University of Rhode Island DigitalCommons@URI Open Access Dissertations 2021 GENDERED & GENREFIED BODIES: HEROISM AS PRODUCTION AND PERFORMANCE IN SWORD & SORCERY FANTASY Anthony Conrad Chieffalo University of Rhode Island, [email protected] Follow this and additional works at: https://digitalcommons.uri.edu/oa_diss Recommended Citation Chieffalo, Anthony Conrad, "GENDERED & GENREFIED BODIES: HEROISM AS PRODUCTION AND PERFORMANCE IN SWORD & SORCERY FANTASY" (2021). Open Access Dissertations. Paper 1230. https://digitalcommons.uri.edu/oa_diss/1230 This Dissertation is brought to you for free and open access by DigitalCommons@URI. It has been accepted for inclusion in Open Access Dissertations by an authorized administrator of DigitalCommons@URI. For more information, please contact [email protected]. GENDERED & GENREFIED BODIES: HEROISM AS PRODUCTION AND PERFORMANCE IN SWORD & SORCERY FANTASY BY ANTHONY CONRAD CHIEFFALO A DISSERTATION SUBMITTED IN PARTIAL FULFILLMENT OF THE REQUIREMENTS FOR THE DEGREE OF DOCTOR OF PHILOSOPHY IN ENGLISH UNIVERSITY OF RHODE ISLAND 2021 DOCTOR OF PHILOSOPHY DISSERTATION OF ANTHONY CONRAD CHIEFFALO APPROVED: Dissertation Committee: Major Professor David Faflik Martha Rojas Kyle Kusz Brenton DeBoef DEAN OF THE GRADUATE SCHOOL UNIVERSITY OF RHODE ISLAND 2021 Abstract Works of sword-and-sorcery fantasy often have the reputation of reproducing “traditional masculinity” through figures of heroism that embody a stoic, self-reliant and self- righteous machismo. They are similarly regarded as presenting stereotypical femininity as emotional, dependent, and delicate. These assumptions prevent sword-and-sorcery fantasy works from receiving the critical examination that the genre warrants. This genre is critically underutilized despite its unique capacity and bountiful potential to channel and redirect cultural expectations of gender roles and social norms. Sword-and-sorcery texts often reflect the patriarchal structures of reality, but they can also challenge and subvert those same structures. Sword-and-sorcery can be a genre of possibilities. This study examines the unconfined sense of place and time found in specific sword-and-sorcery settings as well as the transgressive and transformative personae of specific sword-and-sorcery heroes regardless of their sexuality, gender, or race. While many sword-and-sorcery tales conform to gender categories, they also have the capacity to shatter stereotypes of the real world in the limitless potential of such fantasy worlds. In order to investigate the ways in which some sword-and-sorcery works reflect white supremacist masculinism of reality while others challenge hegemonic patriarchy, this study examines the works of three prominent authors of the genre: Robert E. Howard, Catherine Lucille Moore, and Samuel R. Delany. Each author is responsible for episodic figures of sword-and-sorcery heroism in Howard’s Conan the Cimmerian, Moore’s Jirel of Joiry, and Delany’s Gorgik the Liberator. This study finds that specific sword-and-sorcery works gesture towards departures from merely perpetuating the exclusion and exploitation endemic of white supremacist masculinism. These works exemplify a capacity for messaging meaning beyond traditional gendered assumptions of the genre and advance transgressive figures of gendered and genrefied heroism including expressions of male femininity and female masculinity. Acknowledgements I would like to thank dissertation committee members David Faflik, Martha Rojas, and Kyle Kusz for their encouragement and support through this process. I appreciate your dedication, patience, and the many hours that you devoted in our meetings to help this project develop. I offer sincere thanks to Michelle Caraccia as well for her invaluable assistance in navigating university deadlines, forms, and policies. I would certainly be lost without her guidance. Infinite gratitude to my family; to my mother and father for encouraging me to follow my passion; to my wife, Nicole, who inspires me to do and to be better; to my brothers, grandparents, extended family; and to those whose love and support will always be felt even in their absence. iii Table of Contents Abstract ..................................................................................................................................... ii Acknowledgments .................................................................................................................... iii Table of Contents ..................................................................................................................... iv Introduction: Works of Sword-and-Sorcery .............................................................................. 1 Chapter 1: Robert E. Howard’s He-Man Barbarians: Masculinity or Male Femininity? ....... 32 Chapter 2: C.L. Moore’s Jirel of Joiry: Femininity or Female Masculinity? ......................... 91 Chapter 3: Samuel R. Delany’s Gorgik: Gendered-and-Genrefied Liberation ..................... 133 Conclusion: The Future of Sword-and-Sorcery .................................................................... 160 Bibliography.......................................................................................................................... 168 iv Introduction: Works of Sword-and-Sorcery Yes, I have such memories. You have, too. We both return to them, now and again, to weave, unweave, and reweave the stories that make our lives comprehensible to us. But whatever fascination, or even partial truth, such memories hold, how useful can they be to someone who wishes to understand how his or her freedom works? – Gorgik the Liberator Samuel Delany, The Game of Time and Pain The categorization of cultural production into genres is a cipher through which authors encode meaning and readers decode meaning. Authors of literature capture reality and translate perceptions of meaning in this messaging to readers. Genres are not merely collections of story tropes, stereotypes, and archetypes that communicate to which category a story belongs. Genres are ciphers of intricate allegorical and symbolic messaging for the interpretation of their readers. This dissertation engages with American cultural productions that communicate messages of traditional masculinity and a specific genre rooted in assumptions of traditional, male masculinity: sword-and-sorcery fantasy literature. The American Psychological Association defines “traditional masculinity” as a form of masculinity that is “marked by stoicism, competitiveness, dominance and aggression [and] on the whole, harmful. Men socialized in this way are less likely to engage in healthy behaviors” (Pappas 34). The American Psychological Association affirms that there are multiple masculinities and that traditional masculinity is only one form of masculine expression. Traditional masculinity is what has been culturally and socially relayed as the normative and expected performance of masculine behavior, particularly pertaining to males. Traditional masculinity encourages stoic machismo, self-reliance, and feats of brute physicality while discouraging empathy, affection, and mutualism (the belief that cooperation and mutual dependence is necessary for one’s welfare as social beings).1 1 Despite the fact that sword-and-sorcery stories including those of Robert E. Howard reinforce traditional, essentialist ideas of gender, others like that of C.L. Moore and Samuel R. Delany challenge simplistic ways of imagining gender and the genre’s treatment of gender roles and relations. While it is true that sword-and-sorcery has been constructed as preserving and reinforcing the dominance of traditional male masculinity organized by ideas of white supremacy and patriarchy in their respective historical context, it is also true that some women and people of color wrote stories within the field that resisted the ideas that organized the conventions of the genre. Therefore, the critical understanding of these texts is one of contested terrain. There is no essentialist, definitive meaning for these texts. Their meanings are shifting, at times progressive, at times regressive, and at times transgressive. Scholars, academics, and critics leading the charge to demonstrate the “gender dynamism” of sword-and-sorcery works and authors must consider how specific examples of these texts transgress traditional gender classifications, definitions, and formulations as an ever complicated terrain. These analyses ought to consider the conventions of genre itself to constitute the cipher of decrypting meaning in the texts through which we conceptualize presentations and productions of neo-mythologized heroic construction. Navigating productions and performances of sword-and-sorcery heroism is not a matter of historicizing these texts so much as it is a matter of genrefying them. Theodore Martin argues that the contemporary as an aesthetic or literary field is unknowable without enough critical distance to periodize and historicize it. Therefore, the way it can be known is through a literary theory fixating on genre to make knowable what is otherwise unknowable. It provides an “alternative historicism” for analyzing the paradox of historicizing the contemporary, which is made even more logical by the fact that contemporary studies already embrace genre unlike modernist studies with its antipathy for genre and 2 postmodernism with its “pastiche for multiple genres at once” (Martin 8). One of the most important implications of Martin’s work is the notion