Introduction

It may have been the first novel written by anyone who ever called the Ozarks home. If so, then it’s almost certainly not what you would expect. First published in 1854, The Life and Adventures of Joaquín Murieta, the Celebrated California Bandit would likely have taken its place in the dustbin of history alongside other dime novels of the nineteenth century if not for two “firsts” and a link with a twentieth-century American pop-cultural icon. The fictionalized tale of an actual Sonoran-born bandit in Mexican California is believed to be both the first novel penned by a Native American and the first published in California, two hefty firsts that are unlikely to make room for our humble regional claim in the author’s biographical entry anytime soon. Nor will his roots in the hills of Oklahoma and Arkansas earn billing over the assertion by some scholars that the novel inspired Johnston McCulley’s creation of the heroic Mexican character Zorro in 1919....

Pozdrowienia z Krakowa. "Belle Epoque" kontra "Tabu"

Two series premiered in 2017: British-American Taboo and Polish Belle Epoque. The year is not the only similarity – based on the statements by Edward Miszczak, head of programming of the TVN channel, resemblance was sought and even intended. Similitude in the main character’s image as well as the starting point of the story lines proved to be misleading. A closer look at both shows reveals that the only feature that they have in common is their rootedness in popular (and vernacular) cultural traditions: in Taboo intentional and visible references to political fiction, film noir aesthetics, graphic novel and heist movie; in Belle Epoque (topical but also stylistic) resemblance to popular gutter circulation novels (dime novels) on Polish territory at the turn of 19th and 20th centuries.

Gunslinging justice

Gunslinging justice explores American Westerns in a variety of media alongside the historical development of the American legal system to argue that Western shootouts are less overtly “anti-law” than has been previously assumed. While the genre’s climactic shootouts may look like a putatively masculine opposition to the codified and mediated American legal system, this gun violence is actually enshrined in the development of American laws regulating self-defense and gun possession. The climactic gun violence and stylized revenge drama of seminal Western texts then, seeks not to oppose "the law," but rather to expand its scope. The book’s interdisciplinary approach, which seeks to historicize and contextualize the iconographic tropes of the genre and its associated discourses across varied cultural and social forms, breaks from psychoanalytic perspectives which have long dominated studies of film and legal discourse and occluded historical contingencies integral to the work cultural forms do in the world. From nineteenth century texts like Cooper's The Last of the Mohicans (1826) and Reconstruction era dime novels, through early twentieth century works like The Virginian, to classic Westerns and more recent films like Unforgiven (1992), this book looks to the intersections between American law and various media that have enabled a cultural, social, and political acceptance of defensive gun violence that is still with us today.

American Literary History and the Turn toward Modernity

Approaching the period of 1880 to 1930 in American literature as one in which the processes of rethinking the past were as prevalent as wholly “new” works of art, this collection treats the century’s long turn as a site that overtly staged the tension among conflicting sets of values—those of past, present, and the imagined future. Navigating established literary modes as well as anticipatory inscriptions of the “modern,” turn-of-the-century authors continually negotiated ideological boundaries, treating the century’s long turn as a period ripe for experimentation. Essays in the collection, which range across topics such as canonicity, advice literature, Native American education, companionate marriage, turn-of-the-century feminism, dime novels, and the Harlem Renaissance, stress the hybridity born of multiple historical investments. As the authors of this collection demonstrate, the literature from the century’s turn is irreducible to the characteristics either of the nineteenth or the twentieth centuries; rather, it is literature of dual practices and multiple values that embodies elastic qualities of historical plurality – a true literature in transition.

Nazi Justice in Popular Legal Culture

Stories dealing with the detection of a crime, the hunt of the culprit, and his or her conviction were extremely popular in Nazi Germany. They were the product of an entertainment industry that remained in private hands far into the Second World War. Published as books, dime novels, films, radio plays, and dramas, crime stories were successfully commercialized and marketed through multiple media. Products of a popular culture must by definition be liked and consumed by the audience. Although this might sound like a tautology, it describes a premise that even the Nazi regime could not totally suspend. The products of popular culture were primarily a means to address the entertainment needs of the audience rather than being an instrument of indoctrination purposefully designed by the Nazi elite. These products could be regarded as the result of a negotiation process for a Nazi mainstream that tried to mediate the intentions of the producers, the interests of the regime, and the expectations of the recipients. What were the representations of law and order that the popular culture in NS Germany under these premises could offer? Telling about crime and justice in a popular and fictitious way demands a certain grade of reality. Such works result from genre conventions consumers of popular stories expect to be respected. The settings and ingredients in these novels and movies must be from this world. That does not mean realism in a literal sense but a rather realistic setting to make the fiction believable. What the story offers has to match the readers’ expectation at least in part. In a totalitarian society that wants to control potentially every aspect of life, the amount of realism required becomes problematic. As long as there is a gap between ideological theory and reality, any author who wants to incorporate aspects of the reader’s daily life to make the stories work cannot be sure if she or he has incorporated the necessary aspects. Stories that tell about crimes committed in a NS German society do not fit in this conception because they could create doubt about public security. Telling stories about police forces and a legal system that always acts in total accordance with the rule of law could point out the grotesque discrepancy of these descriptions with the reality of the rogue state of Nazi Germany.

Penny Dreadfuls, Story Papers, and Protosuperheroes (1825–1935)

This chapter examines the tradition of periodical adventure stories that existed in Britain during the period 1825–1935, focusing on “story papers” and “penny bloods,” also known as “penny dreadfuls.” It first provides a historical background on the emergence of British comics before discussing “story papers” and “penny dreadfuls,” and especially their relationship with similar publications in America and the characters who, in retrospect, can be seen as protosuperheroes and villains. It also shows how these publications established the market and audience for adventure comics in Britain and influenced the rise of a similar market in America, where dime novels and pulp magazines, along with newspaper strips, would later influence the rise of superhero comics. The chapter concludes with an analysis of three of the early treatments of the superhuman from science-fiction literature: Edward Bulwer-Lytton's The Coming Race (1871), Philip Wylie's The Gladiator (1930), and Olaf Stapledon's Odd John (1935).

From the Nineteenth to the Twentieth Century

Chapter three follows the lineage of frontier and Western fantasies from the nineteenth century to the twentieth via the comic book adaptations of novels like The Last of the Mohicans and comic depictions of frontier figures like Boone and Girty. Following in the line of late-nineteenth century dime novels and early twentieth century film, comic books inherited many of the tropes and conventions of the Western and frontier genres, including those of the white Indian and playing Indian. Multiple adaptations of The Last of the Mohicans, from the 1940s to the 2000s, testify to that story's persistent appeal. In the 1950s, a flurry of Boone comics demonstrates his popularity as an American hero while engaging in many of the themes and cultural implications that are essential to this book's focus.