Conan fascisten? En idéanalytisk studie kring sword and sorcery och Robert E. Howards fiktive barbar

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This thesis falls within the realm of social studies, specifically social studies in literature, and attempts to establish whether the sub-genre of fantasy literature known as sword and sorcery contains elements which resemble the tenets of fascism. Robert E. Howard is considered the progenitor of the sub-genre and his stories have an influence on the nature of sword and sorcery literature today, 70 years after his death. Howards creation of the sub-genre coincides with the spread of fascist ideologies around the world in the 1930s and the study attempts a societal mirroring analysis of Howards texts. With the help of an analytical model based on fascism expert Robert O. Paxtons so-called mobilizing passions of fascism, Howards stories of Conan the barbarian have been deconstructed and analyzed. The study shows clearly that certain elements of the stories do indeed correspond to basic ideological elements of fascism. However, the results of the study are inconclusive as to whether this indicates that sword and sorcery was inspired by the widespread surge of fascism which occurred at roughly the same time, or if they simply sprang from the same sociocultural soil. The similarities are tempered by the issue of context and the presence of numerous exceptions. Further studies with different scientific tools and paramete...