ABSTRACT

This introduction presents an overview of the key concepts discussed in the subsequent chapters of this book. The book looks at the interdisciplinary transfers that the idea of the American West has gone through. It addresses the revision of the myth of the American West. The chapter shows how the construction of freeways, roads, and bridges in a metropolis such as Los Angeles has altered the memoirs of the inhabitants of that megacity and, thus, of the very notion of humanity. It presents the figure of El Zorro as a popular hero in the American West and outlines the process of “Americanization” that the originally Hispanic figure went through. Since the West as a myth and an idea disembarked in the European popular imagination, it has recurrently been constructed as a literary, cinematographic space, circumscribed by a very specific natural environment and a narrow human geography: arid landscapes, vast pastures, natives, and cowboys.