Last Week

III. Lit. of the New Republic (1776-1837)

• Noah Webster

• Washington Irving

This Week

• James Fenimore Cooper

• Edgar Allan Poe

James Fenimore Cooper

• Born 1789 in New Jersey

• Started writing 1820

• Lived in New York & Europe

• Died 1851

James Fenimore Cooper

Famous for…

• 1st major American novelist

• Conservative

• Cooperstown, New York (wealthy landowner)

• Leatherstocking tales

• Also wrote spy novels, sea novels, works on democracy

Leatherstocking Tales

Collection of five novels

• The Pioneers (1823)

• The Last of the Mohicans (1826)

• The Prairie (1827)

• The Pathfinder (1840)

• The Deerslayer (1841)

Leatherstocking tales

• Invention of frontiersman/hero

Natty Bumppo

Leatherstocking

Hawkeye

La lounge carabine

• Motif of ”riding into sunset”

• Common man as hero

The Last of the Mohicans - characters

• Leatherstocking• Chingachgook • Uncas

• Magua

• Major Heyward• Cora (dark-haired)• Alice (blonde)

• Col. Munro

The Last of the Mohicans – character groupings

• Heyward + Alice (blonde)

• Uncas → Cora ← Magua

• Leatherstocking

• Chingachgook

Implications of groupings

• Cultural Relativism

Leatherstocking = man between cultures

Values Indian & European cultures in their own contexts

No mixing of cultures

Implications

• Miscegenation

-No interracial marriages

-Death is result

-Leatherstocking as symbol of infertility

-Indian doomed – hence Uncas is the last

Modern version

• Reverses role of females

• Drops Cora’s past• Sexualizes

frontiersman

• Prevents intermarriage by killing characters

Original Leatherstocking

Daniel Boone

(1734-1819)• Opened Cumberland

Gap• Settled Kentucky• Published own story

1784• Moved to Missouri• National hero at death

Frontiersman

• Image survives from

Daniel Boone

to

Leatherstocking

to

Hollywood Western

Lone Rider

• Loner• Rarely talks• Never marries• Individualist

• Frontier as borderland

Lone Frontiersman: Interpretations

• Macho

• Boy’s hero

• Individualist

• Existentialist

• Sterility

• Racist

Image of Indians

Noble savage

vs.

Devil

Image of Indians

At a little distance in advance stood Uncas, his whole person thrown powerfully into view. The travellers anxiously regarded the upright, flexible figure of the young Mohican, graceful and unrestrained in the attitudes and movements of nature. Though his person was more than usually screened by a green and fringed hunting shirt, like that of the white man, there was no concealment to his dark, glancing, fearful eye, alike terrible and calm; the bold outline of his high haughty features, pure in their native red; or to the dignified elevation of his receding forehead, together with all the finest proportions of a noble head, bared to the generous scalping tuft.

Image of Indians

The savage spurned the worthless rags, and perceiving that the shawl had already become a prize to another, his bantering but sullen smile changed to a gleam of ferocity, he dashed the head of the infant against a rock, and cast its quivering remains to her very feet.

Reactions to Cooper

• Racist images of Indians

• Unrealistic language– Mark Twain’s ”Fenimore Cooper’s Literary

Offences”

• International bestseller

Influences on Cooper

Sir Walter Scott

• Historical novels

• Dichotomies of the Romance

• (good-bad; light-dark)

• Typical of era

Lit of the New Republic – The Big Three

• Washington Irving

(short fiction)

• James F. Cooper

(novel)

• Willam Cullen Bryant

(poetry)

European forms

American environment

Historical emphasis

Edgar Allan Poe

• Born 1809• Raised by foster

parents• Spent 5 years in

school in England• Married cousin• Published poetry &

criticism• Died 1849

E.A. Poe

• Belongs to no region of country

• Doesn’t strictly fit into categories

• None of his writings take place in U.S.

• Suffered from real poverty, not genteel poverty

E.A. Poe - Achievements

• Reputation suffered at his death

• Revered in Europe

• Opinion split in U.S.– Psychological writer, or– ”Jingle man”

Misinformation

• Some caused by friends

• Some caused by own writings

-artist or money-maker?

• Not a drug addict

Literary work

• Detective story (”Murders in the Rue Morgue”)

• Horror tales (Tales of the Grotesque and Arabesque)

• Handful of poems

• Literary critic (”Philosophy of Composition”)

”The Philosophy of Composition”

• Written as explanation of ”The Raven” (1845)

• Articulates theory of short story– Unity of effect– Read at one sitting

The Raven

Once upon a midnight dreary, while I pondered, weak and weary, Over many a quaint and curious volume of forgotten lore,    While I nodded, nearly napping, suddenly there came a tapping, As of some one gently rapping, rapping at my chamber door. "'Tis some visitor," I muttered, "tapping at my chamber door-                  Only this, and nothing more."

The Raven

Ah, distinctly I remember it was in the bleak December, And each separate dying ember wrought its ghost upon the floor.    Eagerly I wished the morrow;- vainly I had sought to borrow    From my books surcease of sorrow- sorrow for the lost Lenore- For the rare and radiant maiden whom the angels name Lenore-                  Nameless here for evermore.

The Raven

And the silken sad uncertain rustling of each purple curtain Thrilled me- filled me with fantastic terrors never felt before;    So that now, to still the beating of my heart, I stood repeating,    "'Tis some visitor entreating entrance at my chamber door- Some late visitor entreating entrance at my chamber door;-                  This it is, and nothing more."

Major themes

• Fear of death

• Death of young woman as beautiful

• Doppelgänger

• Collapse of personality

• Perversity of human nature

Contradictions

• Chaotic personal life, but writing highly structured.

• Romantic writer who helped developed the detective story

• Used realism in gothic scenes (often accused of having horrible taste)

Next time:

• Literature of the American Renaissance

• Nathaniel Hawthorne

• Herman Melville