James Fenimore Cooper and his
Leather-stocking tales

James Fenimore Cooper(1789-1851)

James Fenimore Cooper(1789-1851)

A brief biography of J.F.Cooper
Leather-stocking tales

A brief biography of J.F.Cooper
Life story
 Born in a rich family
 Attended Yale but expelled because of misconduct at 13
 Joined the United States Navy at 18
 Lived in New York and participated in intellectual life and politics at the beginning of the 1820s
 Lived in Europe from 1826 - 1833, and during this time he defended American democracy in his writings
 Inherited fortune and lived a comfortable life

A brief biography of J.F.Cooper
Major works
 Precaution in 1820 (His first novel was written on a dare from his wife. )
 A historical novel---The Spy in 1821
( a great success)
 A sea adventure tale---The Pilot in
1824
( the best of his many sea romances)
 The frontier saga--- The Leatherstocking Tales during 1823-1841
( one of the most widely read American novels )
 The first official history of the U.S.
Navy in 1839

A brief biography of J.F.Cooper
 He wrote America’s first historical romance, frontier saga and sea adventure tale.
Contributions  He created a myth about the formative period of the American nation
 He made the American conscious of his past and the Europeans conscious of America.

A brief biography of J.F.Cooper
 He was the first writer to portrait
American Indians and frontiersmen .
Contributions
 He was the first writer to Find "the
West" and "the frontier life" as materials for literary works and introduced Western tradition into
American literature.
 He made us understand the value of
Americans – individualism and freedom

American Indians

Frontiersmen

Frontiersmen

Leather-stocking Tales(1823-1841)
• 1.The Deerslayer( 杀鹿者 ) in 1841
• 2. The Last of the Mohicans( 最后的莫希
干人 ) in 1826
• 3. The Pathfinder( 探路者 ) in 1840
• 4. The Pioneers( 拓荒者 ) in 1823
• 5. The Prairie( 大草原 ) in 1827

Pioneers

Prairie

Leather-stocking Tales(1823-1841)
• The Leather-Stocking Tales account for five of these novels about pioneer life, and yet in popularity they have outweighed all of Cooper's other works.
The Tales contain a five volume biography of their protagonist Natty
Bumppo.

Leather-stocking Tales(1823-1841)
• Natty Bumppo:
• several names for the same character: Hawk-eye, the
Pathfinder, the Deerslayer, Leather-stocking;
• a typical frontier man: honest, simple, innocent, generous;
• represents brotherhood of man, nature and freedom;
• an ideal American, a perfect example and a father image of the frontier man

Leather-stocking Tales(1823-1841)
• Theme: modern civilization advancing on the wilderness and the conflicts between them
• Features:
1) Good at inventing plots (Cooper had never been to the frontier area personally.)
2) Style: powerful, yet clumsy and dreadful
3) Wooden Characters
4) Use of dialect, but not authentic (criticized by
Mark Twain)

The Last of the Mohicans

The Last of the Mohicans
• The Last of the Mohicans is an epic novel by James Fenimore Cooper. This novel was first published in January 1826. It is the most famous of the Leather-stocking Tales.
It was one of the most popular Englishlanguage novels of its time, and it helped establish Cooper as one of the first worldfamous American writers.

The Last of the Mohicans
• The story is set in the British province of New
York during the French and Indian War, and concerns a massacre of a colonial garrison and a fictional kidnapping of two sisters, who were the daughters of the commander of Fort
William Henry. Parts of the story may have been derived from the capture and death of
Jane McCrea, in July 1777 near Fort Edward,
New York, by members of an Algonquian tribe.

Designed by Xinyang Wang
09301020