Literary movement – Colonial realism/ romantism

Fenimore Cooper

The last of the Mohicans

http://www.sparknotes.com/lit/mohicans/facts.html

Literary movement – Colonial realism/ romantism

James Fenimore Cooper (September 15, 1789 – September 14, 1851) was a prolific and popular American writer of the early 19th century. He is best remembered as a novelist who wrote numerous sea-stories and the historical novels known as the Leatherstocking Tales, featuring frontiersman Natty Bumppo. Among his most famous works is the Romantic novel The Last of the Mohicans, often regarded as his masterpiece.

He anonymously published his first book, Precaution (1820). He soon issued several others. In 1823, he published The Pioneers; this was the first of the Leatherstocking series, featuring Natty Bumppo, the resourceful American woodsman at home with the Delaware Indians and especially their chief Chingachgook. Cooper's most famous novel, Last of the Mohicans (1826), became one of the most widely read American novels of the 19th century. The book was written in New York City, where Cooper and his family lived from 1822 to 1826.

In 1826 Cooper moved his family to Europe, where he sought to gain more income from his books as well as provide better education for his children. While overseas, he continued to write. His books published in Paris include The Red Rover and The Water Witch —two of his many sea stories.

His books related to current politics and Cooper's self promotion increased the ill feeling between author and public. The Whig press was virulent in its comments about him, and Cooper filed legal actions for libel, winning all his lawsuits.

Later Life. He turned again from pure fiction to the combination of art and controversy in which he had achieved distinction with the Littlepage Manuscripts (1845–1846). His next novel was The Crater, or Vulcan's Peak (1847), in which he attempted to introduce supernatural machinery. Jack Tier (1848) was a remaking of The Red Rover, and The Ways of the Hour was his last completed novel.

Cooper spent the last years of his life back in Cooperstown. He died of dropsy on September 14, 1851, the day before his 62nd birthday. His interment was in Christ Episcopal Churchyard, where his father, William Cooper, was buried.

Cooper was the first major American Novelist to include African and African American characters. Though these black characters often fell into stereotypical roles, he still used slaves, free Negroes and mulattoes throughout his books.

"Mine ear is open, and my heart prepared: The worst is wordly loss thou canst unfold:-- Say, is my kingdom lost?"—Shakespeare

The Last of the Mohicans: A Narrative of 1757 is a historical novel by James Fenimore Cooper

The story takes place in 1757, during the French and Indian War (the Seven Years' War), when France and Great Britain battled for control of the North American colonies. During this war, the French called on allied Native American tribes to fight against the more numerous British colonists.

setting (place) · The American wilderness frontier in what will become New York State.

The novel was one of the most popular in English in its time, although critics identified narrative flaws. Its length and formal prose style have limited its appeal to later readers, yet The Last of the Mohicans remains widely read in American literature courses.

A notable feature of the novel is that Cooper uses more than one name for many of the characters and groups of people. For example, Nathaniel Bumppo refers to himself as Natty. The Mohicans call him Hawkeye, and the French and their Huron allies use the term La Longue Carabine (Long Rifle) for both Bumppo and his rifle, Kildeer

Another feature is Cooper's detailed and extended descriptions of places—some of which he was familiar with—characters, and events.

· Magua (ma-gwah) – the villain of the piece; a Huron chief driven from his tribe for drunkenness and later whipped by the British Army (also for drunkenness), for which he blames Colonel Munro. Also known as "Sly Fox."

· Chingachgook (chin-GATCH-gook) – last chief of the Mohican tribe; escort to the traveling Munro sisters, father to Uncas. Unami Delaware word meaning "Big Snake."

· Uncas – the son of Chingachgook and the titular "Last of the Mohicans" (meaning the last pure-blooded Mohican born).

· Natty Bumppo/ Hawkeye &ndash/ Oeil de Faucon; a frontiersman who, by chance meeting in the forest, becomes an escort to the Munro sisters. Also known to the Indians and the French as "La Longue Carabine" on account of his long rifle and shooting skills.

· Cora Munro – dark-haired daughter of Colonel Munro. Her mother, whom Munro met and married in the West Indies was a mulatto,^[9] half-white half-African-Caribbean. In the novel, Cora is termed a quadroon at one point.

· Alice Munro – Cora's younger, blonde half-sister, the daughter of Alice Graham, who was the love of Munro's life when he was young, but whom he was able to marry only much later in life.

· Colonel Munro – the sisters' father, a British army colonel in command of Fort William Henry.

· Duncan Heyward – a British army major from Virginia who falls in love with Alice Munro.

· David Gamut – a psalmodist (teacher of psalm singing) also known as "the singing master" due to the fact that he sang for every event.

The action takes place around Glens Falls in upstate New York. Cora and Alice Munro, daughters of Lieutenant Colonel Munro, are traveling with a column of reinforcements from Fort Edward to Fort William Henry. In the party are David Gamut the singing teacher, and Major Duncan Heyward, the group's military leader.

Magua intends to lead the party into an ambush, but is foiled when they meet Natty Bumppo, also referred to in this novel as Hawkeye, and the two Mohicans, Chingachgook and his son Uncas, on the road.

Magua and Huron tribe kidnaps Major, Cora and Alice Munro. Hawkeye, Chingachgook and Uncas escaped for help.

Magua wants to marry Cora – she refuses => intends to burn them

Duncan wants to stop – fight => Hawkeye comes with allies and saves them.

They reach the fort meet Colonel Munro. The fort gives in French troops

Magua kidnaps Cora and Alice

Duncan Heyward loves Alice goes to save her.

Three days later, Natty Bumppo and the Mohicans, Heyward and Colonel Munro follow Magua's trail. Outside the Huron village, they come across David Gamut, teaching beavers to sing psalms.

Gamut tells them that Alice is in the village, Cora is in another village belonging to the Lenni Lenape (Delaware) tribe

Heyward's disguise is successful, but before he can find Alice, Uncas is led into the village, having been captured by the Hurons.

Duncan saves Alice. Hawkeye comes back to save Uncas.

Ucas – leader of Delaware wins the Hurons but Magua kidnaps Cora. Ucas pursues (гонится)

One of the Hurons wants to kill Cora, Ucas tries to stop it => falls => faint

That man kills Cora => Ucas kills that man => Magua kills Ucas => Hawkeye kills Magua

Delaware lost the leader

Magua’s threat to marry a white woman plays on white men’s fears of interracial marriage. When Magua kidnaps Cora, the threat of physical violence or rape hangs in the air, although no one ever speaks of it. Whereas the interracial attraction between Uncas and Cora strikes us as sweet and promising for happier race relations in the future.

The character David Gamut allows Cooper to explore the relevance of religion in the wilderness. In theory at least, the American frontier is untouched by human culture.

Cooper uses the frontier setting to explore the changing status of the family unit. Cooper posits that the wilderness demands new definitions of family. Uncas and Hawkeye, for example, form a makeshift family structure. When Uncas’s real father, Chingachgook, disappears without explanation in the middle portion of the novel, Hawkeye becomes a symbolic father for Uncas.

The concept of hybridity is central to the novel’s thematic explorations of race and family. Hybridity is the mixing of separate elements into one whole, and in the novel it usually occurs when nature and culture intersect, or when two races intersect.

The recurring description of Uncas as “the last of the Mohicans” symbolizes the death of Indian culture at the hands of the encroaching European civilization. The title anticipates the ultimate tragedy of the novel’s plot. Although the title specifically refers to Uncas, it also alludes to a larger historical event: the genocidal removal of the Indians by President Andrew Jackson’s policies of the 1830s. The phrase “the last of the Mohicans” laments the extermination of the ways of life native to America.

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