maybe some other paraphilias too” ( July 24, 2008). Other critics offer more substantial comments that charge the original poster with seeking attention and pushing an agenda. The statements by three such critics are presented here. Metazare writes: “I have a feeling you made this thread only to seek attention, I highly doubt anyone is actively looking for quests tailored to fit

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gay people in the game” ( July 22, 2008). Granz agrees; “Why does sexuality have to come up in video games too. Do I go around heterosexual questing and posting about it? No.... Man what an attention ***** this dude is” ( July 22, 2008). Finally, PrObitas writes: most people who’s first statement is I’m gay or I’m looking for gay, in a forum or anywhere else, are advertising, whether they know it or not. You don’t see straight people walking around in parades flaunting their sexuality do you? That **** belongs in the bedroom, or in a location people have to choose to visit. Down mainstreet where I do my shopping is not the venue for such things [July 24, 2008].

The posters often state that gay content has no place in the mainstream online games that they play, much less “down mainstreet” where they shop, and their posts frequently present the attempts at intimidating or silencing the openly gay player as justifiable and his departure from the online game and the internet forum as desirable. The statements by five such critics are presented here. Deicide-Hyborian replies, ending the post with a threat: “Well.... Have you ever read any of the Conan books? I have never read one titled Conan the Buttbarian or Conan the AssDestroyer. Dude, seriously.... Don’t bring your gay antics to this game, you won’t like the results” ( July 22, 2008). Spindoctor wants the gay player to go elsewhere, perhaps to a gay gamer ghetto: “When you choose an out of the norm lifestyle you should not interject it into the mainstream play.... However feel free to suggest some company making an exclusively gay mmo. I am sure it would make money and you might find a more sympathetic audience” ( July 24, 2008). Arevea sees the hostile reactions as fully justified: “Look nothing against the gay population, but don’t promote your lifestyle, just shut the **** up and nobody will flame you like this.... Play the game to enjoy it, not to bring politics in the game; I thought online video games was to make everyone feel the same and as one, but I guess not” ( July 26, 2008). SingingSteel appeals to the forum moderators to silence the gay player: “Delete This Thread!!! Mod[erator]s, Please get rid of this thread or move it to the off topic area. This thread has nothing to do with the game. I didn’t come to the forums to debate on the nuances of homosexuality. We get enough of this crap shoved down our throats as it is, and I’m sure as hell not paying a monthly fee to hear it” ( July 26, 2008). A fifth poster addresses what that poster sees as the reason behind the original post and the source of the gay player’s real-world problems: I’m not sure how any of this has anything to do with AOC.... If your seeking acceptance and understanding then we’re not the audience for that. Find people in your real world circle who will accept you as you are. I’m sure there is someone, your dad, your mom, your preacher who will usually accept you no

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The post implies that gayness is the problem and that online gaming is not the cure.

Conclusion A fuller understanding of what these posts say about players’ views of the virtual male body in the game may require moving past the literature dealing specifically with Age of Conan and online gaming to include a brief discussion of recent scholarship on the cultural meanings of muscled male bodies. The posts at The GayGamer.net Forums repeatedly show appreciation for the “hot,” muscled look of the male avatars in Age of Conan. The posts provide little evidence of ironic or camp sensibilities; they embrace the look of the male avatar and do not seem to view it, for example, “like someone out of a Tom of Finland cartoon, the symbols of masculinity so overdrawn and fetishized as to suggest an ironic, gay sensibility” (Bordo 154).7 Similarly, the posters at The GayGamer.net Forums tend to prefer subtle and purely masculine guild names over those that reference the idea of gay pride or otherwise call attention to themselves. The gay male players’ appreciation for the muscled virtual male avatars is thus not necessarily counter-hegemonic and, at least on some level, may even reinforce conventional ideals of masculine power and strength. In an extensive review of previous publications by Daryl Higgins and others, Nicholas Lanzieri and Tom Hildebrandt have recently argued that, through muscle training, many gay men can use their own body “as a vehicle to connect with masculine power” (281) and thereby embrace conventional ideals of masculinity in order to avoid “any resurgence of their internalized homophobia” (282). In a study not included in the review by Lanzieri and Hildebrandt, Patrick Keleher similarly argues that the muscled gay male body may reinforce hegemonic masculinity rather than challenge it. Keleher writes that “gay men’s muscular practice and acquisition may be an attempt to dispel the association between homosexuality and effeminacy” (122). Further, he concludes that the participants in his study of gay male bodybuilders often reproduce essentialist discourses of masculinity and femininity: “While on the surface, participants were resistant to the concept of hegemonic masculinity, those same muscular gay men did seem to engage in complicit masculinity — complicit in reinforcing a dominant gender order — in practice” (134). The degree of complicit masculinity, of course, may be tempered by other

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trends in the posts at The GayGamer.net Forums. The posters repeatedly comment on the diverse nature of the gay community (although perhaps that openness and tolerance is mostly “on the surface,” too) and maintain friendly exchanges with one another even when they disagree. Unlike the strongly present trend on the Age of Conan Forums, they also do not seek to intimidate, do not loudly complain, and do not formally petition to have the game changed so that it might more fully match their own ideas of what the male avatars should or should not look like. Many of the posters at the Age of Conan Forums are strongly vocal about their dissatisfaction with a number of features of the “look” of the male avatar in Age of Conan: they want what they see as gender-appropriate clothing (pants, not “skirts” and “dresses”), and they want gear that matches, that is less revealing, and that is more subtly colored. Some of them also want body hair on their male avatars. Taken as a whole, the relevant posts at the Age of Conan Forums seem to assert a wish for a firmly drawn line between the female body and the male body, one in which the former is highly sexualized and the latter is not. In doing so, the posts seem to resist what Paul Fussell has identified as the male bodybuilder’s blurring of the “distinction between Hemen and Girly-girls” through, among other things, their large chests, revealing outfits and hairless bodies. Fussell writes: “His joy in cleavage, accentuated by the tank-top, which as a restraint to his bouncing breasts looks like nothing so much as a male halter, in her joy in cleavage, accentuated by the push-up bustier. Both bodies are testaments to physical passion, made more so, in each case, by shaving the legs and underarms” (46).To add to Fussell’s list of similarities between the extreme feminine “girly girl” and the hypermasculine avatar is yet another item specific to Age of Conan. At the same time that players complain about the odd combinations of armor that, to them, look “flamboyantly homosexual” or “super gay,” they frequently engage in debates of their own about which pieces of gear best match and which do not. Neither set of forum posts emerges as the winner in this conflict over the virtual male body. Rather, the posts seem to be engaged in a dialectic of sorts, one much like what Stefan Brandt discusses in his essay “American Culture X: Identity, Homosexuality, and the Search for a New American Hero.” Brandt argues that contemporary American culture has experienced a slow and far-reaching dialectical transformation: This process has involved both the normalization of formally “deviant” forms of masculinity and the “queering” of dominant types of masculinity. It is a process of hybridization that may have blurred old boundaries but has also entailed a virulent rediscovery of conventional masculinity that is ritualistically rejuvenated, reanimated and reinforced in cultural and social practice [78].

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Old boundaries have indeed been blurred, and not only the boundary between straight and gay male identities. Male bodybuilders, who in the 1970s were often considered “freaks” and “oddities” because of their excessive muscularity (Moore 95) and thus were often viewed as a deviant form of masculinity, have been normalized through steady media exposure. Jon Stratton argues, for example, that from Stay Hungry and Pumping Iron to Twins and Kindergarten Cop, “taken together, Schwarzenegger’s films present a narrative of the normalisation of the spectacle of the muscular male body” (198). The same narrative of normalization may be said of video games; for in Age of Conan, every male avatar looks much like an amateur bodybuilder. However, the look of the male avatar in Age of Conan may also indicate a move in the opposite direction, presenting that now normalized muscular male body, that newly dominant type of masculinity, as always open to “queering” through the various ways in which it is exposed to the gaze of every player, whether those players are female or male, are straight or gay, or say they want it or not. Some of the sources surveyed at the beginning of this essay now also emerge as more relevant than others to the discussion of how players talk about the male avatars in Age of Conan. The diagnosis of online gaming as sublimation of real-world frustrations or inadequacies (see The Big Bang Theory, Stanley, and Bambridge) is not supported by an analysis of the internet forum posts. However, psychoanalysis may yet provide useful language for talking about what may be occurring beneath the surface of the posts. The strong identifications that the players have with their avatars may support Easthope’s arguments on the roles of the ego ideal and narcissism in shaping contemporary views of the fit male body. Van Cleave’s concerns about online gaming addiction are not confirmed, nor is the statement by King and Krzywinska that “rhetorics of ‘liberation’ ... are often used by players describing the pleasures of ... games” (176) with settings like Age of Conan. Gay male players are seen, as Carr and Alexander might predict, to use forum posts to “rework” or “resist” the heteronormativity of the game. Their attempts are well received at The GayGayGamer.net Forums but meet with pronounced hostility at the Age of Conan Forums. However, gay players may be less successful at “opening up a space for thinking differently and more diversely” (Alexander 169) about masculinity and perhaps even play a part in perpetuating hegemonic masculinity. Mortensen’s focus on the game’s eye-candy and Boyle’s formulation of the online game as bordering on soft-core pornography seem applicable, given the players’ strong visual and visceral responses to the appearances of both the male avatars and the gear that they wear. Finally, McGonigal’s idea of online gaming as a form of work may now also appear applicable to this discussion.

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Players may indeed not be using Age of Conan and other online games primarily as a tool for what Bambridge calls a “legitimate exploration of an emerging new reality” (18), but neither are they necessarily simply transforming their “real world” dissatisfactions into virtual accomplishments. Rather, as evidenced in the forums, players of Age of Conan seem to be importing into and recreating within the online game their preexisting, real-world biases and values surrounding definitions of maleness and masculinity. If, following McGonigal, players are indeed performing cultural work in the online environment of Age of Conan (an environment that includes the forums and other venues for talking about game-related material), then their overall project is the ongoing, often conflict-ridden (re)definition of what it means to be — and, more importantly, what it means to look like — a real man in our heavily mediated world.

Notes 1. The Big Bang Theory had juxtaposed the stereotypes of the science geek and the barbarian at least once before. An episode from nearly a year earlier, “The Middle-Earth Paradigm,” features Penny’s ex-boyfriend Kurt (played by fitness model Brian Patrick Wade) dressed as a barbarian: Kurt attends Penny’s costume party bare-chested and muscled, wearing only a loincloth, beaded necklace, leather wristbands, and sandals. 2. Barney Glaser and Anselm Strauss, cofounders of the grounded theory method, have engaged in a “persistent rhetorical wrestle” (Holton i) over their once-shared methodology. My approach follows Glaser’s flexible model rather than the highly structured model of Strauss and Corbin. 3. Incidents grouped under History are more likely to be off-topic for this study than incidents grouped under Setting. R.E. Howard’s realm of Hyboria borrows from a range of ancient human civilizations across time, and historical arguments about the fictional world often seem confused or misplaced. Posters variously identify the period of Age of Conan as pre-historical, as classical, or even as medieval. In truth, it is perhaps a bit of all three and thus, for the historian, is not a topic to be understood through the lens of real-world history. In Consuming History: Historians and Heritage in Contemporary Popular Culture, for example, Jerome de Groot names Age of Conan alongside World of Warcraft as examples of “quasi-historical romance fantasy combat scenarios” (139). Elsewhere, he similarly characterizes (or disparages) Howard’s widely popular tales of Conan the Cimmerian as “pseudo-historical fantasy” (282n25). 4. The post’s use of two terms in place of one (“the chest/breasts”) suggests a conventional understanding of gender as two wholly separate biological spheres: men have chests whereas women have breasts. Differences in the character creation process in Age of Conan reinforce this wholesale opposition of male and female. The male avatar first appears among a group of male slaves rowing a large slave ship, whereas the female avatar first appears in a harem in a separate, sequestered section of the ship. Similarly, during the character creation process and on the login screen when a player returns to the game, the female avatar practically writhes on the screen whereas the male avatar stand mostly still, making only small movements or adjustments of the body. An earlier version of the game reportedly contained a difference in game play: female avatars were slower at combat than male avatars. The combat mechanics have since been equalized, and female and male in the game now seem identical in all things but appearance. In appearance, though, they remain very different. 5. There are few recent online discussions of homoeroticism in Howard’s world of Conan. Most discussions of homoeroticism seem to focus on the Arnold Schwarzenegger films, and many recent online discussions of sexuality in Howard’s work seem committed to presenting

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a wholly straight, unproblematic account of the author’s life and works. See, for example, the “Shield Wall” metaphor in and readers’ responses to Mark Finn’s widely circulated document “Robert E. Howard: A New Manifesto” or the dismissal of the “potentially homoerotic” in Joe Killian’s “The Second Coming of Conan the Barbarian.” Jeffrey P. Dennis offers an interesting and developed perspective on homoeroticism in Howard’s fiction in his study We Boys Together: Teenagers in Love before Girl-Craziness, noting that Howard’s story “The Tower of the Elephant” (1933) is the only one of the 17 stories in Weird Tales that takes place during Conan’s adolescence: “This story is fascinating because it precisely mirrors the adventures of the adult Conan, only transformed from hetero-erotic to graphically homoerotic” (59). 6. The strong visual differences between the male avatars and between the gear of the decadent Stygian civilization and of the barbaric Cimmerians may call to mind Paul Fussell’s distinction between the intellect and the body in his analysis of the phenomenon of male bodybuilding. He writes in a language that seems to describe the Cimmerian barbarian in Age of Conan: “The longing is atavistic. It is a primordial return to the time when strength and sex were synonymous for survival of the species. It’s the romantic idealization of a prelapsarian, natural man, untrammeled by thought, by knowledge of good and evil, by, in fact, knowledge. Intellect is held to be effete, essentially feminine and suspect. Better a blank slate, clean and unpolluted, than a mind, filled as it is with vacillation and moral quandary” (57). 7. Examples of overdone and fetishized Conan-like male figures might be found in online adult gay comics such as Jett’s “Kong” and Patrick Fillion’s “Zahn” or in the “Conan the Destroyer Film Custom Action Figure” (and other custom-built Conan action figures) designed by Anesis using different parts, including the body of a Tom of Finland action figure and the hair from a Barbie doll. A further example might be found in the language used to market Age of Conan. Whereas Funcom has advertised the game using conventional language, regularly calling it “brutal, savage and sexy” (see, for example, Famine’s April 2, 2009 post in the Age of Conan Forums thread “Free ‘Age of Conan’ trial now Live”), at least one reviewer calls attention to the overdrawn and fetishized looks of the avatars. The subtitle of the brief review in Maximum PC (Sept. 2008) reads “More leather and flesh than an S&M bar” (“Age of Conan: Hyborian Adventures” 90). That review praises the game’s character creation and combat systems (i.e. the looks and moves of the in-game avatars) over the game’s storyline.

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Carr, Diane. “Games and Gender.” Computer Games: Text, Narrative and Play. Ed. Diane Carr, David Buckingham, Andrew Burn, and Gareth Schott. Cambridge: Polity Press, 2006. 162–76. Cross, Gary. Men to Boys: The Making of Modern Immaturity. NY: Columbia, 2008. de Groot, Jerome. Consuming History: Historians and Heritage in Contemporary Popular Culture. New York: Routledge, 2009. Dennis, Jeffrey P. We Boys Together: Teenagers in Love before Girl-Craziness. Nashville: Vanderbilt University Press, 2007. Easthope, Anthony. What a Man’s Gotta Do: The Masculine Myth in Popular Culture. New York: Routledge, 1990. Fillion, Patrick. “Zahn.” n.d. http://patrickfillion.com/. May 10, 2011. Finn, Mark. “Robert E. Howard: A New Manifesto.” Conan the Movie Blog. Oct. 18, 2010. http://www.conanmovieblog.com/2010/10/18/robert-e-howard-a-new-manifesto/. March 10, 2011. Funcom. “Creating your own Character.” community.ageofconan.com Dec. 22, 2006. http://community.ageofconan.com/wsp/conan/frontend.cgi?func=frontend.show&templ ate=searchresult&keyword=creating+your+own+character&x=0&y=0. March 15, 2011. Fussell, Paul. “Bodybuilder Americanus.” The Male Body: Features, Destinies, Exposures. Ed. Laurence Goldstein. University of Michigan Press, 1994. 43–60. The GayGamer.net Forums. FAD Media, Inc. 2011. Web. http://gaygamer.net/forum/. Glaser, Barney G. The Grounded Theory Perspective: Conceptualization Contrasted with Description. Mill Valley, CA: Sociology Press, 2001. _____, and Anselm L. Strauss. The Discovery of Grounded Theory: Strategies for Qualitative Research. Chicago: Aldine, 1967. Higgins, Daryl. “Narcissism, the Adonis Complex, and the Pursuit of the Ideal.” Gender Outcasts and Sexual Outlaws: Sexual Oppression and Gender Hierarchies in Queer Men’s Lives. Ed. Christopher Kendall & Wayne Martino. New York: Harrington Park Press, 2006. 79–100. Holton, Judith A. “From the Editor.” The Grounded Theory Review 6.3 ( June 2007): i–iii. Jett. “Kong.” March 4, 2011. http://www.spunkcomics.com/. May 10, 2011. Keleher, Patrick. “Mary, Mary, Why Ya’ Bulgin’: Power, Privilege, and the Construction of the Gay Muscle Body.” Dissertation. York University. Toronto, Ontario. August 2009. Killian, Joe. “The Second Coming of Conan the Barbarian.” The Carolinian. Jan. 18, 2010. thecarolinianonlne.com. May 11, 2011. King, Geoff, and Tanya Krzywinska. Tomb Raiders and Space Invaders: Videogame Forms and Contexts. London: I.B. Tauris & Co. Ltd., 2006. Lanzieri, Nicholas, and Tom Hildebrandt. “Using Hegemonic Masculinity to Explain Gay Male Attraction to Muscular and Athletic Men.” Journal of Homosexuality 58 (2011): 275–93. McGonigal, Jane. Reality Is Broken: Why Games Make Us Better and How They Can Change the World. NY: Penguin, 2011. “The Middle-Earth Paradigm.” The Big Bang Theory. CBS. October 29, 2007. No. 106, season one. Television. Moore, Pamela L. Building Bodies. New Brunswick: Rutgers, 1997. Mortensen, Torill Elvira. Perceiving Play: The Art and Study of Computer Games. New York: Peter Lang, 2009. “Roleplayin’ Episode 4: Anomaly (AOC Machinima).” Youtube.com. Sept. 12, 2009. http://www.youtube.com/all_comments?v=lJxOmOtRew. May 3, 2011. Stanley, J. B. The Battered Body. Woodbury, MN: Midnight Ink, 2009. Stratton, Jon. The Desirable Body: Cultural Fetishism and the Erotics of Consumption. Manchester: Manchester University Press, 1996. Strauss, Anselm, and Juliet Corbin. Basics of Qualitative Research: Grounded Theory Procedures and Techniques. Newbury Park, CA: Sage, 1990. Van Cleave, Ryan G. and Mark Griffiths. Unplugged: My Journey into the Dark World of Video Game Addiction. Deerfield Beach, FL: Health Communications, Inc., 2010.

Fandom and the Nostalgia of Masculinity STEPHEN WALL

“Know, O Prince...” This project began as an endeavor to understand the place of masculinity in Conan fandom,1 an effort to determine if the hypermasculine (Weems 2008, 31–33) image of Conan the Barbarian prompted or halted discussion of the subject amongst readers. What it has become is an example of the pervasive presence of a dominant Western doxa of manliness that attempts to root itself in all things of which men are a part. This construction gives the impression of a monolithic masculine tradition that forbids any kind of dissent or dialogue (Bourdieu 1995, 160). I want to stress that these findings are preliminary and they would not be so easy to articulate were it not for the fact I have seen them before in my work with Neo-Pagan men (Wall 2009) and with men’s narratives on autoeroticism (Wall 2011). I pursued the aforementioned studies after becoming well-versed in the foundational elements of modern masculinities studies, such as Pierre Bourdieu’s Masculine Domination, Brod and Kaufman’s Theorizing Masculinities, and Peter Nardi’s Men’s Friendships. The model I am attributing to the culture of Conan and Robert E. Howard fandom is not my own design, but rather a complex and thoroughly argued conception. Furthermore, folklorist Simon Bronner has shown that the central figures of popular culture such as Conan the Barbarian are more than capable of acting as tradition-bearing folktypes for notions of masculinity, allowing the consumers of popular culture to come away with ideas on the subject even if it is not their intention to do so (Bronner 2005, 13). Therefore, I have approached this topic mainly as a folklorist studying the curious space wherein folklore and popular culture interact with oneanother. According to Paul Smith, “...a highly complex set of direct and indirect interactions, transformations, and simulations are in constant and 174

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simultaneous operation,” between the two concepts. The practices of folklore and popular culture are similar enough to cause an exchange of ideas when the subjects interact, which in turn causes change for both concepts (Smith 1991, 123–124). To this end, I have tapped the narratives of individuals who can best be described as the bearers (Narvaez and Laba 1986, 2–4) of the Robert E. Howard and Conan “traditions”: fans (Stenger 2006, 26). It is through their words alone that I have assembled my understanding of the culture of Conan fandom and the ideas of masculinity embodied within its context. Clearly, being a fan is more than reading the stories and even having a passing familiarity with the person of Howard. There is often a material culture, objects that act as emblems (Noyes 2003, 34) associated with fandom. My principal informant has related to me that he owns “thousands of dollars worth of Conan statues,” which he keeps in an office/library in his apartment. There is also a discussion thread on the Official Robert E. Howard Forum entitled “Cold Hyrkanian Steel,” which features over 500 posts dedicated to photographs and discussions of swords, axes, and other weapons forum members own, are considering purchasing, or that they think represent the weapons of Conan’s Hyborian setting — an aesthetic (Pocius 2003, 54–55) that is hotly debated by the community.

Methodolog y As is the case with most folkloristic endeavors, this paper is concerned with using primary source material in the form of interviews and narratives and viewing it through the lens of secondary theoretical sources. My primary source material comes from two places: a series of interviews with an informant named “Jim” who describes himself as, “the world’s biggest fan,” of Conan and Robert E. Howard, as well as a series of discussion threads on the community forums of the Official Robert E. Howard website (www.conan.com). Face-to-face interviews, such as those I conducted with my informant, have a long history of serving as the basis for folklore fieldwork (Ives 1997[1974], iv-xii) but searching through on-line forums for useful primary source material is a newer idea, built upon a growing body of theory that includes works such as Christine Hine’s Virtual Ethnography and Trevor Blank’s edited work Folklore and the Internet. In discussing the practice of digital ethnography, Hine makes the statement that, “the models of culture and cultural artefact are used to provide a structure for thinking about two aspects of cyberspace which can be seen as

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field sites for an ethnographer” (Hine 2000, 14). One can look at the internet as a culture unto itself or an aspect of the culture outside digital space. For the purposes of this study, the wisest course of action seems to be the latter, as the internet becomes a place where individuals with similar tastes ( Jones 1987, 173) can meet to discuss the shared experiences of their fandom. Masculinity is a vast subject that works its way into fandom — as gender has the capacity to do in practically any cultural context (Butler 1990, 42–43)— and that fandom subsequently works masculinity into its virtual narratives. The forum community of the Official Robert E. Howard website has a membership of close to 4200 individuals, up to 500 of which may involve themselves with the website at once according the forum’s record-keeping software. While this is a sizable number compared to some online fantasy fandoms, such as the Dragonlance forum (www.dlnexus.com/community), which has some 2100 members, it is dwarfed by the giants of modern popular science fiction and fantasy such as Harry Potter (www.cosforums.com) and Naruto (www.narutoforums.com)— the forums for which count 93,000 and 201,000 members respectively. To be realistic however when dealing with online communities, one must take into account several unknowable quantities: there are likely a number of people that have membership in a given forum but never participate in discussions, there is also likely a number of “lurkers” who visit the forums but never post or hold memberships, and there is always the possibility one individual may hold more than one account within a forum community. With these variables understood, I have noticed in previous experience with fan-centered forums that a core, or regular group, of posters emerges. Fortunately, it is fairly easy to access this core group as most forum software logs the number of posts attributed to a given user and presents it every time the user posts, often in the form of a rank or honorific title. For example, a participant on the Official Robert E. Howard Forum with less than a hundred posts to his or her credit is titled a “Spear Carrier,” whereas several hundred posts grant the title of “Warrior,” and 1000-plus posts comes with the honorific “WarLord.” It is also clear that those who administer the forum or participate in the community to a greater degree are entitled to personalized epithets such as “Ancient Briton” or “Metal Barbarian Dinosaur.” This practice of personalizing one’s digital space is in keeping with Simon Bronner’s assertion that internet posting is less like journaling or keeping a diary of one’s thoughts, and more like the act of “making one’s mark” attributed to graffiti taggers or practitioners of latrinalia (Bronner 2009, 56–57). A forum user can also choose to display her or his age, gender, and/or location, though again one must

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contend with the variable of never really knowing who is telling the truth about their non-digital selves in a digital space. These fields too, can also be personalized, as one might list her or his location as “The Misty Moors of Scotland” just as easily as one might write “Florida.” What is likely to be certain about these brief descriptions of the posters is the date they joined the forum, which is always listed in the case of the Official Robert E. Howard Forum, allowing ethnographers to follow to participants in terms of their time as site-members as well as tracking their posting volume. My informant Jim is also a part of this virtual space, but he acts as an element the virtual ethnographer rarely sees: the “lurker” or non-participating observer of an online performance. Jim mentioned in his interviews that he prefers to observe, rather than get involved directly with online discussions because they tend to cause him aggravation by becoming sidetracked or bogged down by participants who, “just don’t get it.” The “it” for Jim represents a cogent understanding of the themes attributed to the Conan character, how Robert E. Howard’s personal life and environment helped the author to build those themes, and what is appropriate use of the character and his sword and sorcery setting now that Howard’s work has been handed off to others.

Jim: Anatomy of a Conan Fan Jim’s introduction to Conan began not with Howard’s stories, but with the 1970s newsprint comic The Savage Sword of Conan. He described to me how, in his teens and twenties, even Newfoundland’s urban center of St. John’s was somewhat isolated, and the availability of the comics made them a treat for the senses. “You went to the corner store and crossed your fingers,” Jim explained, and The Savage Sword of Conan was “something different ... it wasn’t Spider Man or Donald Duck.” Even as a man in his fifties he recalls with nearbliss of the olfactory experience of the newsprint that meant he was holding a new comic for the first time. He remarked that Conan’s existence as a rural wanderer struck a chord with him in terms of his Newfoundland upbringing, where, in the 1970s “camping, hunting, and fishing,” with family members were the activities of choice even among the “townies” of St. John’s. Jim also related that he enjoyed the black-and-white comics because they did not conform to the censorship of the Comics Code Authority2, meaning the stories presented the reader with more images and themes of sex and violence than Marvel Comics’ Conan the Barbarian could at the time, something that, “would appeal to any adolescent male.” Based on the numerous “introduction to Conan” narratives and polling

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one can find on the Official Robert E. Howard Forums, Jim’s route through the comics to the literature is not all that uncommon. Fans seem equally likely to find their way to the fandom through Howard’s original works, the comics of the 1970s and 80s, or the Arnold Schwarzenegger films. Like Jim, many fans seemed to grow into their appreciation for Robert E. Howard and the various writers and artists that created the body of Conan popular culture over time, first discovering the literature and comics as teenagers, and then returning to them with a more mature literary appreciation later on in their lives. This overlap between adolescent and adult interests speaks well to the theory on nostalgia that I will introduce shortly. In talking with Jim I tried to assess why he was drawn to the stories of Conan as opposed to literature from contemporary authors. Jim’s response was one of nostalgia, as he explained that the roots of fantasy writing were good stories with characters that served the plot and moved it forward. His principal complaint about modern fantasy authors was that their characters are the centerpieces of their work and the stories serve the personal development of those characters above all else. In a somewhat uncomfortable statement prefaced by, “This is going sound sexist,” Jim remarked that the presence of women authors in the modern genre of fantasy fiction was largely to blame3 for this change of focus from story to character. The personal nature of folklore methodology makes it a challenge for me, as the researcher, to deal with his remarks. Jim and I have known each other for close to three years. We have come to know a good deal about each other’s lives and, as parents, we have even swapped stories about raising children. Thus it is not surprising that I would want to protect my informant and perhaps even edit out his statement. However, it is perhaps one of the most telling pieces of information I have come across. Jim’s interest in fantasy begins as second-wave feminism is transforming Western thought (McPherson 2000, 208–210). He is, effectively, born on the cusp of the critique. Jim is educated in a pre-feminist fashion during the 1960s and early 1970s. He is too young to participate in the emerging dialogue on gender, yet he experiences the social change it embodies. The ideas of the feminist critique require him to scrap core assumptions that contribute to his sense of self. Conan then, becomes nostalgia, a strategy to establish a dynamic and continuous identity; effectively circumventing the effects of the feminist critique upon Jim’s social world. In an informal forum-based poll, a full third of the participants — totaling over three hundred votes — suggested that they found their way to Conan through the comics4 of the 1970s and 80s, just as Jim did. It would only make sense that Jim and other Conan fans use Howard’s work as, “an intra-personal expression of self ... derived from the experience of a

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particular age-cohort” (Wilson 2005, 19). Michael Kimmel’s assessment of modern Western masculinity suggests that men will flee all things feminine in order to maintain a masculine identity (Kimmel 1994, 128–131). If Robert E. Howard wrote a “manly” or masculine variety of fantasy, it is only because those writings have come to represent a nostalgic experience of the genre prior to the popularity of female fantasy authors. Jim speaks of Conan as “black and white,” a curious metaphor reminiscent of his first experiences with The Savage Sword of Conan comic, and also a telling allusion to the nostalgic tradition Jim and other Conan fans have created over time. “Black and white” would seem to indicate a removal of complexities and a memory of a simpler time, both in writing and in life. Conan is “not complex” according to Jim, rather everything is spelled out in a very honest fashion, unlike the “soap-opera drama” of modern fantasy where characters’ loves, loyalties, and desires are more difficult to parcel out and understand. I should note that Jim does not fixate solely on gender differences when speaking nostalgically. I have heard him say on numerous occasions that, “The worst thing to happen to fiction is the trilogy,” arguing that the idea of writing a story across multiple volumes is a scheme to sell books to a captive audience which is ultimately detrimental to the quality of writing produced. Jim argues that modern authors dilute their stories with pages and pages of needless background and character development. “I don’t really care what Conan’s brother’s name is or if his parents were happy in their marriage,” Jim argues, unless it is important to the story. “I’ve read lots of deep, thought-provoking literature ... that’s not what I want out of Conan.” In this case, the nostalgia takes on a tone of economic criticism, curiously in lock-step with what Jim describes as the inadvertent message of many of Howard’s Conan works: that civilized society is corrupt and unjust, thus it harms beautiful and pure things for its own gain. “Ever since the publication of the Lord of the Rings, the trilogy is the norm.... And why? Because it’s a publishing trick. Why get a person to buy one book when you can get them to buy three? Three times the profit. But unfortunately it doesn’t mean three times the story.”

The Riddle of Masculinity To prove that fandom sees masculinity and the character of Conan the Barbarian as going hand-in-hand, one need only examine the discussion surrounding the reemergence of the character on film5 and the actor chosen to embody him. Since the announcement of his casting, actor Jason Momoa has been the focus of numerous online discussion threads wherein fans set about

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emasculating him. Common techniques for this include comparisons of recent images of Momoa and photos of Arnold Schwarzenegger from when the venerable actor/politician took on the role of Conan. I have noticed a tendency in posters opposed to Momoa’s casting to post photographs showing the younger actor as both lean and youthful, effectively feminizing him when compared to pictures of a young Schwarzenegger, then recently crowned with the body-building title “Mr. Universe,” in his Conan costume. Other attacks have centered on Momoa’s early years in the spotlight as a professional surfer. Though a professional athlete, like his predecessor, Momoa is once again feminized and made the target of jokes that focus on stereotypes of stupidity and non-aggression attributed to surfers. The clearest example of this was a fan suggesting that if the “war master” that trained Schwazenegger’s Conan in the original Conan the Barbarian asked Momoa the now-famous question, “What is best in life?” Momoa, as Conan, would respond, “To take away their boards, see them before you without a tan, and to hear the lamentation of their chicks dude.” It was also interesting to observe a mildly homophobic discussion of the fullness of the actor’s lips on The Official Robert E. Howard Forum. As forum members used graphic design programs to alter images of Momoa’s recent work on the television show Stargate: Atlantis into images more suited to Conan as rendered by Frank Frazetta; transforming his dreadlocks into straight, black hair and removing his beard. Artists were accused of alternatively feminizing or defeminizing Momoa based on how they drew his lips without a beard. Both comments on Momoa’s surfing past and concern over artists tampering with the masculinity, or lack thereof, of his images bring to mind the work of Mikita Brottman and her evaluation of Gershon Legman’s life and legacy (Brottman 2002, 46–47). One can see a fear of improper portrayal of Conan emerge through these discussions, suggesting that it would somehow reflect back onto lifelong fans should the figure symbolizing their idealized masculinity be used to create a phenomenon like the Twilight films: a supernatural drama centering on feminized men and marketed toward adolescent women. While such an idea is far-fetched, the digital undercurrent of fear and disappointment seems real enough. The feminization of Conan would turn a men’s space in popular culture into a women’s space, and thus retroactively feminize the predominantly male fandom. Jim actually expressed similar concerns with regard to the portrayal of Conan as hypermasculine, something he sees as a combination of Frazetta’s book-cover art and the casting of Schwarzenegger as the first on-screen embodiment of the character. He points to the fixation on the physical image

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of Conan as a deviation from Howard’s work: “Howard spoke through Conan, and some of the things [the character] said were things that [the author] believed. The testosterone-driven hyper-masculine man, that’s not what Howard was saying.”

The Doxa of Sword and Sorcery I would be remiss if I did not point out that it is very rare for the Conan fans with whom I am familiar to discuss masculinity directly. It is always a secondary topic, which actually fits the framing of dominant Western masculinity as doxa: a cultural element that, according to Pierre Bourdieu, “...goes without saying because it comes without saying,” (Bourdieu 1995, 163). Indeed, this tradition of a silent, dominating masculinity is why a folkloristic approach to the subject is so useful. For the fandom, it is clear that the elements of Conan media do exactly what Simon Bronner says all traditions men know and practice do: “They embody and express manliness and provide common fonts of symbols, images, and practices from which to derive and shape meaning. Even if not ‘performed,’ such traditions provide metaphors to think with, and sometimes to live by” (Bronner 2005, xii). Jim states rather emphatically that Conan is “escapist” literature. On the discussion threads of the Robert E. Howard forum there are only a handful of instances in which masculinity is foregrounded in the opening lines of a dialogue, and in these cases the writer is typically responding to a Conan reference in popular media. The typical response seems to defuse any outsider discussions of masculinity in Conan literature and films unless it is positive in nature. The most common response to outsider interest or criticism is that, the uninitiated groups or individuals have missed the point. For example, it was interesting to hear Jim lament the choice of Arnold Schwarzenegger as the first actor to take up the mantel of Conan. Jim argues that because of this choice, the audience that sees Conan as strictly an item of popular culture rather than an item of fandom comes away with the notion that the character is entirely about brute strength and has little in the way of mental alacrity, “He just sounds very stupid.” The Conan that Jim appreciates is a less hyper-masculine figure, his successes within the Hyborian setting are driven by his cunning, intelligence, and the honest and free way he lives his life. Jim envies Conan’s ability to “throw off the shackles of society,” and “walk toward the horizon,” until he finds something of interest. His frames himself in opposition to Conan by saying, “Let’s face it, most of us just inhabit our lives,” but Conan “really lives.”

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All the same, fans do not seem proud of the fact their favorite author wrote material that, as far as anyone with an understanding of modern politics can see, contains elements that are racist and sexist by current standards, but they accept this stigma with arguments that contextualize the fiction they love. “Howard was a product of his times,” remarks one veteran poster. Another mentioned that after growing up in a “small Texas town,” like Howard did, it is a wonder the author was not much more prejudiced. Participants in the Official Robert E. Howard Forum are very aware of what makes the subject of their fandom unpopular and “politically incorrect” and there is almost an audible groan from the forum’s regular posters every time the issue is brought up. Here we can see similarities between Conan fandom and the sense of stigma and persecution that Michael Jindra argues exists in the quasi-religion or “civil religion” of Star Trek fandom ( Jindra 1994, 47– 48). Conan fandom, as Conan fans understand it, is about concepts that supersede or overrule the inequalities present in Howard’s writing, and fans begrudgingly accept that outsiders will never understand this culture-specific truth. Howard’s masculinity is perhaps the one exception where fans might hold a belief about the author that is understood, by cultural outsiders and insiders, to be negative. The narrative I found came from a veteran of the forum interested in the rumor that the author was a virgin when he committed suicide at age thirty. A debate emerged on this thread over the ramifications of Howard’s virginity or lack thereof, with individuals taking sides as to whether or not Howard’s depictions of Conan’s sexuality were written by someone with or without sexual experiences of his own. “How a man interacts with women [,] tells something about the man,” remarked the fan who started the thread. Another felt that a shift in Howard’s later work indicated a more personal knowledge of sexual intimacy: ... the value of his work is not lessened (or increased) one way or another. However, as [Howard Philip’s Lovecraft] noted,6 Howard put himself into everything he wrote. Basically none of REH’s protagonists created in the ’20s had anything to do with women. That is, they didn’t really sexually interact with women. All of that changed in the ’30s. I would say Howard had his first sexual encounter between 1930 and 1932. The effect of that is obvious in his writings, [in my opinion]. Conan would be an entirely different character otherwise.

Contrarily, there are several examples on The Official Robert E. Howard website where fans defend the author from the suggestion he had homosexual inclinations. While these defenses are solid, in that they rely strongly on evidence from Howard’s prose and poetry, it is interesting to note the difference

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in tone between discussions of Howard’s virginity as opposed to his sexuality; the former is open to interpretation whereas the latter becomes an effort to rally around Howard and protect him from perceived harm. In discussing themes of masculinity I asked Jim if he had ever seen Conan display vulnerability and what that looked like to him. He pointed me to an image from the cover issue 100 of Marvel’s Conan the Barbarian as demonstrating how the character experienced grief and pain. The image shows the typical bare-chested Conan, holding his dead lover Bêlit and crying out. Jim’s thoughts on the relationship between Conan and Bêlit echo the thoughts of many Official Robert E. Howard Forum participants, saying Howard intended for Bêlit to be Conan’s only love and the only companion for which he expressed a deep and visible level of grief. At the same time though, Jim was quick to point out that Conan’s grief does not overwhelm the reader but, “serves the story.” Positive approaches to Conan’s masculinity are the only examples I am aware of where the subject takes center stage in the discussion. The single example I found of a forum discussion in which masculinity was the primary topic centered on a veteran poster calling himself “Konorg.” Konorg approached the forum seeking information on how he might impart the values of manhood Conan represents unto his young son. Through his writing he appeared genuinely concerned that the post-feminist Western world would “neuter” his son, leaving him weak-willed and submissive. He wanted to prevent this by making him into an “Alpha Male,” typified by Conan. Konorg’s efforts prompted arguments with other veteran posters. Some considered his intentions too close to “brainwashing” for their liking, others suggested efforts to teach a child to live by a pack mentality would only create a “power-hungry bully,” and other still made homophobic jokes like, “Don’t let him watch BrokeBack Mountain.” There were also those that were neutral or dismissive toward his efforts, saying it was, “hard to get children to do anything,” or that alpha maleness was determined by natural selection more than by upbringing. Finally, a handful of posters were in support of Konorg’s efforts, sharing his understanding that a society that empowered women and taught them to be “manly acting” was a frustrating environment in which to raise a boy. Over ninety-some posts by more than a dozen participants led the discussion in all sorts of directions. Konorg began to argue vehemently with a poster called TorceroQuijas, while others discussed the matter around them. Several curious anecdotes emerged: Here’s an example of what I think is the wrong way to go about this: I was having a tattoo done by one of the best [tattooists] in UK (who had better remain nameless for the purposes of this tale), when his small son (must have

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Others began to discuss physical altercations between children and adults: I remember a time when I was five that I met three boys who lived over on the next street, and were trying to pick on me. I came into the carport and my father asked me what I was looking for. “A stick,” I replied, explaining that I was going to need a stick in order to defeat three boys. He assured me that I could handle them without a stick and so I returned to them unarmed. When they all jumped me at once, I cried out that the fair play was one at a time, so they backed off. Coming at me one at a time, I was able to throw all three of them to the ground in quick succession. I returned to my dad in a great mood, and he was happy that I was able to best them without doing serious bodily harm [“korak,” a forum veteran].

At one point, a poster identifying as female entered the discussion, chiding the “guys” and telling arguing parties to, “play nice,” and that true “alpha males ... would not bother to joust with words on keyboards.” As this comment was directed at Konorg and the poster with which he was arguing, other participants took the opportunity to mock the way the discussion had transformed into aggressive posturing. Even Konorg’s principal detractor acknowledged he had crossed a line and violated the rules of forum — one of which forbids personal verbal attacks against any other member. Konorg did not recant or apologize however, he merely stated that he would drop the argument in order to avoid having the discussion thread blocked by forum moderators. What strikes me as interesting about this thread is that it speaks to the fragile nature of the dominant Western masculine tradition. A group of discussants, all but one identifying as men, came together and effectively emasculated Korong, revoking his capacity to discuss a subject because (A) he was being too personal and aggressive about the matter and (B) he was demonstrating an understanding of manliness that was contrary to the group. Just like so many other traditions, masculinities have a fluid construction that appears rigid and lasting to the tradition-bearers (Handler and Linnekin 1984, 276; Hobswan 1983, 4). The principal masculinity of the Conan forum’s veteran participants is very much like that described by Bourdieu in Masculine Domination, however there are subtle differences that speak to its fluidity. Most of the posters opposed Konorg’s notion that a man need not worry about raising his daughters in a society where popular culture is geared toward

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encouraging women to be strong and dominant and they opposed his idea that teaching his son to be aggressive and combative toward others would help him achieve success. At the same time however, there was a lack of definition of what being a man “is” or “looks like” that calls to mind Bourdieu’s “androcentric vision” wherein the dominant masculine tradition remains dominant because it eschews all manner of definition (Bourdieu 1998, 9). So while the aforementioned discussion between fans shows that there is an association between Conan fandom and masculinities, we must turn to more direct sources to determine if the Conan literature speaks to its fans on the subject of manliness. Fans discussing the nature of violence describe it as an animal impulse; fitting considering some of the animal images used by Howard to describe Conan. On the other hand there is the sense that Conan’s masculinity centers on honor and virtue. “Don’t stand for iniquity. Don’t stand for evil, duplicity,” these are the ideas that Jim ascribes to Conan-style manliness. Everywhere Conan went in the civilized world he would encounter people who would do anything to maintain and increase their personal wealth and power. Conan was so obviously uncivilized because he never broke his word and was always loyal to his friends. Even when he robbed people, the “crimes” he committed were against tyrants and cruel wizards. “We understand stealing a loaf of bread to feed your family,” says Jim, speaking as the reader, the same way, “Conan robbed people who robbed everyone else.” Jim refers to Conan as an “archetype,” a word that has certainly fallen out of fashion among scholars endeavoring to move away from the inequalities of the Freudian/Jungian theoretical framework. That said, Jim’s identification of Conan as a character all-together different from others in literature is apt. In terms of his masculinity, as fans see it, Conan appears to be the summation of several different ideas about manliness. It would seem that Howard hints at as much in “The Phoenix on the Sword,” saying that Conan was so many things all at once, “a thief, a reaver, a slayer, with gigantic melancholies and gigantic mirth.”

Beware the Wrath of Nostalgia Jim is not alone however in feeling an invasion of men’s gendered space when it comes to fantasy writing. I managed to locate a similar train of thought in an “off-topic” (i.e. not Howard or Conan-related) series of posts on the Official Robert E. Howard forums. This short discussion was related to the “caveman” sub-genre of fantasy literature. Here a poster mentioned that, while working at a local library, 75 percent of the authors of post 1980s

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fiction set in the pre-historic era were women. The forum veteran who started the post offered a similar preemptive apology to the one I heard from Jim, saying, “Thinking about the genre, I came to the realization that it is now dominated by female authors. Now, let me be clear: I’ve got nothing against female authors. But how did this happen?” As might be expected, a number of the responses were humorous in nature: one respondent suggested prehistoric fiction was now, “...a new sub-genre of steamy romance novels,” while another suggested it was a subconscious effort on the part of women because, “they want their cavemen back.” Again, we need only consult Mikita Brottman to understand the anxieties that lie behind such jokes. “The acceptance of denial under the guise of ‘humor’ not only makes regression possible, but hides the underlying censored impulse” (Brottman 2004, 151). Jim actually spelled out that censored impulse for me when he said, “As men, we’re in a strange land,” arguing the pressure to create a dual identity that is equal parts aggressive and sensitive, and to know exactly when each aspect of that identity applies to a given situation. He also related the matter back to Howard’s stories saying, “The world of Conan parallels the world we live in now, it isn’t any simpler.” This comparison between Conan Hyborian world and the modern world in which Western men find themselves is why the men who make up the majority of the Conan fandom identify Conan and Howards’ other works as a men’s space. The threat of feminization becomes all too clear in the words of a poster calling himself PainBrush.7 In responding to the “dominance” of women in the authorship of “caveman” fiction he suggested the need for some “controversial conversation,” on the forum. PainBrush stated that such a thread was the “perfect place” for women authors to start an argument and make use of terms like “misogynist” and “knuckle[-]dragger.” He was not pointing this out as a looming threat, but rather antagonizing any women who might be reading the discussion thread. Such aggression is likely aided by the context of the internet forum, which allows for a certain amount of aggressive rebellion,” and, “other transgressive practices” (Bronner 2009, 61). PainBrush went on to recount an online argument he had been party to in which author Barbara Tarbox, a contributor to the feminist sword and sorcery series Sword and Sorceress, created by Marion Zimmer Bradley,8 “showed up here [and] called me a knuckle[-]dragger just for pointing out how silly it was that she said she wouldn’t like to spend much quality time with Conan,” PainBrush continued his narrative account saying, “she declared she was going to single-handedly ‘feminize Sword [and] Sorcery’— or give it a long-needed ‘woman’s-touch.’” It was clear PainBrush felt this author had already established her views on the Conan fandom, and was not likely to be swayed,

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“[She] just looked at our avatars, yelled ‘knuckle[-]draggers’ [and] disappeared.”9 I endeavored to locate the exchange in an attempt to gain access to the whole story. The argument, which happened as part of a discussion thread titled “Women Readers and Conan,” took place almost three years prior to the prehistoric fiction discussion.10 It was clear that some of the almost 200 posts had been removed by either the posters or moderators. PainBrush even makes the statement that he is taking back and erasing some of what he said mid-argument. Fortunately, with enough participants quoting each other’s posts I was able to piece together that PainBrush and several other members found it upsetting that the pro-feminist author had written a review of the sword and sorcery genre, stating that if it did not improve its consumer statistics with women it would cease to exist. What was meant as a comment on the image of sword and sorcery being unfriendly to potential customers became a personal attack to these men, who proceeded to mock the author with such intensity (for example, taking her surname “Tarbox” and turning it into the grotesque and sexist epithet “Tar-Box”) that she actually made a brief appearance on the forum totaling six posts — only two of which remained after edits took place. The consensus of the aforementioned discussion thread was that plenty of men involved in Conan fandom at the digital level know of women who read, or have read, the stories and comics, but there are few regular participants in the forum who identify as women — around half a dozen by my reckoning — indicating a strong divide along gender lines between those who are “readers” and those who are “fans.” The social sphere of Conan fandom certainly has a capacity for hostility towards women. It is usually the case that one or more participants will attempt anti-feminist humor whenever the topic of Howard’s non-male readership is discussed. “The real question is, are there any women under [130 pounds] who read Conan?” (“Monstera,” forum participant) The only posters identifying as women who seem to actively participate are highly flirtatious and sexually aggressive in terms of their user names (e.g., “Buxom Sorceress”), avatar images, and/or writing — almost daring the predominantly male forum to engage them. Yet the responses they receive are mainly compliments related to whatever point they are discussing, the sexual banter is not returned in any public fashion.11 It is interesting to note how this behavior mirrors female characters in Howard’s Conan stories, Narkari, Thalis, or Bêlit in particular. These literary roles allow the women of the forum to fit themselves into the Conan framework and avoid offending the masculine space. Even when nonheteronormative sexuality is expressed, such as when “Avylon” said, “I’m a

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chick and I like Conan. I don’t really read romance novels UNLESS they revolve around warfare and savage men.... But all of this may be accounted for because I am a lesbian,” regular posters move in to incorporate the conversation back into the men’s space through humor, to wit PainBrush responded to the above, “I haven’t got it all figured out yet, but I’m a big Conan fan [and] I’m a big lesbian trapped in a man[’]s body...”

Conclusions The gendered nostalgia created by Conan fans is a phenomenon not unlike a “gilded cage.” Men are trapped by the rules and structures of their own masculinity, and though it may dominate the society in which they dwell they are always in a state of flight and frustration as women expand their influence. In the midst of this flight, appointed by the very masculinity these men are seeking to protect, angry protests emerge, but because the gendered constructions in question function as doxa, the anger is directed toward the only visible form of gendered identity available: women. Despite the doxic qualities to which it adheres, Conan media does appear to grant fans a certain amount of fluidity. Whereas other carnivalesque entertainments of Western popular culture, such as The Rocky Horror Picture Show, allow participants to strip away the binding qualities of masculinity (Stam 1989, 110–111), Conan is more monolithic; his “script is concrete and material,” (Thomas 2003, 173–174) both for young men discovering him for the first time and adults appreciating him as fans. However, his fandom allows participants to live those qualities of masculinity in a larger-than-life fashion. Conan has a dual nature: he is the animal and yet he is above the baser animal acts of humans. He hunts and kills but he will not lie and cheat. He is, at once, uncivilized and yet more civilized than any man claiming to be civilized. I see this very paradox as nostalgia, the liminal space where one can maintain two simultaneous identities at once while reimagining a golden age of literature unmarked by gender-based conflict. It appears that, for his fandom, Conan the Barbarian becomes a space where ideas that are contrary in the modern world exist comfortably side-byside. Men, confused about their place and their gendered behaviors, can have different nostalgic reactions simultaneously. When considering the pitfalls of modern masculinities, one man can say, “It was easier when being a man meant just being an animal, like Conan,” and another can say, “It was easier when being a man meant living by a strict code of honor, like Conan,” and both are correct, not because they share the same answer, but because they

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have identified the same challenge. “Nostalgia is an interpersonal form of conversational play, serving the purpose of bonding” (Wilson 19, 2005). When I brought this matter up with Jim, I was surprised to hear him agree with me, even after explaining that I could not avoid commenting on his idea that the writings of women have transformed modern fantasy into something it was not originally intended to be. He remarked instead that he associated his adult appreciation for Conan and his world with the Welsh word, “Hiraeth,”12 which he informed me had no direct English translation, and went on to say was, “a sense of longing or wishing for something that is no longer there.” It occurs to me that men who have brought their ideas about masculinity into the space of Conan fandom are aware of how fragile their nostalgia is as their favorite genre changes over time. Such men then are not living in the past, but living in the moment, just as the warrior, reaver, and conqueror they admire does.

Notes 1. In the interest of providing context, I feel it is important to let the reader know that, while I am familiar with Robert E. Howard’s Conan works due in large part to my interest in his contemporary, H.P. Lovecraft, I consider myself an outsider in terms of Conan fandom. Conan was not part of my formative years of fantasy reading, which took place in the 1990s and centered largely on Timothy Zahn, Anne McCaffrey, and the authoring duo of Margaret Weis and Tracy Hickman. I saw Dr. Prida’s book as an ideal opportunity to say something about an element of fantasy/science-fiction fandom, but in a manner that would limit my own biases as much as possible. 2. Senate Committee on the Judiciary, Comic Books and Juvenile Delinquency, Interim Report, 1955. 3. In fairness to my informant, he later amended his statement and blamed, in addition, the owners of the “Dungeons & Dragons” trademark: TSR Incorporated, and later, Wizards of the Coast for efforts to saturate the market with novels that were, “Too much like Tolkien, full of elves and dwarves.” In Jim’s mind, this made fantasy fiction too rigid a construction to successfully foster new and creative settings for stories. 4. It is worth noting that Janelle Wilson defines nostalgia as an identity building strategy of the leisure class (2005, 29). It is for this reason that I link a notion as important in creating one’s narrative of the world and the place of one’s self within it to the hobbies and entertainment activities Jim and other Conan fans pursued as adolescents and continue to pursue as adults. Jim remarked to me during one interview that the only difference between being an adult and a child for him is that, “Now I have my own money,” and he can consume as he chooses, “which is why I have a room with thousands of dollars worth of Conan statues.” 5. Referring here to the “reboot” of the Conan franchise on film by Millennium Films and Nu Image Films, released on August 19th, 2011. 6. Most of the frequent posters on the Official Robert E. Howard forums have an impressive grasp of the author’s work and background. They frequently refer to the correspondence between Howard and his contemporaries, such as H.P. Lovecraft, as well as his poetic works, which are not as widely known in popular culture as the Conan stories. I note this to indicate that the debate over Howard’s virginity was not pure speculation or assumptions based on the Conan texts. It was frequently based on Howard’s most personal collected writings.

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7. PainBrush is a specific example of what makes digital ethnography so useful to the practice of folklore and similar disciplines. Were I to base this study solely on interviews, I would not have access to this individual, as he died more than a year prior to the writing of this essay (Harron 2010, The Cimmerian.com). His more than 4300 posts, as well as his user profile, have been left on the Official Robert E. Howard Forum to act as a digital memorial. While there are examples of folklorists studying digital memorials (Dobler 2009), I find the fact that this individual’s multiple narratives are still accessible in their raw format a particularly unique scholarly opportunity for which I am grateful to both him and his contemporaries on and off-line. 8. Sword and Sorceress is an effort by feminist fantasy authors to add strong female protagonists to the body of sword and sorcery fantasy literature. 9. In this case PainBrush refers to the images one may use on the Official Robert E. Howard forum and others like it to identify one’s self along with a user name. PainBrush, for his part, uses a beaten and bloodied image of Conan’s face as his avatar. 10. One advantage to data collection using internet forums is that most sites allow for searches by topic over multiple years and will often allow one to search by member’s names as well. 11. Like many on-line spaces that encourage dialogue between fans of a particular topic, the Official Robert E. Howard Forum allows users to send private messages to one another. What takes place in this private space is another variable I am forced to accept by using this non-interrogative narrative-collection strategy. 12. Like many people whose families have lived in Newfoundland & Labrador for multiple generations, my principal informant maintains a sense of “Celtic-ness” as part of his personal identity (Abrahams 2003, 211). Specifically for Jim, and perhaps due to his appreciation for pulp fantasy literature, this means a private scholarly effort to familiarize himself with the non–English languages of Britain. I have also noted this same sense of “Celtic-ness” in the forum postings of some Conan fans, bringing me full-circle with my principal informant, back to the notion that Conan spoke to him as a “Newfoundlander” when he first read the comics in the 1970s.

Works Cited Abrahams, Roger D. “Identity.” Eight Words for the Study of Expressive Culture. Ed.Burt Feintuch. Urbana: University of Illinois, 2003. 198–222. Print. Bourdieu, Pierre. Masculine Domination. Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 1998. Print. _____. Outline of a Theory of Practice. Trans. Richard Nice. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1995. Print. Bronner, Simon J. “Digitizing and Virtualizing Folklore.” Folklore and the Internet Vernacular Expression in a Digital World. Ed. Trevor J. Blank. Logan, UT: Utah State University Press, 2009. 21–66. Print. _____. “Menfolk.” Manly Traditions: the Folk Roots of American Masculinities. Ed. Simon J. Bronner. Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 2005. 1–60. Print. Brottman, Mikita. Funny Peculiar: Gershon Legman and the Psychopatholog y of Humor. Hillsdale, NJ: Analytic, 2004. Print. _____. “Gershon Legman: Lord of the Lewd.” Sex and Humor: Selections from the KiInstitute. Ed. Catherine Johnson, Betsy Stirratt, and John Bancroft. Bloomington, IN: Indiana University Press, 2002. 42–52. Print. Butler, Judith. Gender Trouble: Feminism and the Subversion of Identity. New York: Routledge, 1990. Print. Dobler, Robert. “Ghosts in the Machine: Mourning the MySpace Dead.” Folklore and the Internet: Vernacular Expression in a Digital World. Ed. Trevor J. Blank. Logan, UT: Utah State University Press, 2009. 175–93. Print.

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Handler, Richard, and Jocelyn Linnekin. “Tradition, Genuine or Spurious.” Journal of American Folklore 97.385 (1984): 273–89. Print Harron, Al. “Dan ‘PainBrush’ Goudey Rocks His Way to Valhalla.” The Cimmerian. www. thecimmerian.com. January 5, 2010. Web. Hine, Christine. Virtual Ethnography. London: SAGE, 2000. Print. Hobshawm, E. J. “Introduction: Inventing Traditions.” Ed. E. J. Hobsbawm and T. O. Ranger. The Invention of Tradition. Cambridge, Cambridgeshire: Cambridge University Press, 1983. 1–14. Print. Ives, Edward Dawson. The Tape-recorded Interview: a Manual for Fieldworkers in Folklore and Oral History. Knoxville, Tenn.: University of Tennessee, 1997 [1974]. Print. Jindra, Michael. “Star Trek Fandom as a Religious Phenomenon.” Sociolog y of Religion 55.1 (1994): 27–51. Print. Jones, Michael Owen. Exploring Folk Art: Twenty Years of Thought on Craft, Work, and Aesthetics. Ann Arbor, MI: UMI Research, 1987. Print. Kimmel, Michael. “Masculinity as Homophobia: Fear, Shame, and Silence in the Construction of Gender Identity.” Ed. Harry Brod and Michael Kaufman. Theorizing Masculinities. Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage Publications, 1994. 119–41. Print. McPherson, Kathryn. “First-Wave/Second-Wave Feminism.” Encyclopedia of Feminist Theories. Ed. Lorraine Code. London: Routledge, 2000. 208–10. Print. Narvaez, Peter, and Martin Laba. “Introduction: The Folklore-Popular Culture Continuum.” Media Sense: the Folklore-popular Culture Continuum. Bowling Green, OH: Bowling Green State University Popular, 1986. 1–8. Print. Noyes, Dorothy. “Group.” Eight Words for the Study of Expressive Culture. Ed. Burt Feintuch. Urbana: University of Illinois, 2003. 7–41. Print. Pocius, Gerald L. “Art.” Eight Words for the Study of Expressive Culture. Ed. Burt Feintuch. Urbana: University of Illinois, 2003. 42–68. Print. Smith, Paul. “Contemporary Legends and Popular Culture: ‘It’s the Real Thing.’” Contemporary Legend 1 (1991): 123–152. Print. Stam, Robert. Subversive Pleasures: Bakhtin, Cultural Criticism, and Film. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1989. Print. Stenger, Josh. “The Clothes Make the Fan: Fashion and Online Fandom When “Buffy the Vampire Slayer’ Goes to eBay.” Cinema Journal 45.4 (2006): 26–44. Print. Thomas, Jeannie B. Naked Barbies, Warrior Joes, and Other Forms of Visible Gender. Urbana: University of Illinois, 2003. Print. Weems, Mickey. The Fierce Tribe: Masculine Identity and Performance in the Circuit. Logan, UT: Utah State University Press, 2008. Print. Wilson, Janelle L. Nostalgia: Sanctuary of Meaning. Lewisburg: Bucknell University Press, 2005. Print. Wall, Stephen E. “Agony and Ecstasy: the Relationship Between the History and Folklore of Male Autoeroticism.” Culture and Tradition 30/31 (2011):Forthcoming. Print. _____. “Revealing the Unperformed Folklore of American Masculinities Through Men’s Conflicts with American Neo-Pagan Constructions.” Rethinking the Sacred: Proceeding of the Ninth SIEF Conference in Derry 2008. Religionsvetenskapliga skifter 73 (2009): 89– 100. Print.

Source Material Bradley, Marion Zimmer. Sword and Sorceress. New York: DAW, 1998. Print. Chamber of Secrets —The Ultimate Harry Potter Community. Web. 23 June 2011. http://cosforums.com Conan the Barbarian. Dir. John Milius. Perf. Arnold Schwarzenegger, James Earl Jones, Max Von Sydow. Universal Pictures, 1982. DVD.

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Conan: the Barbarian. Dir. Marcus Nispel. Perf. Jason Momoa, Ron Pearlman, Rose McGowan. Lionsgate, Nu Image Films, and Millenium Films, 2011. Conan: the Destroyer. Dir. Richard Fleischer. Perf. Arnold Schwarzenegger, Grace Jones, Olivia D’Abo. Universal Pictures, 1984. DVD. “The End of ‘masculinity’ ... Conan the Surfer...— AGEOD Forums.” AGEOD Forums Powered by VBulletin. Web. 23 June 2011. http://www.ageodforum.com/showthread.php?t =16330. Naruto Forums — Powered by VBulletin. Web. 23 June 2011.http://narutoforums.com “Dragonlance Nexus: Online Community.” Dragonlance Nexus: Unofficial Dragonlance Lexicon, News, Fan Art, Gaming Rules, and Product Information. Web. 23 June 2011. http://d lnexus.com/community The Official Robert E. Howard Website. Web. 23 June 2011. http://conan.com Thomas, Roy, John Buscema, and Alfredo P. Alcala. Stan Lee Presents the Savage Sword of Conan. New York, NY: Marvel Comics Group, 1977. Print.

“Barbarian Heroing” and Its Parody New Perspectives on Masculinity IMOLA BULGOZDI “But I understood that these men had settled down and were immensely rich and powerful,” he said. “That’s what heroes want, isn’t it? To crush the thrones of the world beneath their sandalled feet, as the poet puts it?”— Terry Pratchett, The Last Hero

Any Conan the Barbarian comics fan would spot that Lord Vetinari misquoted the poet, more precisely the introduction to each Marvel Comics issue, which dates back to Robert E. Howard’s very first published Conan story “The Phoenix on the Sword” (1932): “Hither came Conan, the Cimmerian, black-haired, sullen-eyed, sword in hand, a thief, a reaver, a slayer, with gigantic melancholies and gigantic mirth, to tread the jeweled thrones of the Earth under his sandaled feet” (23). However, this first glimpse of Conan, attributed by Howard to the fictitious Nemedian Chronicles, was to be overwritten in popular fiction by the 1982 Hollywood hit, Conan the Barbarian, which, in turn, led to the 1986 debut of the Discworld character, Cohen the Barbarian in Terry Pratchett’s The Light Fantastic. Although originally conceived as a parody of the movie character, as indicated by Cohen’s first appearance among barbarian chieftains pondering “what is it that a man may call the greatest things in life” and answering toothlessly “Hot water, good dentishtry and shoft lavatory paper” (36–7), in Interesting Times (1994) and The Last Hero (2001) he becomes a far more complex figure, often displaying links with the original Conan of the short stories. Naturally, “a very old man, the skinny variety [...], with a totally bald head, a beard almost down to his knees, and a pair of matchstick legs on which varicose veins had traced the street map of quite a large city” wearing only a “studded leather holdall” and a pair of boots (Light Fantastic 75) is unquestionably comical, but “something seemed to have gone wrong with the ageing process there” explains Pratchett. “Cohen had always been a barbarian hero because barbaric heroing was all he knew how to do. And while he got old he seemed to get harder, like oak” (Interesting Times 70). Despite his 95 193

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years, he still is the Discworld’s greatest hero, invincible, seasoned and cunning, making one wonder what has happened to the iconic figure of the barbarian, created by Howard in a period when much of the pulp science fiction and what would be later called fantasy was “escapist literature written for and about males” (Bogert 88). In my view, Ghenghiz Cohen, albeit a parody of the type of masculinity embodied by Conan the Cimmerian, not only provides insight into the naturalization process of traditional male and female roles, constructed as gender oppositional, but also questions the seemingly obvious link between masculinity and the strong, well-built and muscled male body. As pointed out by Tim Edwards in Cultures of Masculinity, “male bodies are not necessarily very ‘masculine.’ One only has to think of the bodies of young boys, disabled men and elderly or frail men to realise that any such equation is not so simple” (123). With this in mind, I intend to explore Howard’s conception of barbarian masculinity which, despite the pre-historic setting, incorporates both mythical and modern traits, while analyzing how the figure of Cohen deconstructs this image at the end of the twentieth century.

Archetypal Figures: Hero, Warrior and King As pointed out by Stephen Wicks in Warriors and Wildmen: Men, Masculinity, and Gender, the longest-standing personification of manhood is most likely the pre-historic hunter, who was superseded by the warrior in societies no longer dependent on hunting. It is important to bear in mind, however, that the “warrior, foremost among male archetypes, is in many ways a variation of the hunter. He embodies almost all of the same qualities necessary for the successful hunter” (29), which manifests itself convincingly in the figure of Conan the Cimmerian, who not only excels at fighting various giant beasts, but also proves to be a superior woodsman in “Beyond the Black River” and in “The Black Stranger.” The state of Howard’s world in the Hyborian Age recalls the historical period of Ancient Greece and Rome in terms of technology, religion, or social hierarchy, when “battlefield valor was the pinnacle of manhood, often elevating men to godlike status” (30). Conan’s background, however, also links him to the Wildman who stands for man’s eternal bond with nature, a type of “unrefined masculinity.” Wicks also emphasizes the inherent goodness of this archetype and contrasts him with his “antithesis, the brutal Savage Man” (72), represented by Howard in abundance as various embodiments of the enemy. Despite the rather ample generation gap, Ghenghiz Cohen and Conan have quite a few common characteristics: we know that once the former was

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also “a great big chap, neck like a bull, got chest muscles like a sack of footballs [...], he’s the Disc’s greatest warrior, a legend in his own lifetime,” rephrased by Cohen: “I’m a lifetime in my own legend” (Light Fantastic 79). Their trademark loincloth and appetite for meat, beer, wine and women most likely comes with the job description, but the thing that makes Cohen stand out is his charisma, defined by Rincewind in The Last Hero as him being contagious: “like a mental illness, sir. Or magic. He’s as crazy as a stoat, but ... once they’ve been around him for a while, people start seeing the world the way he does. All big and simple. And they want to be part of it” (29). Without a similar personality, Conan the Cimmerian would not have been able to become a leader in virtually all the communities Fate brought him to: captain of the mercenaries in Khoraja, chieftain of the Afghuli hillmen, captain of the guard in Khauran, desert chief of the Zuagirs, pirate captain of the Red Brotherhood, general of the horsemen in Tombalku, chief of the black Bamulas, and most importantly, King of Aquilonia. It is in this last capacity we meet him in “The Phoenix on the Sword” and in Howard’s only completed novel The Hour of the Dragon. Since Cohen and his Silver Horde of six ancient heroes conquered the Agatean Empire as a generous retirement plan in Interesting Times, he also had to assume the responsibilities of governing a kingdom, which both barbarians find challenging: “these matters of statecraft weary me as all the fighting I have done never did” confesses the Cimmerian, who “had been laboriously scrawling on waxed papyrus” (Complete Chronicles 27) with a golden stylus. Emperor Cohen — one might hazard the assumption due to his age — is less adaptable: “It’s dull. Everyone creepin’ around bein’ respectful, no one to fight, and those soft beds give you backache. All that money, and nothin’ to spend it on ’cept toys. It sucks all the life right out of you, civilisation” (Last Hero 55). Robert Moore and Douglas Gillette’s study of ancient myths and modern dreams coupled with years of clinical practice of psychotherapy, resulted in the following definition of the Warrior archetype, which is embodied in both characters: The Warrior energy is concerned with skill, power, and accuracy, and with control, both inner and outer, psychological and physical. [...] The Warrior never spends more energy than he absolutely has to. And he doesn’t talk too much. [...] This means that he has an unconquerable spirit, that he has great courage, that he is fearless, that he takes responsibility for his actions, and that he has self-discipline. Discipline means that he has the rigor to develop control and mastery over his mind and over his body, and that he has the capacity to withstand pain, both psychological and physical. He is willing to suffer to achieve what he wants to achieve [King, Warrior, Magician, Lover 83].

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Cohen, however, seems to be a far less versatile character. In a changing world of laws, fences and farms around the Ramtops, the Discworld barbarian country, and people complaining when a dragon is killed, he tries his luck on the faraway Counterweight Continent but flexibility is not his strongest point. While we see Conan the Cimmerian wearing the garb of various countries with natural elegance, Cohen and his gang are unwilling to put civilized clothes on as a disguise because “without our leather and mail people’ll just think we’re a load of old men” (Interesting Times 170) plus loincloths are leather and “don’t rot for years” (147) anyway. Their overall frame of mind could be described as conventional, be it warfare: “everyone charging all at once, waving their swords and shouting” (318); city behavior: “pillage, ravish, loot, set fire to the damn place on your way out” (130), or architecture: the exquisitely decorated imperial throne hall is considered gaudy, typically foreign and “not a patch on our chieftain’s longhouse back in Skund. It hasn’t even got a fire in the middle of the floor” (222). King Conan seems a sophisticated person in comparison, and yet, he is described as a stereotypical barbarian in the very first story: “you laugh greatly, drink deep and bellow good songs” (Complete Chronicles 29) as opposed to his gloomy, straightfaced and abstinent Cimmerian countrymen. Both are, however, men of principle, Conan bound by “the code of his people, which was barbaric and bloody; but at least upheld its own peculiar standards of honor” (Complete Chronicles 816). Cohen, more specifically, lives by the Code: “you followed the Code, and you became part of the Code for those who followed you. The Code was it. Without the Code, you weren’t a hero. You were just a thug in a loincloth” (Last Hero 159). In “The Scarlet Citadel” Howard describes Conan as a “red-handed plunderer,” who had seized the kingdom of Aquilonia for personal gain, and yet he refuses to “sell his subjects to the butcher” (55) to buy his own freedom. Similarly, Cohen is outraged when Lord Hong — in the tradition of Eastern tactical warfare — uses his soldiers as ‘scum’ “to be slaughtered by the other side! While the king just hangs around at the back” (Interesting Times 317). Howard puts down Conan’s behavior to “the instinct of sovereign responsibility” (Complete Chronicles 55), I, however, believe in both cases it also stems from the barbarians’ respect for the chieftain who got his position based on merits, as well as their aversion to tyrants, along with their perpetual willingness to risk their own lives to save others. The Discworld definition of “heroic deeds”—“fighting monsters, defeating tyrants, stealing rare treasures, rescuing maidens” (Last Hero 20)— very well describes Conan’s adventures, as well, linking these figures to Moore and Gillette’s archetype of the Hero, which raises questions about the type of masculinity they stand for:

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It is generally assumed that the heroic approach to life, or to a task, is the noblest, but this is only partly true. The Hero is, in fact, only an advanced form of Boy psychology — the most advanced form, the peak, actually of the masculine energies of the boy, the archetype that characterizes the best in the adolescent stage of development. Yet it is immature, and when it is carried over into adulthood as the governing archetype, it blocks men from full maturity [37].

Could it be that these barbarians are no more than overgrown boys at play unable to settle down? This would not only put their achievements in a different light, but also explain much of the escapist nature of Howard’s writing. What partly saves them from these charges, on the one hand, is their inborn, absolutely unconscious attitude of the barbarian to heroism, due to which they manage to avoid the Hero’s overdone dramatic actions meant to impress others as well as himself, considered typical of this archetype by Moore and Gillette. On the other hand, their ability to forge transpersonal commitment in spite of being highly individualistic is a characteristic of the Warrior, whose loyalty to “a cause, a god, a people, a task, a nation” (84) is evident in many of Conan’s deeds and Cohen’s insistence on the Code, as an ideal way of life. Although they both end up sovereigns of powerful countries, they differ in their willingness to take up the role of the King, the most important mature archetype in Moore and Gillette’s view. According to Howard, “Conan was about forty when he seized the crown of Aquilonia, and was about forty-four or forty-five at the time of The Hour of the Dragon” (qtd. in Jones 909), which means he has reigned for about five years and as a result “no Aquilonian noble dares maltreat the humblest of my subjects, and the taxes of the people are lighter than anywhere else in the world” (Complete Chronicles 50). After the conquest of the Agatean Empire, Cohen’s first order is to do away with kowtowing, then frees the prisoners and has torturers beheaded, and gives a free pig to every peasant in his attempt to redress social injustice. He makes the world’s most naïve and well-meaning person, Twoflower, his Grand Vizier the same day and the next thing we know, in The Last Hero, the Silver Horde has set out to return fire to the gods in their attempt to die as heroes should: in battle. Dethroned Conan, though tempted by “the wild, mad, glorious days of old before his feet were set on the imperial path when he was a wandering mercenary, roistering, brawling, guzzling, adventuring” (658) and the possibility of carving out “another kingdom for himself ” to “rise above the ruins of nations as a supreme conqueror” (659), devotes himself to regaining Aquilonia in The Hour of the Dragon, which quest takes around a year’s time. The fact that afterwards he is planning to make Zenobia his queen and start a dynasty shows that

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Conan does take this responsibility seriously, as opposed to Cohen, who cannot escape the habit of a lifetime of heroing.

Masculinity —“tigerish, elemental, untamed”? Howard molded Conan the Barbarian with the undisguised purpose of creating a figure unequalled in its combination of strength, stamina, skill in battle, and charismatic personality, on the one hand, following the fundamental concepts of classical masculinity and on the other hand, adding the American myth of the self-made man. The latter not only implies the traditional view of male superiority and female inferiority, but also leads to casting Conan either in the most powerful position or as successfully working his way up there. He is the embodiment of what sociologist Robert Connell defined as ‘hegemonic masculinity,’ which is obviously “not a fixed character type, always and everywhere the same” (qtd. in Campbell & Bell) but position is significant: there are different kinds of masculine character within society that stand in complex relations of dominance over and subordination to each other. What in earlier views of the problem passed for the ‘male sex role’ is best seen as hegemonic masculinity, the culturally idealized form of masculine character (in a given historical setting), which may not be the usual form of masculinity at all [Connell 69].

The negative connotations attached to barbarians in Antiquity was reinforced in Europe in the 10th and 13th centuries by Hungarian and Mongolian raids respectively, and therefore, barbarian warriors could be hardly regarded as a usual manifestation of masculinity in the 1930s. However, the scene was set for Conan by the immense popularity of both Edgar Rice Burroughs’s novel, Tarzan of the Apes (1912) and the film that followed in 1917. As pointed out by Maurizia Boscagli in Eye on the Flesh: Fashions of Masculinity in the Early Twentieth Century, “the wildness of the Nietzschean ‘beast of prey,’ with its attributes of manliness and self-control, becomes irrevocably juxtaposed with the gratuitous and aestheticized exhibition of a perfect body” (94). Conan displays similar characteristics as Tarzan, whose identity is ambiguously both human and animal, and it is important to notice that Burroughs relies on the larger-than-life qualities of the Nietzschean superman — which distinguish him from the rabble — to distinguish Tarzan from the beast (122). Yet, Tarzan, Lord Greystoke, was definitely not a “barbarian,” since the contemporary discourse reserved the term for the modern masses: “The idea of the average person’s ‘barbarism’ tapped the discursive repertory developed by colonial

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ideology [...], accompanied by the anthropometric and ethnographic knowledge needed to define racial and cultural difference as inferiority” (173). The fact that Conan was regarded as outlandish wherever he went besides his homeland, along with the frequent reminders of his foreign accent, appearance and behavior, which do not comply with the custom of the place, definitely relegates him to an inferior position. Howard, however, puts the discourse of the superman to good use: animal and noble at the same time, the superman claims to belong to an aristocracy of race, therefore Conan inspires respect, admiration and loyalty due to his courage and elemental, pure force. The author defines his masculinity not only as the opposite of femininity, but also in contrast with different types of villains: evil priests and sorcerers, immoral and/or tyrannical leaders, and cruel tribesmen for the most part. Howard successfully turned the figure of the barbarian warrior into a positive entity by providing a masculine body and personality which could become a symbol of masculinity for disoriented men in the industrialized world of the 1930s. Connell states that the basis for different varieties of masculinity is the structure of gender relations in a given society, and the strong cultural opposition between masculine and feminine in patriarchal gender orders leads to the assimilation of subordinate masculinities to femininity (31). However, Conan’s wandering lifestyle mostly prevents Howard from working within this framework, and thus, he resorted to the well-known dichotomy of barbarism and civilization to define masculinity: the civilized people of the Hyborean age are often decadent and no match for the Cimmerian. Civilization — as defined in the traditional Eurocentric view typical of Howard’s time — provides the social setting for different types of villains: priests and sorcerers who abuse knowledge and tyrants who abuse power. Picts and other tribesmen are often depicted as unnecessarily cruel, treacherous and are treated as inferiors in ways strongly reminiscent of the Colonial period. As Connell points out, subordinate masculinities are produced at the same time as hegemonic masculinity — take the position of eunuchs in both Howard and Pratchett — while in exploited or oppressed groups, for instance, in the case of slaves, masculinity may share many features with hegemonic masculinity but these gender forms are socially de-authorized (30–31). Conan, however, comes from such a remote area that civilized norms do not affect him: barbarian masculinity is forged in a fair fight with the elements, various beasts and the enemy, and the outcome is presented by Howard as the authentic masculinity. The figure of Ghenghiz Cohen clearly disrupts this idealistic picture of manhood, even if we take into consideration that “men have been described

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as ‘in their prime’ between the ages of 45 and 60, dominant in every sphere of society: academia, business, politics and religion, for example (Thompson 1994), and for a small minority, this power is little diminished even in very old age” (Arber et al. 5). Cohen and the Silver Horde do not rely on power deriving from civilized social or institutional hierarchies in their old age, they still play the “survival of the fittest” game although the world has changed. While ancient heroes suffering from piles, tendonitis, incontinence, dementia or in need of a wheelchair are definitely a parody of Conan the Cimmerian, they also poke fun at the exaggerated concern for male fitness and youth in consumer culture. Pratchett is not reticent about physical aging or bodily functions, which in Howard’s world simply do not exist. Through portraying people who could be categorized as “oldest old” with the exception of Boy Willie — not yet 80— he also addresses the problem of the maintenance of masculinity and autonomy, which affects a growing proportion of the world’s population. As Edwards points out, “bodies, male and female, are stratified according to a host of factors including age, weight, height, colour and size, into a kind of pecking order through which ‘people are privileged by the degree to which they approximate cultural ideals’ (Gerschick, 2004:372)” (135). Needless to say, as for appearance, Cohen the Barbarian is far indeed from cultural ideals, but his spirit, deeds and legend continue to lend him high prestige, even if he falls over trying to carry the rescued maiden due to his arthritis, and ends up slung over her shoulder. Notwithstanding the abundance of parodistic elements in The Light Fantastic, “Rincewind was aware of some sort of chemistry bubbling away” (108) between Cohen, eighty-seven at the time, and Bethan, aged seventeen, who get married in the end. Pratchett here seems to explore this aspect of the character mostly for the sake of parody, which — as mentioned earlier, is toned down in Cohen’s subsequent adventures — but women are still attracted to him. In “Theorizing Age with Gender: Bly’s Boys, Feminism, and Maturity Masculinity,” Judith K. Gardiner states that “older men with power, wealth, or a modicum of physical fitness remain accepted as sexual subjects who are also sexually desirable in a way that older women are not” (98). Thus, it is not surprising that in Interesting Times Cohen is taken prisoner because he was “too busy to fight” and “didn’t want to upset the young lady. Couldn’t help meself. Went down to a village to pick up some news, one thing led to another [...]” (76) and even sophisticated Lady Jade Night of the Imperial Court is “rather attracted to Cohen’s smell of unwashed lion” (241). Conan the Cimmerian’s build and smoldering blue eyes definitely play a role in making women swoon, but in practice, ancient Cohen is able to perform all the heroic deeds without the strongly muscled body. What

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started out as parody, turned into a deconstruction of the myth associated with the powerful male body: what is left, is “Cohen, a sort of basic natural force on legs” and his charisma, which “overpowered even his normal smell of a goat that had just eaten curried asparagus” (202–3). Pratchett also operates with a different dichotomy in his definition of Cohen’s masculinity: the presence of the arch-coward wizard Rincewind introduces the perspective of everyday people who would rather lie low than fight. Nevertheless, he ends up being chased through all sorts of adventures and saving the world accidentally a couple of times. Rincewind’s doubts, his attempts to wriggle out of it and save his skin at almost any cost are contrasted with a hero’s view of the same mortal danger, for instance, while preparing for the defense of the capital city Hunghung: “‘where’d we get another chance like this? Six [ancient men] against five armies! That’s bl–that’s fantastic! We’re not talking legends here. I reckon we’ve got a good crack at some mythology as well’“ (Interesting Times 273). Unlike Howard, who created rather onedimensional villains, typical of early science fiction and fantasy, Pratchett uses humor and parody to make even the bad guys more entertaining. Yet, it is not against the villains that Cohen stands out; a hero with 80 years of experience in the business deals with them quite matter-of-factly. If it is not muscle, it must be his attitude that makes him heroic, and that becomes conspicuous if contrasted with that of Rincewind, the most unlikely hero of all. Although the barbarian masculinity that Conan and Cohen represent does not really lend itself to analysis within the framework of structured gender relations within society, their relationship with women is pertinent to the question. In “From Barsoom to Giffard: Sexual Comedy in Science Fiction and Fantasy,” Judith Bogert comes to the conclusion that the pulp fiction of the 1930s either ignores women or treats them as props. Their function is to adore the hero and, periodically, to fall into the hands of villains so that the hero can have something heroic to do. Quite often, female dialogue consists mainly of screams from the sidelines. Human relationships are drawn in broad strokes. [...] The hero’s love interest, if one exists, is an idealized version of femininity, a womanly woman [88].

Undeniably, there are plenty of womanly women in Howard’s stories, or rather there is no other kind that would get a slightly significant role. Conan is “no more monogamous in his nature than the average soldier of fortune, but there was an innate decency about him” (Complete Chronicles 149) as we find out from “The Slithering Shadow.” He does appreciate female beauty and spirit, but there is no indication of him ever falling in love, which is not synonymous with passion and desire. In this he conforms to Moore and Gillette’s Warrior

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archetype, who “in his pure form is emotionally detached; [...]. This is apparent in the Warrior’s attitude toward sex. Women, for the warrior, are not for relating to, for being intimate with. They are for fun. [...] It also explains the horrific tradition of the raping of conquered women” (87–88). Conan does claim “I never forced a woman against her consent” (Complete Chronicles 854), yet the short story entitled “The Frost-Giant’s Daughter” does not stop short of assault and attempted rape: His sword fell into the snow as he crushed her to him. Her lithe body bent backward as she fought with desperate frenzy in his iron arms. [...] the feel of her slender body twisting in his mailed arms drove him to blinder madness. His strong fingers sank deep into her smooth flesh; [...] She writhed her golden head aside, striving to avoid the fierce kisses that bruised her red lips [822–23].

With the exception of this story, however, there is no need for Conan to use force, as he seems to sound “the hidden primitive chord that lurks in every woman’s soul” (113), and he keeps very exclusive company, indeed: Princess Yasmela, the daughter of the Duke of Kordava, Olivia, daughter of the King of Ophir, Bêlit, descendant of the kings of Ashkalon, Octavia, daughter of a Nemedian lord, Yasmina, Devi of Vendhya, and Nafertari, mistress of the satrap of Zamboula all feel attracted to the Cimmerian. Some are not able to disregard their position, while others give in to passion, when won by “fire and steel and blood” (133). Women in Howard’s stories are very much confined by their social rank or lack of it, having been abducted or sold as slaves, and usually their “worst oppressor had been a man the world called civilized” (220). The Cimmerian admires strength, independence, poise in a woman, but once he rescued and desired her, he feels “drunk with his possession of this splendid creature” who “belong[s] to me now” (287, italics mine), unless claimed by a stronger force, such as a sovereign’s duty. In a world where women are considered the spoils of war, are bought and sold, and seraglios are markers of social standing and masculinity, Conan’s treatment of his companions, even if not of noble blood, is far more humane: his concubines “are unused to brutality” (68), he values the life of a slave girl higher than immense treasure in “Jewels of Ghwalur,” and when a woman needs help, he is as generous with his last drop of water in the desert as with rubies worth a fortune in “The Black Stranger.” In the Hyborian Age women are definitely not men’s equals, in “The Vale of Lost Women” Livia is “stunned by the realization that nothing hinged upon her at all. She could not move men as pawns in a game; she herself was the helpless pawn” (854), and the two female characters who strive for independence can only achieve it as outlaws: they are both pirates.

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In the short story entitled “Queen of the Black Coast,” we find Conan spared by Bêlit, “the wildest she-devil unhanged” (240), because “with the unerring instinct of the elemental feminine, she knew she had found her lover” (243). Howard creates a romantic atmosphere with the inclusion of fragments he calls “The Song of Bêlit” and seemingly the two share a mutual complementary relationship: “hers was the mind that directed their raids, his the arm that carried out her ideas” (245). Yet, Bêlit’s passionate outbursts professing her love are in stark contrast with the barbarian’s silence on the subject, just like the claim she “held my heart inviolate/To lavish on one man my hot desire” (236) and his past: “he had held too many women, civilized or barbaric, [...], not to recognize the light that burned in the eyes of this one” (242). Conan was chosen by a proud pantherish “queen by fire and steel and slaughter” (243) to be her king and decides to join the pirates because the free life with a beautiful tiger-cat appeals to his barbaric soul. The fact that Bêlit strips naked, tears off her ornaments and performs her matingdance on the blood-stained deck, then throws herself at Conan’s feet, clearly shows that she gives herself to this man and by giving herself she also takes a subordinate position. Despite her successful command of a pirate ship and a crew of black giants, Howard allows Bêlit no equality with Conan; she experiences their lovemaking as well in terms of subordination: “you have held and crushed and conquered me” (247). We know far less of Cohen’s amorous conquests, but he too appreciates different kinds of beauties: as a young man he “liked my women red-haired and fiery,” then as he got older he preferred women “with blonde hair and the glint of the world in her eye,” then he grew a little older again and fancied “dark women of a sultry nature,” and in The Light Fantastic he is at the stage of looking for patience in a woman (108). It also turns out he was married four times, and he is certain of having many kids, though he has not seen most of them, “you know how it is. But they had fine strong mothers” (The Last Hero 120), whom he probably met briefly but to much satisfaction of both parties, as can be fathomed: “Not rape, I believe,” said Mr. Betteridge [...]. “Not in the case of Cohen the Barbarian. Ravishing, possibly.” “There is a difference?” “It’s more a matter of approach, I understand,” said the historian. “I don’t believe there were ever any actual complaints” [20].

Unlike Howard’s stories, Pratchett’s world does not naturalize women’s subordination, and they are given far more varied roles in Discworld novels in general. Howard’s female characters conform to clichés and are often stereotyped: they are either young and pretty noblewomen or slaves, and in some

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cases a combination of both. Occasionally a beautiful evil witch gives a twist to the plot, in a few stories a servant girl has a couple of lines, and the only old woman mentioned is a good witch who helps Conan gain back his kingdom. In “Red Nails” we meet “Valeria of the Red Brotherhood, whose deeds are celebrated in song and ballad wherever seafarers gather” (506), Howard’s most exciting female character in the Conan stories, who does not conform to gender norms on several points. The author does not fail to point this out in her description, emphasizing the incongruous presence of a female body in circumstances reserved for men: She was tall, full-bosomed and large-limbed, with compact shoulders. Her whole figure reflected an unusual strength, without detracting from the femininity of her appearance. She was all woman, in spite of her bearing and her garments. [...] Instead of a skirt she wore short, wide-legged silk breeches, [...]. On one shapely hip she wore a straight double-edged sword, and on the other a long dirk. Her unruly golden hair, cut square at her shoulders, was confined by a band of crimson satin [505, italics mine].

Conan’s description, besides his stature, tan and rippling muscles, includes his weapons but is far less specific as to the particulars of the male body: “Broadsword and poniard hung from this belt” (508). “On one shapely haunch he wore a broadsword, and on the other a poniard” would be the exact counterpart of the sentence referring to Valeria, but the effect would not be the same: she is subject to the male gaze, which sizes her up, while Conan’s masculinity is constructed out of strength, glare and weapons. It is Valeria’s female body that gets her into trouble: it is virtually impossible for a young, pretty woman to stay single and independent among pirates or in any other all-male group, no wonder she even has to resort to killing in self-defense. “‘Why won’t men let me live a man’s life?’“ (509) she asks, impressing the reader as a proto-feminist, but as the story unravels, she finds herself in extraordinary circumstances gradually subdued by fear, a new sensation that makes her sit tamely on Conan’s knee. “She had always resented any man’s attempting to shield or protect her because of her sex” (522) but her cruelty to other women that Howard calls “the cynical ingenuity which only a woman displays towards a woman” (548) makes it clear that she is an individualist and does not care about the plight of women in general. Although by virtue of her courage, physical strength and “finesse of swordplay” (553) she has hitherto avoided the patriarchal constraints, this adventure teaches Valeria what fear of a man is, and feels ultimately humiliated by the witch Tascela, who can handle her like a child. By stating that “Valeria had always been inclined to despise the other members of her sex” (564), Howard brings into play the stereotype of squabbling women, and in the last fight has her

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kill the witch “for my own self-respect” (573). Valeria has learned a lesson: in spite of being able to fight like a man she cannot escape traditional gender assumptions and she is punished with both physical and mental humiliation. All in all, women in Howard’s works live in a man’s world, they have to conform to men’s standards, and those who question them or display more strength, independence or power than customary are punished. The presence of female characters enhance Conan’s masculinity, and their physical appearance clearly illustrates the stratification of bodies depending on various factors as age, weight, height, color and size, resulting in a hierarchy in which “people are privileged by the degree to which they approximate cultural ideals” (Gerschick qtd. in Edwards 135). Even Valeria, the most independent woman of the Conan stories finally accepts him as her mate, having decided he “was no common man.” Interestingly, it is not Conan’s strength, elemental masculinity or her gratitude that make her change her mind as it happens in other short stories: what she really appreciates is the fact that “he had not taken advantage of her fright and the weakness resulting from it” (Complete Chronicles 522). In other words, he was able to respect her as another human being, since Conan, the pinnacle of manhood does not feel threatened by a woman, however strong, fierce or independent she may be. Pratchett’s women, on the other hand, question patriarchal restrictions with far more insight than Valeria. In The Light Fantastic swordswoman Herrena the Henna-Haired Harridan has to face similar drawbacks “not the least of which was that men didn’t take you seriously until you’d actually killed them,” which naturally derives from the position of women, also reflected in her choice of career: “she was too big to be a thief, too honest to be an assassin, too intelligent to be a wife, and too proud to enter the only other female profession generally available” (121). Definitely a jab at the Marvel Comics character Red Sonja — loosely based on Howard’s Red Sonya of Rogatino (“The Shadow of the Vulture” 1934)— whose chain-mail bikini and thighboots are written off by Pratchett as “rather silly, because any woman setting out to make a living by the sword isn’t about to go around looking like something off the cover of the more advanced kind of lingerie catalogue for the specialised buyer” (89). Herrena is a professional, dressed sensibly and not presented as prey to the male gaze. This perspective is also true for another Discworld barbarian swordswoman who is spared objectification due to her age. In The Last Hero Mrs. McGary, formerly Vena the Raven-Haired, now grey-headed, widowed and quite bored since one of her grandchildren has taken over the inn, dons her armor, which — as drawn by Paul Kidby (Last Hero 40)—resembles a lot that of Xena Warrior Princess. As suggested by her rhyming name, it is likely

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that Pratchett has not stopped parodizing sword-and-sorcery characters, and blends the characteristics of a swordswoman with those of a grandmother: Vena is a great cook but lethal with knitting needles and her embroidery says “EAT COLD STEEL PIGDOG” (81) surrounded by little flowers. She bumps into Cohen and the Silver Horde, who treat her with respect and never question her prowess as a heroine: she can definitely look after herself, and she is a valued member of the team during their last adventure. In the last scene, Vena helps the ancient heroes escape Death but has to decline their invitation to ride out into the stars and find another world: “‘You know how it is,’ she said sadly. ‘Great-grandchildren on the way and everything...’” (161). Although the Discworld offers a far greater variety of roles — Pretty Butterfly and Lotus Blossom are leaders of the revolution in the Agatean Empire, female werewolf Angua and dwarf girl Cheery Littlebottom serve in the Ankh Morpork Watch, Lady Sybil Ramkin is the authority on swamp dragons, and in Monstrous Regiment a whole group of girls join the army dressed as boys, just to mention a few — Pratchett’s female characters are often depicted in the process of pushing back patriarchal boundaries and attempting to solve problems specifically caused by their gender. While Howard’s characters are ultimately chastised for trying to live a man’s life, Pratchett’s women often manage to prove their point and secure equal rights, which do not threaten the type of masculinity represented by Cohen — it is the right attitude that makes one heroic, be it male or female.

Civilization Through Barbarian Eyes “The God in the Bowl” and “The Queen of the Black Coast” feature a young, less seasoned Conan, who is “slightly bewildered [...] when confronted by the evidence of civilized networks and systems, the workings of which are so baffling and mysterious” (736) to barbarians. Howard also describes him as “naive as a child in many ways, unfamiliar with the sophistry of civilization” (239), which enables the Cimmerian to give impartial judgment on various customs, often pointing out the relativity of the terms “civilized” and “barbarian.” Although he acquires both cunning and wisdom through experience, Conan’s respect for human life and the freedom of the individual is not lost: in various stories he condemns human sacrifice, is surprised and appalled that civilized people sell their own children as slaves, and as a king believes in religious tolerance. The barbarian way of life is presented as less complex but more humane in certain ways, especially regarding the bare necessities of life. In “The Black Stranger,” Conan speaks with disgust of civilized countries

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where he has seen “men fall and die of hunger against the walls of shops and storehouses crammed with food” (816), while in Cimmeria people only starve if there is no food to be found in the land at all. In Interesting Times, Pratchett also formulates a straightforward barbarian ethic in Cohen’s tirade: Barbarism? Haha! When we kills people we do it there and then, lookin’ ’em in the eye, and we’d be happy to buy ’em a drink in the next world, no harm done. I never knew a barbarian who cut up people slowly in little rooms, or tortured women to make ’em look pretty [bound feet], or put poison in people’s grub. Civilization? If that’s civilization, you can shove it where the sun don’t shine! [253].

A recurring motif is Cohen’s insightful if somewhat idiosyncratic analysis of the operation of the Agatean Empire based on customs of meat consumption, or rather the lack of it: “There’s men here who can push a wheelbarrow for thirty miles on a bowl of millet with a bit of scum in it. [...] It tells me someone’s porking all the beef ” (94). Although he and his Horde blatantly lack subtlety — which Pratchett exploits to the utmost with hilarious effects — it is exactly Cohen’s literal frame of mind that lets him perceive some basic truths about the Empire, such as the real function of the twenty-foot wall encircling the whole country: it is to keep people in since it obviously cannot keep barbarian invaders out. Despite the fact that he is a keen observer and a cunning leader, Pratchett has him carry on the basic stereotype: “Abstract thinking is not a major aspect of the barbarian mental process” (322) says Cohen, while the wording suggests its exact opposite. Although Conan and Cohen seem to agree on some very basic points regarding barbarian identity as opposed to being “civilized,” their attitude is very much shaped by the cultural ideology of the time of writing. Howard’s stories heavily rely on racial diversity for a sense of the exotic, populating Conan’s world with cultures definitely inspired by real-life counterparts. This is not surprising given the taste for the exotic, which went hand in hand with “the widespread sense in the 1920s within philosophy and the arts of the dissolution of a single universal order. The realization that other cultures and peoples saw the world in different and incommensurable ways was coupled with a fascination with the strange, the exotic, and the primitive,” explains Yu in Thinking Orientals: Migration, Contact, and Exoticism in Modern America. Exotic knowledge became a fetish for elite white men and women to be collected and objectified, since it represented the adventure of the exotic, and resulted in various objects and people being “embraced for their supposed primitive or traditional qualities, and often valued as being relics outside of modernity” (88). While this trend has certainly influenced the modern con-

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ception of the world and its people in general, it definitely did not have an effect on race relations in the Jim Crow South, Howard’s birthplace and lifelong home. In spite of the fact that Conan traveled widely and was in general accepting of other people’s way of life and customs unless cruel or inhuman, his attitude to black people betrays views that were in line with contemporary Southern mentality. In “Shadows in Zamboula” black cannibals prey on citizens and foreigners, not surprisingly described in terms of the racist discourse of the time: Conan sees a monster approaching with a “shambling gait; and a familiar scent assailed the Cimmerian’s nostrils” (483), Zabibi’s abductors were “black men, like great, hulking apes” (486), “the blacks shuffled past, bare splay feet scuffing up the dust” and their voices are “gutturals.” Conan asks “Why don’t the citizens clean out these black dogs?” (487, italics mine). In “Red Nails” Conan complains that “The pay was poor and the wine was sour, and I don’t like black women. And that’s the only kind that came to our camp at Sukhmet — rings in their noses and their teeth filed — bah!” (510). “The Vale of Lost Women” very explicitly makes use of the stereotypical antithesis of the promiscuous black and the virginal white woman: [...] a black woman entered — a lithe pantherish creature, whose supple body gleamed like polished ebony, adorned only by a wisp of silk twisted about her strutting loins. The white of her eyeballs reflected the firelight outside, as she rolled them with wicked meaning. [...] The young black woman laughed evilly, with a flash of dark eyes and white teeth, and with a hiss of spiteful obscenity and a mocking caress that was more gross than her language, she turned and swaggered out of the hut, expressing more taunting insolence with the motion of her hips than any civilized woman could with spoken insults [848, italics mine].

The black chieftain is perceived by his white captive, Livia, as “a fat, squat shape, abysmal, repulsive, a toad-like chunk of blackness, reeking of the dank rotting jungle and the nighted swamps,” altogether a “gross body” (849–50, italics mine). Conan shares her views: “I am not such a dog as to leave a white woman in the clutches of a black man” and would do so even if Livia was “old and ugly as the devil’s pet vulture [...] simply because of the color of your hide.” The only explanation Conan offers is “because some of your instincts correspond with some of mine” (854), which refers to Livia’s extreme physical reaction to “that repellant figure”: “pain was drowned in hate, so intense it in turn became pain; she felt hard and brittle, as if her body were turning to steel” (850) and his having to look “at black sluts until I am sick at the guts” (854).

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In this story Howard recreates the mythical antithesis identified by Paul Hoch in White Hero Black Beast: Racism, Sexism and the Mask of Masculinity (1979) as a manifestation of not only racial domination but also as closely related to the predominant Western conception of manhood: “the summit of masculinity — the ‘white hero’— achieves his manhood, first and foremost, by winning victory over the ‘dark beast’ (or over the barbarian beasts of other — in some sense, ‘darker’— races, nations and social castes)” (94). Conan is definitely represented as the black chieftain’s superior but he would hardly fit the mold: although he always fights a “threatening and immoral [villain]— a representative of the dark, bestial forces of lust and perdition, and embodiment of the lower and sexual” the barbarian is certainly not a classic knight in shining armor, a spiritual figure of high morality. Conan’s presence therefore subverts the dichotomy of two archetypal understandings of manhood: “human versus animal, white versus black, spiritual versus carnal, soul versus flesh, higher versus lower, noble versus base” which were deployed to legitimize the first hierarchical societies and ensure the superiority of “civilized and noble” upper class white heroes (98). Hoch attributes the almost invariable victory of white hero over dark villains in popular fiction, film and television to the need to reinforce the domination of the “higher” over the “lower” parts of the psyche, as well as the maintenance of social hierarchy (99). As it transpires from his stories, Howard was not directly concerned with social hierarchy, since Conan’s superiority is based on the idea of “aristocracy of race,” yet, the idea of nobility remains and it seems to be reserved for white characters. Conan challenges the stereotype of the white hero through his fierce individualism which prevents him from being constrained by any kind of social rule unless they coincide with his own ideas of morality. Thirty years later Jeffrey P. Dennis analyzes another aspect of the same trend rooted in cultural sexism and homophobia, which “requires that the rescuer and rescued be male and female because the peril is an eroticized peril, the villain a literal or symbolic suitor” and results in hardly any same-sex rescues. In mass media texts, depending upon anyone, male or female, would be a sign of weakness, “so when Tarzan, Conan the Barbarian or one of the proliferating ranks of Rambo imitators is strung up in a dungeon, he always manages to break his bonds, evade or assassinate a few dozen guards, and rescue himself.” Needless to say, some of Howard’s Conan stories do not conform to this pattern, since his masculinity is never threatened: he is not only rescued by Zenobia in The Hour of the Dragon, but Howard takes pains to explain: “It was not strange that a passionate young beauty should be risking her life to aid him; such things had happened often enough in his life” (611). In “A Witch Shall Be Born” the crucified barbarian is saved from certain death

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by another versatile adventurer as tall as himself, though more lightly built: the outlaw thief, Olgerd Vladislav. It is also important to note that it is not unusual for Howard to diverge from the typical happy end scenario described by Dennis as follows: “When the crisis is resolved, she [the rescued woman] melts into his arms, even though she has spent the entire story arguing with him and calling him ‘insufferable.’ The final scene promises permanent association through a kiss, a sexual encounter, or a wedding.” In “A Witch Shall Be Born,” he unceremoniously declines the thankful queen’s offer to be her councilor as well as the captain of the guard: “No, lass, that’s over with. [...] I wasn’t made to dwell among marble walls, anyway” (391). In “Shadows in Zamboula” when Zabibi goes back on her promise of sleeping with Conan as a reward for his services, revealing she is the satrap’s mistress, he could not care less: he is far more intrigued by the famous ring he managed to steal in the meantime. In “The Black Stranger” and “The Vale of Lost Women,” he sends back two rescued maidens from the wilderness to their civilized homes without taking advantage of their helplessness, although he asserts his masculinity in both cases. In the former short story, the Cimmerian plays the role of benefactor and generously presents the Duke’s orphaned niece with a bagful of rubies, providing the wealth necessary for her status, and in the latter his compassion for a girl who “is not tough enough for this land” is masked by belittling her and grumbling: “you’d think I was doing you a favor by kicking you out of this country; haven’t I explained that you’re not the proper woman for the war-chief of the Bamulas?” (861). The discussion of the stories above reveals on the one hand that barbarian masculinity, as defined by Howard upsets the dichotomy of the “white hero and black beast” since morality and spirituality, or nobility and civilization, do not go hand in hand, although the domination of “white” over “black” remains. On the other hand, Howard also constructed such a powerful, hegemonic but unself-conscious masculinity in the person of Conan that no homophobic threat can be imagined in such circumstances, especially because barbarian masculinity is contrasted with femininity and not embedded in a social setting. The latter is corroborated by Pratchett’s construction of barbarian masculinity: in Interesting Times the Horde is outraged to find out that their disguise is the traditional clothes adopted by eunuchs in the Forbidden City and react like “men whose testosterone had always sloshed out of their ears” and try to kill Teach, who came up with the idea. Their main concern, however, is not homophobic in nature: “you know ... it’s not ... I mean, when we went past those young ladies back there they all giggled...” (206) blurts out Truckle. Since they are invincible, they simply do not feel threatened by

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men — there is nothing their swords could not solve, but need to assert their masculinity in relation to femininity, especially due to their age. By comparing Cohen and his Silver Horde to the leaders of the Agatean Empire also transpires that civilization, nobility and humanity are not necessarily prerequisites of the “white hero”: it is the uncivilized barbarian who puts an end to hundreds of years of cruel tyranny. What has happened to the iconic figure of the barbarian created by Howard? Neither his short stories, nor the comics have lost their appeal and the 2011 film version continues this tradition. However, what started off as a parody in 1986 became a critical rewriting of the figure by one of the best contemporary satirists, and involves a thorough exploration of gender-based stereotypes. While both Conan and Cohen are based on the archetypal figure of the Warrior and possess a charismatic personality, the latter proves that equating masculinity with a powerfully muscled body is just as much the result of a gendered naturalization process as Howard’s equation of femininity with youth, beauty and desirability in the short stories. Despite creating a hero outside the law, Howard’s stories uphold patriarchal racial and gender conventions which, eventually, are the very basis of Western civilization. With this in mind, it is not so surprising that Conan moves every stone to regain his kingdom and subsequently attempts to cement his position by marrying and starting a dynasty. In contrast, Pratchett’s work exposes ageist, sexist and racist stereotypes — in fact exploits any kind of stereotype — and often helps redress the situation. In true barbarian fashion, ancient Cohen and his companions leave the safety, boredom and immense riches of the Agatean Empire behind in search of a final adventure, then trick the gods themselves and gallop away among the stars instead of dying. One might wonder which fate is more becoming a barbarian hero...

Works cited Arber, Sara, Kate Davidson and Jay Ginn. “Changing Approaches to Gender and Later Life” in Gender and Ageing: Changing Roles and Relationships. Eds. Sara Arber, Kate Davidson, Jay Ginn Maidenhead, Philadelphia: Open University Press, 2003, 1–14. Bogert, Judith. “From Barsoom to Giffard: Sexual Comedy in Science Fiction and Fantasy” Erotic Universe: Sexuality and Fantastic Literature. Ed. Donald Palumbo. New York: Greenwood Press, 1986, 87- 101. Boscagli, Maurizia. Eye on the Flesh: Fashions of Masculinity in the Early Twentieth Century. Boulder, CO.: Westview Press, 1996. Campbell, Hugh and Michael Mayerfeld Bell. “The Question of Rural Masculinities.” Rural Sociolog y. Vol. 65. Issue: 4. 2000, 532+. Connell, Robert W. The Men and the Boys. St. Leonards, N.S.W.: Allen & Unwin, 2000. Dennis, Jeffery P. “‘I Want My Boy Back!’: Substitute Sons and Damsels in Distress.” Thymos. Vol. 4. Issue: 1. 2010, 24+.

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Edwards, Tim. Cultures of Masculinity. London & New York: Routledge, 2006. Gardiner, Judith K. “Theorizing Age With Gender: Bly’s Boys, Feminism, and Maturity Masculinity” in Masculinity Studies & Feminist Theory: New Directions. Ed.: Judith Kegan Gardiner. New York: Columbia University Press, 2002, 90–118. Hoch, Paul. White Hero Black Beast: Racism, Sexism and the Mask of Masculinity. Excerpts in Feminism and Masculinities. Ed. Peter F. Murphy. New York: Oxford University Press, 2004, 93–107. Howard, Robert E. The Complete Chronicles of Conan. London: Gollancz, 2006. _____. “The Phoenix on the Sword” Complete Chronicles, 23–43. _____. “The Scarlet Citadel” Complete Chronicles, 44–78. _____. “Black Colossus” Complete Chronicles, 101–33. _____. “The Slithering Shadow” Complete Chronicles, 134–62. _____. “Shadows in the Moonlight” Complete Chronicles, 209–35. _____. “Queen of the Black Coast” Complete Chronicles, 236–61. _____. “The Devil in Iron” Complete Chronicles, 262–88. _____. “A Witch Shall Be Born” Complete Chronicles, 356–92. _____. “Shadows in Zamboula” Complete Chronicles, 478–504. _____. “Red Nails” Complete Chronicles, 505–73. _____. The Hour of the Dragon. Complete Chronicles, 575–732. _____. “The God in the Bowl” Complete Chronicles, 733–750. _____. “The Black Stranger” Complete Chronicles, 751–817. _____. “The Frost-Giant’s Daughter” Complete Chronicles, 818–25. _____. “The Vale of Lost Women” Complete Chronicles, 847–61. Jones, Stephen. “Afterword: Robert E. Howard and Conan” Complete Chronicles, 897–925. Moore, Robert, and Douglas Gillette. King, Warrior, Magician, Lover — Rediscovering the Archetypes of the Mature Masculine. San Francisco: Harper, 1990. Pratchett, Terry. The Light Fantastic. London: Corgi Books, 1988. _____. Interesting Times. London: Corgi Books, 1995. _____. The Last Hero — A Discworld Fable. London: Gollancz, 2007. The Official Robert E. Howard Website http://www.conan.com/ Wicks, Stephen. Warriors and Wildmen: Men, Masculinity, and Gender. Westport, CT.: Bergin & Garvey, 1996. Yu, Henry. Thinking Orientals: Migration, Contact, and Exoticism in Modern America. New York: Oxford University Press, 2002.

About the Contributors Imola Bulgozdi, an independent scholar, specializes in women writers of the American South and contextual criticism of British cultural studies. She also researches novel-to-film adaptations in representations of the South and aims at raising the academic prestige of fantasy and science fiction. She holds a Ph.D. from Eotvos Lorand University in Budapest. Frank Coffman is a professor of English and journalism at Rock Valley College in Rockford, Illinois. His areas of special interest include the origins, rise and relevance of popular imaginative literature, as well as the poetry and stylistics of Robert E. Howard, rhetorical criticism and stylometric analysis in general, and attacking the critical notions of hypermodernists and “mainstreamists.” Winter Elliott is an associate professor of English at Brenau University in Gainesville, Georgia. In graduate school, a concentration in medieval literature instilled in her a lasting affection for both monsters and the rogues who fight them. She studies and teaches medieval literature and speculative fiction, but has little patience with most film adaptations of that literature — from Beowulf to Conan. Nicky Falkof, a journalist and author, has taught at Birkbeck College. She received a Ph.D. in humanities and cultural studies from the London Consortium. Her research centers around the consequences of the collapse of apartheid on white South African society. Other interests include masculinity in Hollywood cinema, race and gender in popular culture and the postcolonial occult. James Kelley teaches literature and writing at Mississippi State University– Meridian. He received a Ph.D. in English from the University of Tulsa, held a Junior Fulbright Scholar appointment in eastern Germany, and has published mostly in the areas of literary modernism, gender and sexuality, and popular culture. Daniel M. Look teaches mathematics at St. Lawrence University in upstate New York. His area of expertise is the behavior of complex analytic functions under iteration. In 2008, he presented “25 Years of Transformers: Separating Fact from FanFiction” at MIT’s Splash program, where he discussed Jungian archetypes in the Transformers multi-verse. Jonas Prida is an assistant professor of English at the College of St. Joseph in Rutland, Vermont. He earned a Ph.D. from Tulane University and in addition 213

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to his work on Conan, researches in the field of antebellum American popular culture and is planning a larger project in pulp studies. Jeffrey Shanks is an archaelogist for the National Park Service’s Southeast Archeological Center. He earned a M.A. in classical archaeology from Florida State University and is a member of the Robert E. Howard United Press Association and the Robert E. Howard Foundation. He has published in The Dark Man: The Journal of Robert E. Howard Studies, REH: Two-Gun Raconteur, and TheCimmerian.com. Paul Shovlin is a visiting assistant professor of writing at Binghamton University (SUNY). He specializes in research related to the integration of new technologies for writing instruction and enjoys working with developing writers. Stephen Wall is pursuing a doctoral degree in folklore at Memorial University in St. John’s, Newfoundland, where he is a teaching assistant, a research assistant and an instructor for introductory courses in folklore. His dissertation focuses on the masculinities found in television advertising. Daniel Weiss splits his time among a corporate position, research interests, and being a professor of English composition at Macomb Community College. His research interests include Cormac McCarthy (he has a recent article in The Journal of Cormac McCarthy on borders and maps), studies of the west and its literature, and such topics as studies in Robert E. Howard and comic books.

Index “The Frost-Giant’s Daughter” 15, 17, 51, 59, 202

American Indian 84–86, 89 Am-ra 39–40, 42, 47 AMRA 39–40, 97, 101 “Am-ra the Ta-an” 39–40, 42, 47 Atlantis 9, 13–23, 26–28, 30, 32, 88

gay 10–11, 144, 147–149, 151, 153–162, 165– 170, 172; see also homosexuality Gilgamesh 52–53, 55 “The God in the Bowl” 15, 17, 56, 103, 206 “Guns of the Mountains” 87

barbarism 32, 35, 37–44, 46–49, 72, 87, 92, 95, 97, 99, 138, 198–199, 207 Bêlit 58–59, 64, 183, 187, 202–203 “Beyond the Black River” 6, 10, 84, 87, 91– 96, 98–99, 101–102, 194 “Black Canaan” 92–93, 95–101 “Black Colossus” 31, 54, 59, 62, 73 “The Black Stranger” 7, 78, 103, 194, 202, 206, 210; see also “The Treasure of Tranicos” Bran Mak Morn 1, 18, 29, 31, 35, 43, 48 Burke, Rusty 19–21, 24, 31–32, 43, 45, 89 Burroughs, Edgar Rice 1, 35, 37, 198

hapax dislegomena 107, 112, 115 Herron, Don 37, 39, 47, 51, 95 homosexuality 141, 149–150, 157–158, 165– 169 Honoré’s R 107, 112, 114 The Hour of the Dragon 31, 42, 48, 195, 197, 209 Howard, Robert: “Am-ra the Ta-an” 39– 40, 42, 47; “Beyond the Black River” 6, 10, 84, 87, 91–96, 98–99, 101–102, 194; “Black Canaan” 92–93, 95–101; “Black Colossus” 31, 54, 59, 62, 73; “The Black Stranger” 7, 78, 103, 194, 202, 206, 210 (see also “The Treasure of Tranicos”); “Cimmeria” 43, 48; “The Devil in Iron” 42; “The Frost-Giant’s Daughter” 15, 17, 51, 59, 202; “The God in the Bowl” 15, 17, 56, 103, 206; “Guns of the Mountains” 87; The Hour of the Dragon 31, 42, 48, 195, 197, 209; “The Hyborian Age” 16–19, 21, 24, 27–28, 31; “Jewels of Gwahlur” 121; “Knife, Bullet, Noose” 88; letters 29, 36–37, 41–45, 89, 91; “Men of the Shadows” 18–21, 24, 29; “People of the Black Circle” 58, 121; “The Phoenix on the Sword” 13–15, 17, 42–43, 53–54, 56, 103, 121, 185, 193, 195; poetry 9, 35, 37, 46–47, 49; “The Pool of the Black One” 121; “Queen of the Black Coast” 55, 58, 76, 82–83, 121, 203, 206; “Red Nails” 2, 7, 54, 56, 59, 62, 64, 78, 83, 103, 121, 204, 208; “Rogues in the House” 8, 121; “The Scarlet Citadel” 7, 31, 60, 121, 196; “Shadows in the Moonlight” 68, 121; “Shadows in Zamboula” 121, 208, 210; “The Slithering Shadow” 68, 121, 201; “Spear and Fang” 24, 42– 43, 47; “The Tower of the Elephant” 17–

Carter, Lin 2, 5–8, 10–11, 104, 112–113 “Cimmeria” 43, 48 civilization 9, 14–18, 21–22, 25, 27–29, 32, 37–38, 40–43, 46, 48–49, 52–58, 60– 61, 63–64, 67, 70, 72, 79, 82–84, 86– 87, 92, 95, 99, 134, 137–139, 142, 146, 171–172, 199, 206–207, 210–211 Conan the Barbarian (comic) 8, 177, 183 Conan the Barbarian (1982) 5, 10, 89, 123– 124, 127–128, 131–134, 137, 139–140, 180, 193 Conan the Barbarian (2011) 5, 180 Conan the Destroyer (1984) 6, 172 Cooper, James Fenimore 35, 78, 84, 86, 87 de Camp, L Sprague 2, 5–8, 10, 12, 88, 91– 92, 99, 101, 103–104, 112–114, 116 “The Devil in Iron” 42 DiTommaso, Lorenzo 52, 92 Eraser 126 feminine 52, 131, 134, 159–160, 163, 169, 172, 179, 199, 203 Finn, Mark 1, 39, 81, 88, 172 Fort Tuscelan 96, 99–100

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18, 56, 121, 172; “The Treasure of Tranicos” 8; “Vale of Lost Women” 7, 58, 62, 64, 78, 103, 106, 202, 208, 210; “A Witch Shall Be Born” 55, 57, 60, 66, 73, 121, 209–210; “Xuthal of the Dusk” 56–58, 62, 72 (see also “The Slithering Shadow”); “The Years Are as a Knife” 35 “The Hyborian Age” 16–19, 21, 24, 27–28, 31 “Jewels of Gwahlur” 121 Junior 124, 126, 128 Kindergarten Cop 124, 128 “Knife, Bullet, Noose” 88 Kull 1, 8, 14, 16, 18–20, 29–31, 35 Lord, Glenn 1, 7 Louinet, Patrice 14–15, 17, 19–21, 24, 31–32 Lovecraft, H.P. 8, 29–30, 35, 41–44, 46, 49, 182, 189 masculinity 2, 10–11, 52, 57, 67, 71–72, 74–75, 123, 126, 130, 133, 141, 149, 163– 164, 168–171, 174–176, 179–185, 188–189, 194, 196, 198–202, 204–206, 209–211 “Men of the Shadows” 18–21, 24, 29 noble savage 35, 42 “People of the Black Circle” 58, 121 “The Phoenix on the Sword” 13–15, 17, 42–43, 53–54, 56, 103, 121, 185, 193, 195 Picts 16–22, 24, 29, 48, 85–86, 89, 93– 95, 99–100, 108, 199 “The Pool of the Black One” 121 Pratchett, Terry 11, 193, 199–201, 203, 205–207, 210–211 Predator 126, 128, 134 “Queen of the Black Coast” 55, 58, 76, 82–83, 121, 203, 206 race 10–11, 18–19, 21–22, 24–25, 29, 31– 32, 41, 52, 61, 91–93, 95–97, 99, 124, 127, 134–137, 139, 141–142, 199, 208–209 “Red Nails” 2, 7, 54, 56, 59, 62, 64, 78, 83, 103, 121, 204, 208 Rippke, Dale 27–28 “Rogues in the House” 8, 121 The Savage Sword of Conan 2, 8, 177, 179 “The Scarlet Citadel” 7, 31, 60, 121, 196 Schwarzenegger, Arnold 5, 10, 123–128, 130–131, 133, 135–142, 170, 180; Eraser

126; Junior 124, 126, 128; Kindergarten Cop 124, 128; Predator 126, 128, 134; The Terminator 123–124, 126, 128, 130, 141; Terminator 2 134, 141–142; Total Recall 124, 126, 128, 134, 141; True Lies 126, 128, 134 Scott Elliot, G.F. 19, 24, 29, 32 Scott-Elliot, William 9, 22–23, 26–27, 30–31 sexuality 59, 62, 65, 74, 134–135, 147, 149, 167, 171, 182–183, 187 “Shadows in the Moonlight” 68, 121 “Shadows in Zamboula” 121, 208, 210 “The Slithering Shadow” 68, 121, 201 Slotkin, Richard 92–93, 95, 101 “Spear and Fang” 24, 42–43, 47 Spence, Lewis 20–22, 28, 30–32 Stylometry 10, 103–105–112, 118–119 Subotai 129–130, 138–139 Tarzan 1, 13, 35, 37, 147, 198, 209 The Terminator 123–124, 126, 128, 130, 141 Terminator 2 134, 141–142; Thomas, Roy 5–6, 8, 12 Thulsa Doom 10, 128–133, 135, 138–139, 142 Tolkien, J.R.R. 29–30, 36–37, 43, 70, 88, 189 Total Recall 124, 126, 128, 134, 141 “The Tower of the Elephant” 17–18, 56, 121, 172 “The Treasure of Tranicos” 8 True Lies 126, 128, 134 type-token 107, 112–113 “Vale of Lost Women” 7, 58, 62, 64, 78, 103, 106, 202, 208, 210 Valeria 56, 58–59, 62, 64–67, 78, 83, 204–205; in Conan the Barbarian 10, 89, 129–131, 133, 135, 142 Weird Tales 1, 6, 8, 12–15, 17–18, 40, 51, 57–58, 103, 172 Wells, H.G. 9, 24–26, 28–32 Wister, Owen 10, 74–75, 80 “A Witch Shall Be Born” 55, 57, 60, 66, 73, 121, 209–210 Wright, Farnsworth 12, 17, 39, 43, 51 “Xuthal of the Dusk” 56–58, 62, 72 “The Years Are as a Knife” 35 Yule’s K 107, 113, 115–116 Zipf ’s law 105–107, 112, 116, 121