Cowboy Classics

The Roots of the American Western in the Epic Tradition

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In the American psyche, the Wild West is a mythic-historical place where the nation?s values and ideologies were formed. In this violent and uncertain world, the cowboy is the ultimate hero, fighting the bad guys, forging notions of manhood, and delineating what constitutes honor as he works to build civilization out of wilderness. Tales from this mythical place are best known from that most American of media: film. In the Greco-Roman societies that form the foundation of Western civilization, similar narratives were presented in what for them was the most characteristic, and indeed most filmic, genre: epic. Like Western film, the epics of Homer and Virgil focus on the mythichistorical past and its warriors who worked to establish the ideological framework of their respective civilizations. Through a close reading of films like High Noon and Shane, Kirsten Day examines the surprising connections between these seemingly disparate yet closely related genres.