Ranging from the novels of James Fenimore Cooper to Louis L'Amour, and from classic films like Stagecoach to spaghetti Westerns like A Fistful of Dollars, Mitchell shows how Westerns helped assuage a series of crises in American culture. This landmark study shows that the Western owes its perennial appeal not to unchanging conventions but to the deftness with which it responds to the obsessions and fears of its audience. And no obsession, Lee Mitchell argues, has figured more prominently in the Western than what it means to be a man. -Elegantly written. . . . provocative . ....
Ranging from the novels of James Fenimore Cooper to Louis L'Amour, and from classic films like Stagecoach to spaghetti Westerns like A Fistf...
Propelled across the continent by notions of rugged individualism" and "manifest destiny," pioneer Americans soon discovered that such slogans only partly disguised the fact that building an empire meant destroying a wilderness. Through an astonishing range of media, they voiced their concern about America's westward mission. Drawing on a wide variety of evidence, Lee Clark Mitchell portrays the growing apprehensions
Originally published in 1981.
The Princeton Legacy Library uses the latest print-on-demand technology to again make available previously out-of-print books...
Propelled across the continent by notions of rugged individualism" and "manifest destiny," pioneer Americans soon discovered that such slogans only...
Lee Clark Mitchell takes a position against those critics looking to attach ""post"" to the all-too-familiar genre. For though the frontier disappeared long ago, though men on horseback have become commonplace, and though films of all sorts have always, necessarily defied generic patterns, the Western continues to enthrall audiences.
Lee Clark Mitchell takes a position against those critics looking to attach ""post"" to the all-too-familiar genre. For though the frontier disappeare...
