Patrice Louinet, Traumas et conflits symboliques dans l’oeuvre de Robert E. Howard (“Traumas and Symbolic Conflicts in the Work of Robert E. Howard”), a PhD thesis in French for the Sorbonne. Successfully defended 22nd November 2019, and now with a new record page online with English abstract…

“This study explores the fiction of Robert E. Howard [and] calls into question what is seen as the purely escapist nature of his tales and challenge the notion that his fiction is representative of the sub-genre he is considered to have initiated. [The thesis presents] the theory that Howard’s fiction is escapist only in the sense that it avoids writing about a traumatic episode dating from the author’s childhood. Focusing at first on apparently inconsequential details such as the characters’ names or the colour of their eyes, the present work identifies the literary traces and manifestations of the trauma we postulate, to reveal an elaborate, if hidden, architecture that informs the entire body of his fiction. This, in turn, offers new perspectives on Howard’s contribution to American fantasy and leads us to conclude that the very form of the genre proceeds from trauma.”