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Small historical overview of the Western literature
When Christopher Columbus discovered America in 1492, he introduced to the Old Word a wild and unspoiled land and its inhabitants. These "primitive" tribes have inspired different Europeans authors who introduced Indian figures to bring some exoticism in their stories. François René de Chateaubriand wrote Atala or Les amours de deux sauvages dans le désert (1801) in which he tells the tragic romance between the Indian Chactas and Atala.
When the first white men went to America, a new wave appeared in literature under the form of captivity narratives. For example : "The Niagara prisonners" (1816) Jesse Lynch Holman.
Then came the exploration accounts written by intrepid adventurers who first mapped out North America. A fine example : History of the Lewis and Clark expedition (the first publication of expedition journals in 1814).
Being so more accessible, the American countries, attracted thousands of pioneers who overran these unsploiled places with various aims (political, economical or religious). They leaved numerous testominies on their live, difficulties and hopes in their letters and diaries. Example : Little house on the Prairie, Laura Ingalls Wilder (1935).
Professional writers were not indifferent to the spectaculor piece of History that was happening right before their eyes and their accounts contributed to create the Western mythology. Journalists and authors began to write novels and novelettes that, according to their inspiration, took the form of Dime novels or Western stories. The adventures told in the Dime novels were characterized by a lack of realism and a brimful imagination. On the contrary, Western stories did their best to relate the rough realities of the life in the West and on the Frontier. Among the numerous authors who have illustrated the "classic period" of Western (1860-1890), only a few will be listed hereafter : Louis L'Amour, Ned Buntline, Willa Cather, James Fenimore Cooper, Frederick Faust alias Max Brand, Edna Ferber, Olivier Gloux alias Gustave Aimard, Zane Grey, Bret Harte, Jack London.
Others, like Samuel L. Clemens alias Mark Twain, granted to their writings a particular folk language and a typical western humour. So they created the humoristic Western genre also called tall tale. Example : Roughing it ! (Mark Twain).
The Western literature went on like that till the dawn of the twentieth century which means the end of an epoch and another way for Western : the "sundown" Western novel. In this new style, the authors described the slow but unavoidable disappearing of a certain way of life. Example : The chief (John Steinbeck), Smoke on the Prairie (Conrad Richter).
When the settlement of the Far West was completed, many people thought that nothing new would open up new horizons in literature. It was a real mistake. A lot of writers didn't want to leave a vein that was so successful with readers and taking up again the themes and symbols of the conquest of the West, they transposed them in other times and others places. The inspired Western novel was created and it took several forms, as for example the "cape and sword" Western (Zorro, Johnston McCuley).
Presently, Western literature goes on principally evolving in the way of inspired Western novels and is far from keeping within the limits of ancient tracks. Nowadays, authors still create original novels. Among the French contemporary writers, Albert Bonneau tells (in his book Tom Cyclone) the story of a cowboy who is stuntman in movies and Maurice G. Dantec combines Western and science fiction in his novel Babylon babies (1999). Concerning anglophone novelists, Nicholas Evans (The horse whisperer) relates in the "The loop" (1998), the fight of a agent for the protection of endangered species against the ranchers who want to exterminate all the wolves in their region and Cormac McCarthy sets out in "Cities of the Plains", the last volume of "The trilogy of the borders" issued in 1999, the romance of a young cowboy in the middle of the twentieth century.
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