I’ve been reading Robert E. Howard. Just finished a short-story about a crusader. Howard is better known for his fictional characters such as Conan, Kull, and Solomon Kane.
If you wonder how Tolkien’s fiction qualifies as “Christian,” reading a few stories by Robert E. Howard will snap the issues into focus for you. Howard, like Tolkien, made up imaginative universes set in history, and also showed a real enjoyment of poetry and song in his fiction.
But Howard’s heroes are reductionist caricatures compared to Tolkien. It is an amazing contrast.
I’m afraid I don’t see the correlation between Howard’s allegedly reductionist charicatures (a simplification I would dispute) and Tolkien’s work being a result of his “Christian”-ness.
Thanks Al.
1st: Nothing I said about Robert E. Howard keeps me from enjoying reading his stories.
2nd: I haven’t read a Conan story in a loooong time. I have read most recently the complete works of Solomon Kane and now I’m reading the book linked above.
So Conan may come of better. But the Kane is frankly acknowledged at one point to be mentally unbalanced so that he interprets a neurotic need to wonder and live by his sword as a calling from God.
The protagonist in the first Crusader story (his name escapes me at the moment) is at once 1) world-weary of the ambitions of the mighty and 2) totally ambitious to seize and rule a kingdom by his might in battle. He is in fact not that different from those he despises.
You would think civilization was spawned from the edge of a blade in Howard’s world. I don’t think that is true. Civilization comes from the plow, and from bricks, and from trade. (Perhaps I’m influenced by the book of Judges where evil professional soldiers with real military grade weapons are defeated by war leaders bearing ox goads or even women with tent pegs and millstones. The implements of work defeat the war machine.
I still think that Howard’s characters I’ve read recently have admirable qualities, but I don’t think they come across as complete people.
Pingback: Mark Horne » Blog Archive » And if Howard shows how Christian Tolkien was, then Moorcock makes Howard look Sanctified