I would like to remind you that the Western world not only lives in the literature (poetry, plays, screenplays, novels, tales, comic books) but also in music, painting, sculpture, drawing, photography, open-air shows (reconstitutions of outstanding episodes of the History of the United States at the time of the conquest of the West) and of course the movies.
The Western novel proves to be a generic term including different kind of writings.
Discovery, exploration and expedition narratives relating the first contacts of Europeans with the New World, its wild regions and its Indians tribes. These events were either written by the explorers themselves or by authors who, in most cases, used the expedition journals as sources of information and fictionalized the facts and figures.
The testimony of people who lived in or crossed these regions when they were opened to settlement. Three kinds of testimonies can be pointed out : the narratives of ordinary people, those of professional writers who experienced personally and bore witness to the life in the West and finally the authors who took the tone from a witness to relate a real adventure. All these evidences can take the form of diaries or autobiographies.
The traditional Western novel recounting the adventures of made-up heroes (based on the typical characters of men and women who experienced the way west) or significant episodes in the life of the most colourful and famous figures of the American West. A distinction can be made between : on the one hand the narratives very far from reality and on the other hand the stories that told the everyday life of the pioneers who transformed these savage and desertic countries into places where the law and the society were in charge of turning the land to modernity.
The tall tale or humoristic Western novel. These anecdotal novels, written in a funny style, very often tell stories taken from oral and local traditions.
" Sundown " Western novel bearing witness of the end of the conquest period and of " modern times " apparition.
The inspired Western novel that pick up again symbols and myths of the Western and transpose them in other times and places.
