Cowboy Classics
Regular price
€107.99
In the American psyche, the "Wild West" is a mythic-historical place where our 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 mythic-historical 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, this book examines the surprising connections between these seemingly disparate yet closely related genres, shedding light on both in the process.
Kirsten Day is Associate Professor of Classics at Augustana College in Rock Island, Illinois where she lives with her husband Sean and sons Harper and Owen. A native of Arkansas, she received her B.A. from Rice University, completed her graduate work at the University of Arkansas, and studied at the American School of Classical Studies in Athens. Her research interests include women in antiquity and classics in popular culture.