Cowboy Classics: The Roots of the American Western in the Epic Tradition

by Kirsten Day

Overview

In the American psyche, the "Wild West" is a mythic-historical place where our nation’s values and ideologies were formed. In this violent and uncertain world, the cowboy is the ultimate hero, fighting the bad guys, forging notions of manhood, and delineating what constitutes honor as he works to build civilization out of wilderness. Tales from this mythical place are best known from that most American of media: film. In the Greco-Roman societies that form the foundation of Western civilization, similar narratives were presented in what for them was the most characteristic, and indeed most filmic, genre: epic. Like Western film, the epics of Homer and Virgil focus on the mythic-historical past and its warriors who worked to establish the ideological framework of their respective civilizations. Through a close reading of films like High Noon and Shane, this book examines the surprising connections between these seemingly disparate yet closely related genres, shedding light on both in the process.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781474402460
Publisher:	Edinburgh University Press
Publication date:	05/27/2016
Series:	Screening Antiquity
Edition description:	New Edition
Pages:	240
Product dimensions:	6.00(w) x 9.30(h) x 0.70(d)

About the Author

Kirsten Day is Associate Professor of Classics at Augustana College in Rock Island, Illinois where she lives with her husband Sean and sons Harper and Owen. A native of Arkansas, she received her B.A. from Rice University, completed her graduate work at the University of Arkansas, and studied at the American School of Classical Studies in Athens. Her research interests include women in antiquity and classics in popular culture.

Table of Contents

Prologue

1. Howard Hawks’s Red River

2. Fred Zinnemann’s High Noon

3. George Stevens’s Shane

4. John Ford’s The Searchers

5. John Ford’s The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance

Conclusion

What People are Saying About This

Geoff Bakewell

Cowboy Classics is a straight-talking study in cultural reception. Day's analyses of Golden Age western films in light of Homer and Virgil are nuanced and deeply persuasive. Her work has much to teach us about heroism, gender, and the shaping of cultural identity, in both the present and the past.

Editorial Reviews

Day covers a number of aspects exploring both genres and goes in detail concerning important aspects of the heroic characters such as (sparse) language used, the complex system of ideal manhood (and gender roles in general) and the insistence to stand one’s ground to fight for an ideal or justice. Her solid chapter on High Noon in particular makes this very clear. Recommend reading for any fan of Westerns, classic epic or scholar of American Studies.

popcultureshelf.com - Alexander Ebert

Cowboy Classics is a straight-talking study in cultural reception. Day's analyses of Golden Age western films in light of Homer and Virgil are nuanced and deeply persuasive. Her work has much to teach us about heroism, gender, and the shaping of cultural identity, in both the present and the past.

Geoff Bakewell