Whatever we might think of them, popular Westerns, both movies and cheap paperbacks on the newsstand racks, have had a powerful impact on both U.S. culture and Western European culture in general. Collected here are new studies from a variety of critical approaches of popular Westerns by scholars from the U.S., the U.K., and Europe, new studies of classic William S. Hart, John Ford, Clint Eastwood, and Sam Peckinpah film Westerns as well as new studies of seldom studied writers such as James Warner Bellah, Clarence Mulford, Charles Portis, and Oakley Hall.
This pioneering book introduces the “feminine,” a dimension of film not reducible to women’s experience. Exploring this Jungian concept through movies spanning seven decades, it enhances the appreciation of film as a depth psychological medium.
