dc.contributor.author	Starling, Natsumi Monteze
dc.coverage.spatial	United States	en_US
dc.coverage.temporal	c.1850-1980	en_US
dc.date.accessioned	2023-05-23T20:41:10Z
dc.date.available	2023-05-23T20:41:10Z
dc.date.issued	2023-05-09
dc.identifier.other	635a552b-2cf9-4859-8c06-6d050d0568e0	en_US
dc.identifier.uri	https://hdl.handle.net/10428/6715
dc.description.abstract	This paper explores the earlier influences on the Western genre that are not often discussed when outlining the genre's history. If nonfiction works qualify, the travel journal is perhaps the earliest form of Western entertainment; if Westerns must strictly be fiction, then the adventure novels that these travel journals birthed would be some of the first. While the aim is not necessarily to pinpoint the exact beginning of the Western, it is important to try and define its beginnings for the purposes of demonstrating that the genre has existed for nearly a century before the advent of film. Too often is the entire genre understood and discussed through a selective view defined entirely by Hollywood’s Golden Age of Westerns. The films from this era shaped what scholarship considered to be a Western, but since the 1970s, the Western has changed, and the Revisionist mode of Western is the new dominant mode. Histories on the West, however, do not reflect this shift and continue to engage primarily with the Classical West, whereas media studies have engaged with the Revisionist West. This has resulted in a fractured understanding of the genre’s history. Influenced by Classical Westerns, scholars dismissed a century's worth of media in favor of what most closely resembled the Western of Hollywood, The Virginian. The Virginian, however, was not the first to display the characteristics of the Western, nor is the Western completely defined by the Classic mode today. This paper is not the first to acknowledge earlier works of Western fiction, however, it is an attempt to gather disparate ideas on the topic into one cohesive narrative and hopefully encourage further research into the topic.	en_US
dc.description.tableofcontents	INTRODUCTION 1 -- Chapter I: FOUNDATIONS 6 -- Chapter II: VISIONS OF THE WEST 17 -- Chapter III: FRONTIER ADVENTURES 46 -- Chapter IV: THE VIRGINIAN, THE COWBOY, AND THE “FIRST” WESTERN 71 -- CONCLUSION 92 -- ENDNOTES 94 -- BIBLIOGRAPHY 110	en_US
dc.format.extent	1 electronic record (.pdf), 129 pages, 673,340 bytes.	en_US
dc.format.mimetype	application/pdf	en_US
dc.language.iso	en_US	en_US
dc.rights	This dissertation is protected by the Copyright Laws of the United States (Public Law 94-553, revised in 1976). Consistent with fair use as defined in the Copyright Laws, brief quotations from this material are allowed with proper acknowledgement. Use of the materials for financial gain with the author's expressed written permissions is not allowed.	en_US
dc.subject	American history	en_US
dc.subject	Dime novels	en_US
dc.subject	Mass media and history	en_US
dc.subject	Travel journalism	en_US
dc.subject	Western fiction	en_US
dc.subject	Academic theses	en_US
dc.title	Origins of a Genre: Early Influences on the Western Before Film	en_US
dc.type	Thesis	en_US
dc.contributor.department	Department of History	en_US
dc.description.advisor	Block, Mary
dc.description.committee	Haggard, Dixie
dc.description.committee	Fitzgerald, Sarah
dc.description.committee	James, Christine
dc.description.degree	M.A.	en_US
dc.description.major	History	en_US