Origins of a Genre: Early Influences on the Western Before Film
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Authors
Starling, Natsumi Monteze
Issue Date
2023-05-09
Type
Thesis
Language
en_US
Keywords
American history , Dime novels , Mass media and history , Travel journalism , Western fiction , Academic theses
Alternative Title
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.
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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.