1. James F. Cooper (1789-1851): The Pioneers American Literature I 11/01/2004 Cecilia H.C. Liu

2. Facts on James Fenimore Cooper (1) Cooper was born James Cooper on September 15, 1789 in Burlington, New Jersey. (The "Fenimore" was legally added only in 1826.) In 1790 the family moved to Lake Otsego, in upstate New York, and these early experiences in a frontier town gave him the background for The Pioneers (1823), among other frontier novels.

3. Facts on James Fenimore Cooper (2) In 1819, his career as a writer began, and the first tale he published in 1820 was Precaution, a novel of morals and manners which showed the influence of Amelia Opie (whose work Cooper very much admired). Later, since the work and its reception were pleasant enough to encourage JFC to continue, he continued on writing, publishing The Spy: A Tale of the Neutral Ground (1821), The Pioneers, The Pilot (1824), Lionel Lincoln (1825), The Last of the Mohicans (1826), The Prairie (1827),with remarkable explosion of creativity.

4. Facts on James Fenimore Cooper (3) Cooper was also a keen observer of the political and cultural life of America, an accomplished controversialist and a fine naval historian. By the time of his death Cooper had developed a reputation as America's "national novelist," and D. H. Lawrence portrayed his work as "a decrescendo of reality, and a crescendo of beauty," but all his novels engaged historical themes and helped to form the American history and romantic historiography in the 19 th century.

5. The Pioneers: Background Info. In 1785, Cooper’s father, wanted to investigate a a piece of land in this wilderness, Otsego, with a party of surveyors.Otsego At the commencement of the following year, settlement began; and from that time to this the country has continued to flourish and increase in number.

6. Cooper's Natty Bumppo Natty Bumppo, as described in The Pioneers as “6 ft. tall in his moccasins, thin and wiry, with grey eyes, sandy hair, a large mouth and rather heavy eyebrows." He appears physically as a cross between his best friend, the Indian Chingachgook, and his nemesis, Judge Temple.

7. Bumppo ’ s various names in Leather-Stocking Tales Deerslayer Hawk-eye Pathfinder Leather-Stocking

8. Leather-Stocking Tales (in the order of events in the life of Natty Bumppo) The Deerslayer (1841) — young hero The Last of the Mohicans (1826) — mature hero The Pathfinder (1840) — come into maturity The Pioneers (1823) — hero ’ s old age The Prairie (1827) — hero ’ s death Cooper ’ s novels reflect his continuous awareness of contrasts in society, behavior, and government between the United States and Europe, particularly Great Britain.

9. Natty Bumppo ’ s Views in Ch 3 (I) He implores the group to see that men should only kill and use the wilderness to sustain themselves. In essence, man should only take what he truly needs. However, the chapter ends with the eyes of the dead pigeons staring up at the men, Natty becomes the one who understands the virtuous relationship between man and the environment.

10. Natty Bumppo ’ s Views in Ch 3 (II) While the settlers see wilderness as being tamed by their presence, Natty Bumppo has a vision of civilized life coexisting with nature. Natty Bumppo, additionally, wants to keep the unique role that this vast unexplored wilderness contributes to the complexity of America.

11. Cooper ’ s Intention in Natty Bumppo A critic, James Wallace, writes that Cooper wanted Natty Bumppo “to combine a popular tradition of the eloquence of Indian oratory with the garrulity of a frontier character.” Natty Bumppo is Cooper's tool to express his views on the mores of 18 th and early 19 th century U.S. Natty Bumppo agrees with the concept of a firmly class- structured society, and shows disdain for miscegenation. Fearless and miraculously resourceful, Natty Bumppo survives the rigors of nature and the villainy of man by superior strength and skill, and by the help of heaven, for he is always quaintly moral.

12. Cooper ’ s Intention in Natty Bumppo (2) Nonetheless, Natty Bumppo is filled with contradictions, combining "the soul of a poet with the nature of a redneck." Natty craves companionship, but trusts no one, is used by all, but owes nothing to anyone, and craves traditional society while fearing and despising civilization. According to Duncan Heyward, Natty is "a noble shoot from the stock of human nature, which never could attain its proper elevation and importance, for no other reason than because it grew in the forest."

13. Perspective in The Pioneers It could be said that the incidents of this tale are purely a fiction, even though the literal facts are connected with the natural and artificial objects and the customs of the inhabitants. The academy, and court-house, and jail, and inn, and other things, are exact. Cooper is aware of the numerous faults in the story, but he still decides to overlook this fact but wrote the story with the intention to please himself.

14. Responses to The Pioneers Cooper's ingenious wasn’t expressed in his development of American novel, but the ability to find audience for it. With The Pioneers, he facilitated an American literary awakening: from imitations of imported novels to a true literature. "Quite simply, Cooper created a community of readers whose taste dominate the market for fiction in America,.in the 19 th century“ (Sydney Smith’s The Edinburgh Review)

15. What Cooper Says About The Pioneers "Our political institutions, the state of learning among us, and the influence of religion upon the national character, have been often discussed and displayed; but our domestic manners, the social and the moral influences, which operate in retirement, and in common intercourse, and the multitude of local peculiarities, which form our distinctive features upon the many peopled earth, have very seldom been happily exhibited in our literature"

16. The Limitation of Cooper’s Work The weaknesses of Cooper is obvious, which is his female characters, since they lack variety, and are generally sappy and flat. All his fictional works reflect the didactic concern to educate about democracy in a oppressively schoolmasterish method, but his characters are often richly developed, and recognized as a remarkable gallery of American types, with richness, depth, and complexity unsurpassed in American fiction before Hawthorne and Melville.

17. Photo Gallery James Fenimore CooperTop: James Fenimore Cooper : Natty Bumppo ’ s CaveMiddle: Natty Bumppo ’ s Cave Lake Otsego SceneryBottom: Lake Otsego Scenery Photo Credits: http://www.ub-unibielefield.de/diglib/KarlMay/cooper/http://www.ub-unibielefield.de/diglib/KarlMay/cooper/

18. Discussion Questions (1) Several scenes in The Pioneers reflect specifically Cooper's portrayal of Natty Bumppo as a American frontiersman. Name some of them in Chapter 3. Natty is portrayed as the literary bridge between the "old world" and the dawning of American possibility. His interactions in the woods and in civilization make him a vestige of the natural man that Cooper admires, trapped in the changing world that Cooper bemoans. Is there a similar situation we face in the present as readers?

19. Discussion Questions (2) The story of Natty Bumppo is linked to Natty Bumppo the Indian, representing him with two identities. In Taiwan, could it be possible that our indigenous people today also face the same conflict? Cooper mentioned that "In point of civilization, comforts, and character, the Indians, who remain near the coasts, are about on a level with the lowest classes of European peasantry. Perhaps they are somewhat below the English, but I think [...] they are much below the condition of the mass of the slaves.” How does this view affect Cooper’s portrayal of the story?

20. Landscape in The Pioneers In this novel, Cooper debates the complexity of landscape within a new American frontier. Nature replaces history within American culture; and Cooper evaluates his landscape as one that will be established by a civilization unable to escape its own traits of wastefulness and arrogance.

21. Landscape in The Pioneers (2) Cooper foreshadows the settlers' inability to conceive the power, life, and autonomy of nature because they feel it cannot truly exist without their influence. In Chapter III, Natty Bumppo emerges as the antithesis of the wastefulness demonstrated by the settlers. He struggles to understand how abusive the Sheriff and Billy Kirby are when they slaughter pigeons just for sport.

22. Otsego in The Pioneers Otsego was included in a county of Albany, and then became a part of Montgomery after the war; was finally set apart as a county after 1783, which lies among Alleghanies, covering the midland counties of New York. Otsego is said to be a word compounded of Ot, a place of meeting, and Sego, or Sago, the term of salutation used by the Indians of this region.

23. Otsego in The Pioneers (2) There is a tradition that says the neighboring tribes were accustomed to meet on the banks of the lake to make treaties, to strengthen alliances, and which refers the name to this practice. In 1779 an expedition was sent against the hostile Indians, who dwelt about a hundred miles west of Otsego, with the troops proceeded to the other extremity of the lake, where they disembarked and encamped.

24. References James Fenimore Cooper Biography http://www2.bc.edu/~wallacej/jfc/jfcbio.html http://www2.bc.edu/~wallacej/jfc/jfcbio.html Fenimore's Natty Bumppo http://xroads.virginia.edu/~UG02/COOPER/bumppo.html http://xroads.virginia.edu/~UG02/COOPER/bumppo.html Landscape in The Pioneers http://xroads.virginia.edu/~UG02/COOPER/landscape.html http://xroads.virginia.edu/~UG02/COOPER/landscape.html The Pioneers--Cooper's Introduction to the Novel http://xroads.virginia.edu/~UG02/COOPER/chapters.html http://xroads.virginia.edu/~UG02/COOPER/chapters.html Critical and Popular Response http://xroads.virginia.edu/~UG02/COOPER/response.html http://xroads.virginia.edu/~UG02/COOPER/response.html Natty as Indian http://xroads.virginia.edu/~UG02/COOPER/indian.html http://xroads.virginia.edu/~UG02/COOPER/indian.html Natty as Frontiersman http://xroads.virginia.edu/~UG02/COOPER/frontiersman.html http://xroads.virginia.edu/~UG02/COOPER/frontiersman.html