The Good, the Bad and the Ancient

Essays on the Greco-Roman Influence in Westerns

Buch | Softcover

227 Seiten

2022
McFarland & Co Inc (Verlag)
978-1-4766-6764-5 (ISBN)

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Outstanding film and television directors drew inspiration from antiquity when creating the Wild West, and the Graeco-Roman values and influences in their work have shaped our conceptions of the West for years. This first-of-its-kind collection of essays celebrates, affirms and critiques the West’s relationship with the classical world.

Although Americans are no longer compelled to learn Greek and Latin, classical ideals remain embedded in American law and politics, philosophy, oratory, history and especially popular culture. In the Western genre, many film and television directors (such as John Ford, Raoul Walsh, Howard Hawks, Anthony Mann and Sam Peckinpah) have drawn inspiration from antiquity, and the classical values and influences in their work have shaped our conceptions of the West for years.

This thought-provoking, first-of-its-kind collection of essays celebrates, affirms and critiques the West's relationship with the classical world. Explored are films like Cheyenne Autumn, The Wild Bunch, The Track of the Cat, Trooper Hook, The Furies, Heaven's Gate, and Slow West, as well as serials like Gunsmoke and Lonesome Dove.

Sue Matheson is a professor of English at the University College of the North in Manitoba, Canada.

Table of Contents

Acknowledgments

Introduction: America and Antiquity: Force and Thumos in the Western

Sue Matheson

Prologos

West of “Them”: Classical Allusions in Western Film

Kirsten Day

Aristotle and the Wild West: The Western as a Rhetorical Device

Chris Yogerst

Tragic Trails in Indian Country

Chorei, Satyr-Drama, and the Birth of Tragedy in John Ford’s Cheyenne Autumn (1964)

Sue Matheson

Peckinpah and the Problem of Catharsis; or: How Well Does The Wild Bunch Fit Aristotle’s Poetics?

Martin M. Winkler

Euripidean Sunsets: Tragedy, the Western, and Conflicts Within

Maria Cecília de Miranda N. Coelho

Cowboys and Catharsis

Pharmakos and the Bad Citizen Topos in Charles Marquis Warren’s Westerns: Trooper Hook, Tension at Table Rock and Charro!

Fernando Gabriel Pagnoni Berns

“Scratched blood”: The Erinyes and Anthony Mann’s The Furies

Kelly MacPhail

The Splendor of Bart Allison: Antigone and the Tragic Western Hero

Christopher Minz

Homer on Horseback

Homer’s Odyssey and Cattle Drive Westerns

Andrew Howe

Lonesome Dove: Uva uvam vivendo varia fit and Tragic Elements in a Western Epic

Benjamin Hufbauer

Blondie’s Odyssey: The Homeric Journey and American Mythmaking in The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly

Christopher J. Olson

Writing and Rewriting History: Myth in the Iliad and Heaven’s Gate

Brian Brems

Catastrophe

Gunsmoke’s Boot Hill and the Classical Underworld

Jim Daems

Orpheus on the Frontier: Slow West

Cynthia J. Miller

Influence of Classical Literature in Western Film: A Selective Bibliography

Camille McCutcheon

About the Contributors

Index

Erscheinungsdatum	10.03.2022
Zusatzinfo	18 photos, notes, bibliography, index
Verlagsort	Jefferson, NC
Sprache	englisch
Maße	178 x 254 mm
Gewicht	413 g
Themenwelt	Kunst / Musik / Theater ► Film / TV
	Geschichte ► Allgemeine Geschichte ► Altertum / Antike
	Geisteswissenschaften ► Sprach- / Literaturwissenschaft ► Anglistik / Amerikanistik
	Geisteswissenschaften ► Sprach- / Literaturwissenschaft ► Literaturwissenschaft
ISBN-10	1-4766-6764-0 / 1476667640
ISBN-13	978-1-4766-6764-5 / 9781476667645
Zustand	Neuware