Data di Pubblicazione:
2016
Abstract:
Today the younger generation is incredulous or at least very skeptical
when confronted with the totalizing statement that the western dominated
the imaginary of the first seventy years of the twentieth century. Youth
may be aware of some residual aspects of this cultural phenomenon, but it
is difficult for them to accept the idea that two or three generations of
American adolescents – and two generations of European ones –
constructed their gendered identity on western heroes such as the Lone
Ranger, Shane, Wyatt Earp, Davy Crockett, “Buffalo Bill” and
subsequently on actors like John Wayne, Gary Cooper, James Stewart,
Alan Ladd, Gregory Peck, Henry Fonda, Glenn Ford, Burt Lancaster,
Randolph Scott, Clint Eastwood and so on. But data concerning both sales
and derivative works is very reliable: no other genre matched the western
until the 1970s, that is when the western entered its radical crisis and
noir/detective/thriller fiction took over the globalized mass market.
Conventionally, the history of the classic western begins with Owen
Wister’s novel The Virginian (1902), a great success soon to be overcome
by Zane Grey’s Riders of the Purple Sage (1912). From then on the mass
market was conquered by western novels by very prolific novelists and
short story writers such as Zane Grey himself, A.B. Guthrie, Luke Short
(Frederick Glidden), Frederick Manfred, Conrad Richter, Ernest Haycox,
up to Louis L’Amour, who apparently sold more than two hundred and
fifty million copies of his novels. If we turn to cinema, radio, television
and comics, the public is even broader. For several decades most people –
not just men – relied on the “western code” to construct their own identity.
But the western was not created in 1902. It is in the nineteenth century
that the western shapes its diverse heroes, its winning narrative structures,
and moves from the “inventions” of James Fenimore Cooper to the
formulaic texts which invaded the market at the time of the Civil War; it is
in the second half of the nineteenth century, through the dime novels, that
the western acquires its centrality and its mesmerizing force doomed to be
so long-running.
This essay tries to investigate the modes through which the western
acquired such a leading role, following its genealogy and putting a
particular emphasis on the disseminating power the western dime novels
had from the early 1860s.
when confronted with the totalizing statement that the western dominated
the imaginary of the first seventy years of the twentieth century. Youth
may be aware of some residual aspects of this cultural phenomenon, but it
is difficult for them to accept the idea that two or three generations of
American adolescents – and two generations of European ones –
constructed their gendered identity on western heroes such as the Lone
Ranger, Shane, Wyatt Earp, Davy Crockett, “Buffalo Bill” and
subsequently on actors like John Wayne, Gary Cooper, James Stewart,
Alan Ladd, Gregory Peck, Henry Fonda, Glenn Ford, Burt Lancaster,
Randolph Scott, Clint Eastwood and so on. But data concerning both sales
and derivative works is very reliable: no other genre matched the western
until the 1970s, that is when the western entered its radical crisis and
noir/detective/thriller fiction took over the globalized mass market.
Conventionally, the history of the classic western begins with Owen
Wister’s novel The Virginian (1902), a great success soon to be overcome
by Zane Grey’s Riders of the Purple Sage (1912). From then on the mass
market was conquered by western novels by very prolific novelists and
short story writers such as Zane Grey himself, A.B. Guthrie, Luke Short
(Frederick Glidden), Frederick Manfred, Conrad Richter, Ernest Haycox,
up to Louis L’Amour, who apparently sold more than two hundred and
fifty million copies of his novels. If we turn to cinema, radio, television
and comics, the public is even broader. For several decades most people –
not just men – relied on the “western code” to construct their own identity.
But the western was not created in 1902. It is in the nineteenth century
that the western shapes its diverse heroes, its winning narrative structures,
and moves from the “inventions” of James Fenimore Cooper to the
formulaic texts which invaded the market at the time of the Civil War; it is
in the second half of the nineteenth century, through the dime novels, that
the western acquires its centrality and its mesmerizing force doomed to be
so long-running.
This essay tries to investigate the modes through which the western
acquired such a leading role, following its genealogy and putting a
particular emphasis on the disseminating power the western dime novels
had from the early 1860s.
Tipologia CRIS:
1.2.01 Contributi in volume (Capitoli o Saggi) - Book Chapters/Essays
Elenco autori:
Rosso, Stefano
Link alla scheda completa:
Titolo del libro:
Knowledge Dissemination in the Long Nineteenth Century: European and Transatlantic Perspectives