The Spectral West : Super-Nature and the Gothic in the Western Film

McDonald, Keith/ Johnson, Wayne

Anthem Press（2025/07発売）

• 製本 Hardcover:ハードカバー版／ページ数 250 p.
• 言語 ENG
• 商品コード 9781839987922
• DDC分類 791.4365878

Full Description

This book considers the presence of the supernatural and Gothic elements of the Western on screen. These dark and sinister undertones often exist in Western narratives to draw attention to the ever-present issue of death and its haunting resonance which characters encounter. This book examines this through key historic moments in Western film and its contemporary incarnations. The book detects imposing correlations in themes and currents between the Gothic and the Western relating to existential crisis and a loss of faith in ideologies and  institutions. These themes represent the tensions between the old and the new, the deranged insistence on civility and order in a chaotic landscape, disillusionment and the shattering of faith in the natural order, and even nature  and order themselves. The Western, just like the Gothic tale, reminds us that new frontiers are mired in the past, and optimism and survival are hunted down and haunted by guilt-ridden past and passed anxieties and traumas

Contents

Introduction- The Western as Eco-Gothic; Part One- The Savage West; Chapter 1- The Revenant West: Gothic and Spectral Landscapes; Chapter 2- Ghost Riders in the Lonesome West: The Homely and the Un-Homely; Part Two- To the Boneyard; Chapter 3- Dead Men Walking; Chapter 4- Desolation Road; Part Three- The New Viscera in the 21st Century Western; Chapter 5- Tooth and Claw; Chapter 6- "I Like the Way You Die, Boy."; Bibliography; Index;