1,721,256 research outputs found
The Winning of the Western: Early Dissemination of a Literary Genre
No full textToday 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
Tradurre la "Dirty War". La narrativa della Guerra del Vietnam e l'editoria italiana
No full textE' il primo saggio che cerca di fornire una valutazione della politica degli editori italiani di fronte alla narrativa della Guerra del Vietnam, dal 1965 al 2012. Contiene una bibliografia completa delle traduzioni italiane della narrativa in questione.It is the first essay trying to evaluate the politics of Italian publishing companies dealing with American War Literature works, from 1965 to 2012. It contains a full bibliography of Italian translations of Vietnam War fiction
Introduction [a Knowledge Dissemination in the Long Nineteenth Century. European and Transatlantic Perspectives]
No full textNote sulla violenza in "Django Unchained"
No full textFocussing on the treatment of "violence" in "Django Unchained", the author shows the innovative aspects of Tarantino's work within the Western genre, referring to the established tradition in cinema and literature
Il western: attualità di un genere sempre al tramonto
No full textThe essay shows the multiple aspects of a lasting literary and cinematic genre
Conflitto e violenza nel Western contemporaneo
No full textThe essay maps the persistence and the resilience of violence in American Western fiction and culture, showing how the use of violence has changed in the last fifty years both in literature and film, decostructing the notion of "regeneration through violence" at work in the classic western
La narrativa western in traduzione: un aggiornamento
Full text linkThis panoramic bibliographic essay resumes the updates published in Ácoma up to 2002 and focuses on the western in Italy. The first section concentrates on American western fiction translated into Italian since 1828; the second on westerns written by Italian writers; and the third on the western in Italy after the “western crisis” of the late 1960s, that is, in the so called “post-western” narratives
Modi della violenza: note su The Counselor di Cormac McCarthy
Full text linkThe essay examines the evolution of the treatment of violence in the works of Cormac McCarthy, with a special focus on his recent script "The Counselor" (2013)
- …
