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Biography
Cooper was raised near Otsego Lake in central New York,
where his father owned a large property known as Cooperstown
-- at the age of twenty he inherited his father's fortune
and married Susan De Lancy. Soon to become America's first
successful novelist, Cooper wrote his first book in 1820
to prove to his wife that he could write a better novel than
one they had been reading together. Though not an auspicious
start, this novel, Precaution, was followed by The
Spy (1821) and then by his breakthrough novel The
Pioneers (1823), the first of five Natty Bumppo books
known as the Leather-Stocking Tales. The popularity
of the Leather-Stocking Tales -- all historical romances
set in America -- gave Cooper the epithet "The American Scott," and
Natty Bumppo, the aged hunter, would become an icon in American
literature and culture. The other Leather-Stocking Tales are Last
of the Mohicans (1826), The Prairie (1827), The
Pathfinder (1840), and The Deerslayer (1841).
Explorations
When Cooper is referred to (or written off) as "the American
Scott," the phrase usually refers to Cooper's romantic and
epic adventure stories about Hawkeye (Natty Bumppo) and Chingachgook,
his Mohegan friend and companion. These novels do have much
in common with Walter Scott's tales of Ivanhoe, Rob
Roy, and other heroes of a bygone England and Scotland.
But the stories of Natty did not begin as tales of derring-do. The
Pioneers (1823), the first in the long series, grew out
of Cooper's personal experience of growing up in the quick-changing
frontier of upstate New York, where his father (like Judge
Temple in the novel) was a patrician landowner and where
strong traces of another age, of hunters, trappers, scouts,
and Native Americans, were still to be seen among the expanding
white settlements. Though Cooper can be grouped with the
American Romantics, The Pioneers has much to recommend
it as an early work of realism, a sharp-eyed and even prophetic
account of the small, important details of an emerging culture,
and of the cultures which were rapidly disappearing from
that landscape.
1. It's not unusual for a Romantic novel to feature a
hero with extraordinary or even supernatural skills with
a weapon: prowess with a magic sword or a bow and arrow
or a lance. In chapter III of The Pioneers we have
an account of Natty as an eighty-year-old frontiersman,
bringing down a pigeon with one shot of a musket, while
the people of the town go to work with shotguns and even
with a cannon. What special significance does Natty's shot
take on in this chapter?
2. Cooper's prose is often described as ponderous. Read
the first two paragraphs of chapter III of The Pioneers,
and comment on the advantages and disadvantages of setting
the scene and opening the action in this style. Look at
the word choices and sentence lengths, and select specific
phrases for consideration.
3. Read carefully the dialogue between Marmaduke and
his daughter, Elizabeth, in chapter II of The Pioneers.
How would you describe the sound and pace of this conversation?
This kind of interaction was popular in Romantic novels
and on the nineteenth-century stage. How does it differ
from dialogue in modern or realistic fiction, and how can
we account for the appeal of this older form?
Other sites to consult:
James
Fenimore Cooper. A description of historical
references and sources in Cooper's works. Also includes
links to related sites; a biography; and timeline
of Cooper's life and works.
James
Fenimore Cooper page. From the PAL: Perspectives
in American Literature site maintained by Paul
P. Reuben (California State University, Stanislaus).
Includes a diagram of the relationships between The
Leatherstocking Tales and an outline of Cooper's
literary achievements.
The
Last of the Mohicans: The Classic Text.
A fascinating exhibition focusing on the text's
history from a number of angles. Includes images
from different editions of the text, a brief summary,
and a biography of Cooper.
James
Fenimore Cooper Society home page. Includes
an in-depth discussion of Cooper's works on stage;
scholarly papers; and Samuel
Clemens's essay "Fenimore Cooper's Literary
Offenses."
Cooper's
Indians. A three-part essay with textual
examples by Adriana Rissetto (University of Virginia
American Studies site). Part of a larger discussion
called "Romancing the Indian: Sentimentalizing
and Demonizing in Cooper and Twain."
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