61 pages • 2 hours read
Robert W. ChambersThe King in Yellow
Fiction | Short Story Collection | Adult | Published in 1895A modern alternative to SparkNotes and CliffsNotes, SuperSummary offers high-quality Study Guides with detailed chapter summaries and analysis of major themes, characters, and more.
Background
Socio-Historical Context: The Fin de Siècle
“Fin de siècle” is a French term that translates to “end of the century” and is expressive of the period at the turn of the 19th century into the early 20th century (c. 1880-1914), and the style of arts, literature, ideas, and social mores which were prevalent at the time. The culture of the fin de siècle first originated in the bohemian and artistic communities of Paris, as a reaction against commercialism and the bourgeoisie. These ideas came to influence much of Europe and are associated with images of decadence, feelings of ennui and disillusionment, moral decay, and the coming of a new era.
People who adhered to the spirit of fin de siècle were often influenced by new theories of psychology prevalent at the time. Of particular significance is B. A. Morel’s concept of “mental degeneration,” in which he argued that human mental capacity could be degraded from generation to generation through the influence of damaging environments as well as personal influences such as excessive drinking and drug use. He believed these issues caused moral degeneracy, disability, and mental health conditions in the subsequent generations (Schwarz, Julian, and Burkhart Brückner. “Biography of Benedict Augustin Morel.” Biographical Archive of Psychiatry). At the time, there was also a prevalent belief in a close connection between creative genius and mental health conditions, including that one could lead to the other. These theories have since been disproved by modern advances in science and psychology—and much of the terminology and attitudes are now considered to be derogatory—but, as commonly-held ideas at the time, they strongly influenced the fin de siècle movement.
The fin de siècle’s preoccupation with “madness,” degeneracy, and decadence led to expressions of anxiety that permeated the literature and art of the time. It was particularly influential in late Victorian gothic literature. Key examples include Robert Louis Stevenson’s The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde (1886), Oscar Wilde’s The Picture of Dorian Gray (1890), and Bram Stoker’s Dracula (1897). Chambers’s 1985 The King in Yellow, particularly the first four stories, are in this tradition.
Genre Context: Early Supernatural Horror
In writing The King in Yellow, Chambers was consciously adding to a recognized generic tradition. Horror, particularly supernatural and macabre horror, has a long history in English literature, and Chambers’s early work is an important example in this genre. In his critical study of the genre, “Supernatural Horror in Literature,” H. P. Lovecraft argues that “the oldest and strongest emotion of mankind is fear” and that fact lends genuineness, universality, and dignity to “the weirdly horrible tale as a literary form” (Lovecraft, H. P. “Supernatural Horror in Literature.” HPLovecraft.com). Lovecraft pointed to Chambers’s horror stories as fine works in this tradition; although Chambers’s later work was in the historical, romance, and adventure genres, his early stories are still well-regarded works in the horror genre, including those collected in The King in Yellow.
Chambers’s work led the way for a different kind of horror story. Generally at the time, horror in the tradition of gothic literature (such as Dracula) relied on the inclusion of monsters, gory descriptions, and overt melodramatic plot elements; Chambers’s work uses vague, uncanny references and builds up tension through motifs from one story to the next, leaving the exact nature of the threat or “monster” up to the reader’s imagination. As such, The King in Yellow is situated between the macabre stories of Edgar Allan Poe (1809-1849) to the horror stories of H. P. Lovecraft (1890-1937). Poe’s influence on Chambers is evident in the images of a haunted king, shadowy phantoms, and evil things coming to corrupt, motifs which appear in Poe’s 1839 poem “The Haunted Palace” and echo throughout The King in Yellow. Chambers also draws inspiration from the work of Ambrose Bierce (1842-1914), an American writer of historical realist fiction, satire, and early horror. Chambers borrows heavily from Bierce’s short stories, “An Inhabitant of Carcosa” (1886) and “Haïta the Shepherd” (1891), from which he takes the names Carcosa, Hastur, and Hali, although Chambers alters the details of these places significantly.
Chambers’s stories in the horror genre are now his most well-regarded works, which influenced the development of the genre into the 20th century. In particular, H. P. Lovecraft read Chambers in the 1920s, and drew inspiration from The King in Yellow for aspects of his influential Cthulhu mythos. The fictional play, The King in Yellow, the king, the yellow sign, and the mysterious lands of Carcosa and Hastur feature in Lovecraft’s Cthulhu stories. Lovecraft praises Chambers’s supernatural horror stories as reaching “notable heights of cosmic fear.” He laments that Chambers turned his attention to other genres of fiction, and “did not further develop a vein in which he could so easily have become a recognised master” (Lovecraft, H. P. “Supernatural Horror in Literature.”). Similarly, the critic Christophe Thill argues that “Chambers excels in horror, he is convincing when he talks about friendship or artistic creation, but under his quill, love or parental fondness become honeyed, ponderous, indigestible” (Thill, Christophe. “The King in Yellow: An Introduction.” Internet Archive).
