The Tarzan Series of Edgar Rice Burroughs

I The Tarzan Series of Edgar Rice Burroughs: Lost Races and Racism in American Popular Culture James R. Nesteby Submitted to the Graduate College of Bowling Green State University in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree in Doctor of Philosophy August 1978 Approved: © 1978 JAMES RONALD NESTEBY ALL RIGHTS RESERVED ¡ ¡ in Abstract The Tarzan series of Edgar Rice Burroughs (1875-1950), beginning with the All-Story serialization in 1912 of Tarzan of the Apes (1914 book), reveals deepseated racism in the popular imagination of early twentieth-century American culture. The fictional fantasies of lost races like that ruled by La of Opar (or Atlantis) are interwoven with the realities of racism, particularly toward Afro-Americans and black Africans. In analyzing popular culture, Stith Thompson's Motif-Index of Folk-Literature (1932) and John G. Cawelti's Adventure, Mystery, and Romance (1976) are utilized for their indexing and formula concepts. The groundwork for examining explanations of American culture which occur in Burroughs' science fantasies about Tarzan is provided by Ray R. Browne, publisher of The Journal of Popular Culture and The Journal of American Culture, and by Gene Wise, author of American Historical Explanations (1973). The lost race tradition and its relationship to racism in American popular fiction is explored through the inner earth motif popularized by John Cleves Symmes' Symzonla: A Voyage of Discovery (1820) and Edgar Allan Poe's The narrative of A. Gordon Pym (1838); Burroughs frequently uses the motif in his perennially popular romances of adventure which have made Tarzan of the Apes (Lord Greystoke) an ubiquitous feature of American culture. The Tarzan IV myth in silent films like Tarzan of the Apes (1918) and Romance of Tarzan (1918) is compared the the books about the Dark Continent of Africa which Burroughs wrote. The parallels between Thomas Dixon's The Clansman (1905) and D.W. Griffith's The Birth of a Nation (1915) are applied to the film and book versions of Tarzan of the Apes. Similarities between the Ku Klux Kian and the Tarzan Clans of America are presented. With reverence for a lost civilization and hostility toward the unorthodox, particularly Afro-Americans and their culture, the Kian represents an active form of the Anglo-Americanism found more passively in the Tarzan series. Acknowledging that it should be judged foremostly for its entertainment value, the very unconsciousness with which the Tarzan series records popular American attitudes toward racism is important in analyzing American popular culture. Burroughs is a blatant racist who is also capable of satirizing through lost races and cultures his own and American ideas about the development and disintegration of races and cultures. Tarzan represents a rejection of twentieth-century American culture, for the values he upholds are from the nineteenth century. V For Fred and Milton Keichinger, Earl Higley, David Blair, and Juan Seda They would have enjoyed reading it VI Tarzan recalled something that he had read in the library at Paris of a lost race of white men that native legend described as living in the heart of Africa.^ He wondered if he were not looking upon the ruins of the civilization that this strange people had wrought amid the savage surroundings of their strange and savage home.) Could it be possible that even now a remnant of that lost race inhabited the ruined grandeur that had once been their progenitor's? From Edgar Rice Burroughs' The Return of Tarzan (1913) VI1 Acknowledgments There has been a supportive cast behind this production which, in the spirit of American Popular Culture Studies, has been worked on from one edge of the country to the other—from San Diego, California, to Bowling Green, Ohio, to Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. My initial interest in popular film, Tarzan, Africa, and Progressives, has its origins in the courses given by three teachers at San Diego State University in 1974-1975: Paul Vanderwood, my master's adviser, Gene Wise, Distinguished Visiting Professor, and Charles Cutter, inspired user of Tarzan in the classroom. My teachers from the Popular Culture Department at Bowling Green State University will recognize their contribution in the pages of this dissertation. My deepest thanks to Ray Browne, Jack Nachbar, Tom Wymer, Mike Marsden, and Joe Arpad. Supportive people from the English Department include Les Barber, Charles Crow, Tom Klein, and Ken Robb. Bob and Bill Schurk, the former as a fellow student of American popular culture, and the latter as the Director of the Popular Culture Library and Audio Center at Bowling Green State University, bring a much appreciated excitement and energy to our fields of common endeavor. Tom Clareson, A1 vac Carl son, and Kalika Banerji have contributed in ways of which they are probably unaware. Hazel Logan assisted with a generous grant at a most critical time in my doctoral studies, and Joan McClurkin provided the means to help finish the first draft. A persevering family has the vili satisfaction of having contributed from beginning to end. The English Department at Bowling Green State University awarded a non-teaching doctoral fellowship which accelerated my progress toward graduation, and the Popular Culture Department at Bowling Green State University provided the motivation to progress toward graduation. Special thanks are due my colleagues Alfred Jones, Director of the National American Studies Faculty, and Roberta Gladowski, Executive Director of the American Studies Association, for their encouragements and considerations in my quest to finish this project in addition to carrying out my duties as Assistant Director of the National American Studies Faculty. Lynn Adams Dierdorf and Mary Ann Grandjean are the two friendly editors of the kind all dissertation writers might hope for. Semaj Betysen did the expert typing; she and Lord Greystoke deserve the final acknowledgment. James R. Nesteby Philadelphia, Pennsylvania August 1978 , 1X Table of Contents Page Chapter One: Fame, Fortune, and Fun: The Motivations for Edgar Rice Burroughs to Write, and Write, and Write Tarzan Romances 1 Chapter Two: The Tarzan Motifs and Formulas: Indexing as a Method for Cultural Analysis 52 Chapter Three: Edgar Rice Burroughs: Science Fantasist and Science Fiction Writer 99 Chapter Four: The "White Ape Myth" and Tarzan 139 Chapter Five: Tarzan and the Ku Klux Kian: Anglo-Americanism in the Twenties 171 Chapter Six: America, the Dark Continent 196 Endnotes 201 Works Consulted 222 Chapter One Fame, Fortune, and Fun: The Motivations for Edgar Rice Burroughs to Write, and Write, and Write Tarzan Romances Romance, n. Fiction that owes no allegiance to the God of Things as They Are. In the novel the writer's thought is tethered to probability, as a domestic horse to the hitching-post, but in romance it ranges at will over the entire region of the imagination--free, lawless, immune to bit and rein. Your novelist is a poor creature, as Carlyle might say-- a mere reporter. He may invent his characters and plot, but he must not imagine anything taking place that might not occur, albeit his entire narrative is candidly a lie. African, n. A nigger that votes our way. Negro, n. The p-zèce de resistance in the American political problem. Representing him by the letter n, the Republicans begin to build their equation thus: "Let n = the white man." This, however, appears to give an unsatisfactory solution. Ambrose Bierce, The Devil's Dictionary (1911) Tarzan of the Apes, Lord Greystoke, is a seminal literary creation whose importance as a bearer of cultural facades for American customs, beliefs, and mores is matchless. He is one of the preeminent figures in twentieth-century American popular culture. Drawing upon a tradition of similar heroes present in all ages of human lore, Tarzan's creator, Edgar Rice Burroughs (1875-1950), has bequeathed to the world a powerful modern reincarnation of Hercules, Odysseus, Beowulf, Caliban, the Byronic Don Juan, Captain Ahab, and 2 Huckleberry Finn. Most of the work on Tarzan and Edgar Rice Burroughs has been done by a prolific coterie of Burroughs' admirers. There have been numerous articles by fans to fans in fanzines, but, to date, there have been only five significant book-length studies on Burroughs and Burroughs' fiction. Presented chronologically below, they indicate a progressive pattern of development. Henry Hardy Heins does bibliographic work; Richard A. Lupoff considers the works as a literary critic; Robert W. Fenton mounts a pastiche of parallels between Burroughs and his fictional personality, Tarzan of the Apes; Orth reworks Fenton's theme, among others, far more skillfully in his exploration of Burroughs as a writer; Porges authors a suberb and long-awaited official biography. The earliest major work on Burroughs and his writings is Henry Hardy Heins',<4 Golden Anniversary Bibliography of Edgar Rice Burroughs (1962; revised in 1964). Heins provides the groundwork on which the other books on Burroughs and his writings have been based.A treasure trove of information, it includes significant reviews of Burroughs' literature, some Burroughs family history, and a reprinting of several of Burroughs' own articles on Tarzan. The latter part of the book emphasizes illustrations and advertisements as secondary art forms which flourished in conjunction with Burroughs' writings. Dozens of illustrations and magazine covers are reproduced covering the work of Frank E. Schoonover, J. Allen St. John, and the Burroughs brothers, Studley 0. and John Coleman. Still 3 of value, Heins' bibliography is updated periodically in ERB-dom, one of many Burroughs fan magazines, beginning with number 11 (Summer 1964). The favorite of many Burroughs fans, Richard A. Lupoff's Edgar Rice Burroughs: Master of Adventure (1965), literally takes up where Heins left off because Heins wrote Lupoff's, Preface. Lupoff does in prose what Heins did in bibliography concerning the body of Burroughs' works.

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