Art by Michael Whelan
Art by Michael Whelan

The Gothic in Sword & Sorcery

Pulp Origins

Sword & Sorcery, from its very first story in 1929 was steeped in the Gothic. Robert E. Howard published “The Shadow Kingdom” in Weird Tales in August 1929. He had experimented with Solomon Kane earlier, but not until he took his characters to an ancient time period of Atlantis does his work become completely fantastic. The choice of Weird Tales to publish the story was pre-ordained by the fact that there really wasn’t anywhere to do so. Weird Tales was a horror magazine but in the 1920s it wasn’t genre-bound and used both Fantasy and Science Fiction. The very Gothicness of “The Shadow Kingdom” made it enough of a horror story to fit.

Art by Hugh Rankin
Art by Hugh Rankin

Perhaps a definition of the word “Gothic” is in order here. That term can mean a lot of different things to many people. It is a tribe living in the Germanic regions in Roman times. It is a style of architecture used in the medieval times. It became a cultural term used in England and elsewhere to delineate a Northern background divorced from classical influence.

Gothic Origins

And most commonly today, it is a style of novel popular between 1764 and 1820, bracketed by the first Gothic novel The Castle of Otranto by Horace Walpole and Melmoth the Wanderer by Charles Maturin. These strange and horrific books include Ann Radcliffe’s The Mysteries of Udolpho (1794) and M. G. Lewis’s The Monk(1796). Frankenstein (1818) by Mary Shelley is a familiar novel from this period.  Wuthering Heights (1847) by Emily Bronte is a late Gothic that has won a place in halls of literature. Jane Austen’s Northanger Abbey (1803) parodied these books, with its heroine Catherine Morland being influenced by their silliness.

So how do these stodgy old books filled with fleeing heiresses and usually fake monsters really have anything to do with King Kull of Valusia? When you look to the core of what Gothic literature is about it becomes quite obvious. One of the main themes in Gothics is the idea of the past coming to destroy the future. The old family curse reaches out to crush the young people about to live their lives. This curse was usually engineered or performed by villains like Manfred of Otranto, who having lost his heir decides to dump his wife and claim Isabella for himself. It turns out Manfred isn’t the real lord but an usurper, and his deceit comes back to get him.

The Shadow Kingdom

The plot of “The Shadow Kingdom” has Kull, another usurper (but at least an open one) on the throne of Valusia. A wizard of the neighboring Picts sends a messenger named Brule to warn Kull that forces inside his castle are plotting against him. Kull witnesses their power when he sees the ghost of a past king in thrall to evil. Eventually after much Gothic darkness and tunnels, Kull meets his enemy face-to-face. There are members of his retinue who are not human at all but serpent folk. The ancient Serpent Men have manipulated human politics for ages and have singled Kull out for death. There is a fantastic battle scene in which Kull holds off the Serpent Men until reinforcements from the Picts can arrive.

Art by Marie and John Severin
Art by Marie and John Severin

Here we have all the Gothic elements: dark castles, hidden enemies, a lurking ancient evil, and a finale in which good triumphs. Kull is no Isabella, weak and waiting for rescue by her secret prince, the real heir, Theodore. Kull is active, but like Isabella, a symbol of the future and vitality. One of the strong elements in Gothics is a fear and hatred of priests, specifically Catholics. (This has more to do with it being an English publishing phenomenon.) Sword & Sorcery inherits much of that distrust in cloaked wizards and sorcerers. Howard, an American, had no specific issue with Catholicism, but certainly does with authority. The barbarian is as much a rebel as any private detective or cowboy in the Pulps.

H. P. Lovecraft

One of Howard’s influences was his pen pal, H. P. Lovecraft. HPL was an acolyte of Edgar Allan Poe, a late Gothic writer. It should be no surprise that Lovecraft’s Mythos is a Gothic super-structure. Cthulhu and the Great Old Ones are ancient evil, lying in wait for unsuspecting scholars. What could better encapsulate “past coming to destroy the future” than that? Howard’s Serpent Men were drawn into Lovecraft’s Cthulhu Mythos. Howard wrote actual horror tales in that group, but even in his Sword & Sorcery that same lurking evil can be found. The Conan stories are not overt Mythos tales, but the shadow of Lovecraftian evil dwells there. The ancient flying man in “The Garden of Fear”, the ape monster in “Queen of the Black Coast”, the slug monster in “The Slithering Shadow”, etc. all show Howard’s monsters from ancient times.

J. R. R. Tolkien

Let’s leave Robert E. Howard now. While REH was pounding those typewriter keys at a furious pace, another writer was taking a much slower approach to creating his heroic fantasy masterpieces. J. R. R. Tolkien published The Hobbit in 1937. Being a children’s book, it has much less darkness in it than his later The Lord of the Rings (1954-55). When you look at the big evil in Tolkien’s work there is as much of the Gothic as Howard. Consider Sauron. He was defeated and his spirit lies in wait, gaining power to strike again. If that isn’t the past coming to destroy the future, I don’t know what is. Sauron’s servants, the ring wraiths, are Gothic in appearance, again cloaked like priests. The dark castles at Cirith Ungol and Barad-dor as Gothic as Poe’s House of Usher. Tolkien uses Christian images to fight this darkness while Howard just had a sword and a will.

Mervyn Peake

These two giants of heroic fantasy inspired many who followed but perhaps the most Gothic of S&S writers since has been Michael Moorcock. Moorcock does not cite Howard and Tolkien as his main influence. (“my enthusiasm for Howard was fairly brief” Unearth, Winter 1979) He points to Mervyn Peake and his Gormenghast novels. Titus Groan (1946), Gormenghast (1950) and Titus Alone (1959) are Gothic fantasy without being heroic fantasy. No swords or good guys, just a lot of creepy buildings and creepier people. Moorcock’s Gloriana (1978) was dedicated to Peake. Moorcock also wrote a biography of the man.

Art by Mervyn Peake
Art by Mervyn Peake

Michael Moorcock

In 1963, Moorcock wrote a long essay (or series of essays) for Science Fantasy on “Aspects of Fantasy” in which he mostly talks about Lovecraft and the Gothic novels, but he also makes his pitch for Peake:

Peake’s novels are, in other ways, far superior to Tolkien’s because Peake places emphasis on his characters, whereas Tolkien is content to write a classic tale of doom, marvels and high adventure…Also Peake’s characters actually develop as the story goes on, while Tolkien’s do not.

He later goes on to disavow Lord Dunsany and then Robert E. Howard, calling him a hack. He finishes with giving Fritz Leiber a thumbs up. “For all some critics have said to the contrary, I am not a great Sword & Sorcery fan and find Robert E. Howard and E. R. Burroughs in particular, virtually unreadable.” He finishes with calling SF and Fantasy “emotionally unconvincing”. (The only time I can think of such a bombshell being dropped was when Roy Thomas said he didn’t really care for Sword & Sorcery in 1981. Wow!) Moorcock was more fond of Borges and other literary leaning writers over the Pulpsters.

Elric of Melnibone

Art by Brian Lewis
Art by Brian Lewis

So this was the man who would re-imagine Sword & Sorcery in the 1960s. Moorcock did this by writing an “anti-Conan” named Elric. Where Conan was big and brawny, Elric was weak and scrawny. Where Conan was fearless and single-minded, Elric was emotionally distraught and conflicted. Moorcock brings a new Gothic sense to his stories. Elric is more like Heathcliff on the moors than Conan in an inn swilling beer and chasing skirt. The “emotionally unconvincing” is replaced with a hyper-emotionality. (Yes, I said it. Elric is emo.) Does he change greatly over the course of the stories. That’s a matter of opinion but I never found much difference between Elric, Hawkmoon and Erekose. The fact they are all avatars of the same Eternal Champion might explain that but I have to wonder.

Karl Edward Wagner

Whatever you think of Elric and his bunch, Moorcock did bring even more Gothicness to Sword & Sorcery. Once again we felt the dark, brooding doom that hangs over these characters. And other writers got this and played with it, including Karl Edward Wagner and his Kane novels and stories. Kane is even less likable than Elric, being the doomed to wonder the world forever, always bringing pain and suffering in his wake. The entire sub-genre of Grimdark heroic fantasy embraces this philosophy. The darker the better. Gothic images, characters and tropes are amplified to the maximum.

Art by Frank Frazetta
Art by Frank Frazetta

Conclusion

What is the alternative? Is there fantasy without Gothic evil lurking in it? Yes, and it is known as “Vanilla Fantasy”. Here we have unicorns, elves and a medieval world where no one is a serf (at least no one who is good looking) and the woods are filled with golden light. But what can happen without some darkness? Not much. This is a type of fantasy for those who do not like Horror fiction. Fantasy has always had the charge of “escapism” against it from Mundanes. (Throw some tits and dragons in it and they will watch every week!) I have never believed this to be true. Fantasy readers in general seek bigger truths than literary fiction can provide. It is wanting more, not less. But when I look at Vanilla Fantasy it does strikes me as a bit of an escape. Or at least far less satisfying to me. But then I grew up on that “emotionally unconvincing” SF and Fantasy, so what do I know?

 

#4 now in paperback!
A stunning first novel!
A classic bestseller!

6 Comments Posted

  1. “I never found much difference between Elric, Hawkmoon and Erekose. The fact they are all avatars of the same Eternal Champion might explain that but I have to wonder.”

    Agreed. I’m a major Moorcock fan and have been since the 1970s. But as I got older and became more critically objective in my re-reading of Moorcock I had to come to the conclusion that he came up with the concept of The Eternal Champion as a novel and clever way to avoid giving separate and distinctive characteristics to his various S&S heroes. They’re all the same guy with some tweaks here and there. Elric and Corum are the standouts when it comes to characterization. Hawkmoon is pretty much a gloomy gus from start to finish.

    • I compare Elric, Hawkmoon, Corum and Erekose in my blog post here:
      https://ariochspad.blogspot.com/2020/04/corum-coming-of-chaos-swords-trilogy.html

      I’ll just quote it a bit for convenience’s sake:
      The Four-Who-Are-One
      Having now reached a fourth Eternal Champion to have his own extended sequence, it might be interesting to briefly compare these four incarnations of theoretically the same being.

      Erekosë is in one sense probably the most psychologically-complex, as he is conscious of his role as an endlessly-reincarnated pawn of cosmic forces. However, although he may be the most noble at heart of the four, he is also probably the most guilty, having directly caused the complete slaughter of his own race. Unfortunately, the weight of his existence doesn’t permit him to be particularly witty as a conversationalist, making him kind of a “straight man” in comparison to the more sardonic characters…

      Elric has a different kind of complexity, being of a nonhuman race and brought up as a sorcerer-emperor amongst an intellectually-advanced, alien culture. Unlike those of the other Champions, his race is cruelly-indifferent to brutal torture, which accentuates their alien nature. However, Elric is also the most sardonic of the four, and his cutting sense of twisted humor makes his inhuman nature a bit more palatable. Elric is also the Champion seemingly most indifferent to his own death, as long as it is by his own hand and not at the whim of a higher being.

      Dorian Hawkmoon of the Runestaff quartet is probably simplest Eternal Champion, at least at this point in his sequence (he deepens somewhat during the subsequent “Castle Brass” trilogy). Hawkmoon is simply a man, deposed from his position as the Duke of a small Germanic territory by an evil empire. He seems stalwart enough, but is not particularly cultured or witty. Hawkmoon’s appeal comes from the fact that he is a resistance fighter whose admirable persistence leads to a fairly reasonable happy ending. Unfortunately for some readers, Hawkmoon’s general disposition is a bit “domestic”, and not quite as extreme (interesting) as the others. Fortunately, the frequently laughable intrigues found in the Dark Empire’s ranks make up for this in the Runestaff quartet.

      For many Moorcock fans, Corum is their favorite Eternal Champion, probably in large part because Corum is simply the most likeable. He comes from a cultured race, is able to overcome unspeakable mutilations without retaining any great psychological wounds, has a gift for dry understatement, and even composes music. Like Erekosë and Elric, Corum eventually becomes aware of the higher cosmic forces at work, but in contrast to those heroes, largely manages to carve out his own destiny. Erekosë and Elric are essentially gothic (or “Byronic”) heroes heading towards an apocalyptic climax of some sort or another, whereas Corum’s path leads to long-term friendships, romance and freedom. Also, despite Elric’s background in sorcery, Corum seems to be the most comfortable at traveling between planes of the Multiverse, making him closer to a scholarly Professor Faustaff (Rituals of Infinity) than a “Conan the Cimmerian”. Aside from all this, Corum and Jhary-a-Conel may have the best sense of comic timing in the Multiverse (see their Monty Python-esque turn on Duke Teer in The King of the Swords).

  2. One of the best essays on this subject I’ve ever read! Gothic literature is the birthplace of the horror genre, but also a co-parent of fantasy. The other parent is, of course, fairytales, making its grandparents Christian and pagan religions.

  3. “The past coming to destroy the future” – that is quite a line! Fascinating essay. I read a lot as a child, still do now, but there are so many authors in your piece that I am yet to experience. I agree that fantasy & SF are not an “escape”, unless it is an escape from certain confines on our imagination and thinking. SF can ask huge questions about our existence and what civilisation is (or is not), and fantasy can really dig deep into the human condition. Escape?! Running head-long into it all, more like. Thanks for an interesting read!

  4. Michael Moorcock’s view on REH and his writings changed/softened over time, but he never had any good to say about the Lin Carater/de Camp Conan-pastiches,and it’s hard to disagree with him since they really are horrible, as are all the writings of Lin Carter. L. Sprague de Camp was, for all his faults, a much better writer, but his sole Conan novel (according to some sources co-written with his wife) sucks.

Comments are closed.