Conan Meets the Academy: Multidisciplinary Essays on the Enduring Barbarian

Conan Meets the Academy: Multidisciplinary Essays on the Enduring Barbarian

Conan Meets the Academy: Multidisciplinary Essays on the Enduring Barbarian

Conan Meets the Academy: Multidisciplinary Essays on the Enduring Barbarian

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Overview

Robert E. Howard penned a series of fantasy stories in 1932 featuring Conan, a hulking warrior from "Cimmeria" who roamed the mythical Hyborian Age landscape engaging in heroic adventures. More than the quirky manifestation of Depression-era magazines, Conan the Barbarian has endured as a cultural mainstay for over 70 years. This multidisciplinary collection offers the first scholarly investigation of Conan, from Howard's early stories, through midcentury novels and Arnold Schwarzenegger's iconic films, to the 2011 cinematic remake of Conan the Barbarian. Drawing on disciplines such as stylometry, archeology, cultural and folklore studies and literary history, the essays examine statistical analyses of the words in Conan texts, the literary genesis of Conan, later-day parodies, Conan video games, and much more. This volume reveals the hidden scholarly depth of this seemingly unsophisticated fictional character.


Product Details

ISBN-13: 9780786461523
Publisher: McFarland & Company, Incorporated Publishers
Publication date: 12/04/2012
Edition description: New Edition
Pages: 224
Sales rank: 806,855
Product dimensions: 6.00(w) x 9.00(h) x 0.45(d)
Age Range: 18 Years

About the Author

Jonas Prida is Associate Vice President for Academic Affairs at Notre Dame University of Maryland in Baltimore.

Table of Contents

Preface 1

Introduction 5

Part 1 The Literary Conan

Hyborian Age Archaeology: Unearthing Historical and Anthropological Foundations Jeffrey Shanks 13

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 91

Statistics in the Hyborian Age: An Introduction to Stylometry Daniel M. Look 103

Part 2 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 Stephen Wall 174

"Barbarian Heroing" and Its Parody: New Perspectives on Masculinity Imola Bulgozdi 193

About the Contributors 213

Index 215

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