Thanks! By chance, I just re-read "The Dark Eidolon" yesterday for the first time in many years - what a story! CAS remains a sadly under-appreciated writer.
Loving these lectures. I studied Weird Horror in college and still actively search for academic scholarchip and discussion in the surrounding fields as the general Weird and Sword and Sorcery have become my focus more principally. I enjoy your talks very much, Mr. Smith is my favorite of the Big Three. I'm very happy to see you're still posting your lectures. Thanks very much.
Great lecture Michael, thanks for posting. There are some minor errors in the presentation which I'd like to point out, firstly CAS was older than Robert E Howard by 13 years (not younger as you say in the lecture, although you are correct that he was younger than HPL). Secondly, not everyone in Zothique is evil. Phariom (from 'The Charnel God') is a clear example of a noble, loving, and extraordinarily brave youth, who ventures even into the den of the foul god Mordiggian and battles with ghouls to rescue his young bride Elaith. Similarly, Fulbra the young King of Yoros ('Isle of the Torturers') is aggrieved by the loss of his noble father Altath, and is 'swollen by a great sorrow for his perished people' from the plague known as the silver death. Likewise, his faithful servitor Vemdeez who was devoted to Altath and to his son Fulbra, hardly seems the stuff of evil, but rather the archetypical wise, loyal councillor to a worthy King. (Zobal and Cushara are two more examples amongst many others.) There is great honour, romance, and pathos in CAS' characters. They are truly complex entities and brought to life in stunning fashion considering the brevity of the stories. I think it is somewhat crude and simplistic to paint them all with evil homogeneity. As an aside, I've been meaning to pen some essays on CAS for some time. Do you have any recommendations for what would be the most optimal publication for such a project? Cheers.
There are some non explicitly evil characters in the Zothique stories but mostly they are pretty passive and withdrawn and essentially helpless to counteract any of the evil perpetrated by other malevolent human characters or gods.
It was common during Smith's time to run middle names and last names together. For example, Grafton Elliot Smith was often written about as Elliot-Smith or G. Elliot-Smith.
@@RepublicConstitution That's all well and good, but I can't find any reference to Smith hyphenating his name like that or being referred to by both names by his contemporaries, and that's who we're talking about here. I can accept it with Arthur Conan Doyle, but not here, at least not without further evidence that this isn't just an affectation of the presenter (or a simple misunderstanding).
