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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Celebrim" data-source="post: 4362872" data-attributes="member: 4937">I think you are too spoiled by Judeo-Christian standards of how good ethics are established by a text, or for that matter what good ethics consist of.  It's quite easy to read Howard, Leiber, and the pulp writers as heroic narratives establishing what is meant by living a good life.  They are in many ways little different from typical polytheistic epics describing how to live life heroicly and to the fullest."Hither came Conan, the Cimmerian, black-haired, sullen-eyed, sword in hand, a thief, a reaver, a slayer, with gigantic melancholies and gigantic mirth, to tread the jeweled thrones of the Earth under his sandalled feet." is an ethical code, and one that would have been very recognizable to your average pre-Christian warrior society.And nothing is so obviously an ethical question as, "Conan, what is best in life?"  This gets to the heart of what the story is actually about.  What you call 'wish fulfillment', I call 'idealized traditional male virtue'.  Yes, they differ from some other modern fantasies perhaps in that the author did not in fact take his rollicking adventure stories depection of heroism perfectly seriously (although quite arguably Edgar Rice Burroughs did), but then we are getting into questions of authorial intent and the relation of the text to the audience.  Yes, maybe Howard didn't literally intend his stories to serve as guides for how young boys ought to strive to live, but the Greeks and others when they told these sorts of stories actually did.</blockquote>

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