Transatlantic Romanticisms

Ashwill, Gary. "Savagism and Its Discontents: James Fenimore Cooper and His Native American Contemporaries." American Transcendental Quarterly 8.3 (1994): 211 - 27. Ashwill argues that Cooper's works promote "savagism"--the notion that Indians were beyond "saving" and could not be civilized. According to Ashwill, Cooper emphasizes racial difference and condemns racial mixing, thus precluding any potential hybridity. Ashwill places Cooper's work in contrast to Apes and Boudinot, who Ashwill notes suggest alternatively that Europeans and Native Americans are merely "temporarily unequal as a result of historical conditions." The article also refers to Black Hawk, who Ashwill suggests lacked the authority over his own texts that Apes and Boudinot enjoyed.

Blakemore, Steven. "'without a Cross': The Cultural Significance of the Sublime and Beautiful in Cooper's the Last of the Mohicans." Nineteenth-Century Literature 52.1 (1997): 27 - 57. Blakemore's article details the relationship between Edmund Burke's conception of the sublime and The Last of the Mohicans. Blakemore especially distinguishes between the sublime and the beautiful, arguing that Cooper repositions Burke's "beauty" in sublime scenes that "Burke contended could only be enjoyed when [the] pressing, life-threatening sublime was removed" (30).

Burwick, Frederick. "Longfellow and German Romanticism." Comparative Literature Studies 7 (1970): 12 - 42. Burwick outlines Longfellow's associations with German Romanticism and recounts Longfellow's references to Hyperion, Goethe, Freiligrath, and Jean Paul in his private writing and letters. This article emphasizes Longfellow's interest in the picturesque and cites incidents where Longfellow appropriates characteristically German Romantic imagery in his writing.

Davis, Randall C. "Fire-Water in the Frontier Romance: James Fenimore Cooper and 'Indian Nature'." Studies in American Fiction 22.2 (1994): 215 - 31. Davis contextualizes Cooper's texts with discussions of nineteenth-century concepts of "Indian nature" and the period's identification of "Native American drinking" as a unique phenomenon. According to Davis, alcohol was used as justification for removal policies, a principle that was duplicated in Cooper's work through his depiction of morally inferior Native Americans.

Dennis, Ian. "The Worthlessness of Duncan Heyward: A Waverley Hero in America." Studies in the Novel 29.1 (1997). Ian Dennis's article provides an overview of the character of Duncan Heyward, arguing that Heyward's ineptitude is central to the ideological construction of The Last of the Mohicans. Dennis also highlights the miscegenation theme in the novel.

Doolen, Andrew. "'Snug Stored Below': The Politics of Race in James Fenimore Cooper's The Pioneers." Studies in American Fiction 29.2 (2001): 131 - 58. Doolen begins by contextualizing Cooper's novel with references to a prevailing national discourse that viewed the racial divide as impassible. Doolen cites a resurgence in the expatriation movement and the Missouri Compromise as being influences on Cooper's The Pioneers and argues that the novel plays a role in the debate concerning race and nationhood.

Frank, Armin Paul. "Writing Literary Independence: The Case of Cooper--the 'American Scott' and the Un-Scottish American." Comparative Literature Studies 34.1 (1997): 41 - 70. This article decries the tendency of American Studies scholars to overlook international literature and emphasizes the relationship between Scottish culture and Anglo-American writers. Frank also discusses how American writers were inspired by the German literary independence movement, and he examines Cooper's response to British models and the production of traits that distinguish his writing from British literature.

Franklin, Rosemary F. "The Cabin by the Lake: Pastoral Landscapes of Poe, Cooper, Hawthorne, and Thoreau." ESQ: A Journal of the American Renaissance 22 (1976): 59 - 70. Franklin compares attitudes toward nature as presented by Poe, Cooper, Hawthorne, and Thoreau. Initially, the article deals with concepts of the frontier, suggesting that the pastoral serves as a middle ground between the frontier and civilization, with the pioneer house representing the "pioneer-artists's psyche" (60). For Franklin, Cooper is sympathetic to nature and the westward impulse, as evinced by the typical "house" in his novels-- often little more than a cabin or a crude stockade.

George, Laura. "The Native and the Fop: Primitivism and Fashion in Romantic Rhetoric." Nineteenth-Century Contexts 24.1 (2002): 33 - 47. Laura George positions Hugh Blair and James Fenimore Cooper as "bookends" of the popular discourse of the "eloquent savage." According to George, the figure of the primitive man in the Romantic period is contradictory, encompassing an idealized foundation myth for language that is problematized by a Romantic desire for "ornamentation" exemplified, in George's terms, by the rise of fashion in England.

Haberly, David T. "Women and Indians: The Last of the Mohicans and the Captivity Tradition." American Quarterly 28 (1976): 431 - 43. Haberly discusses the influences of captivity narratives on The Last of the Mohicans, outlining the three fears of the captured female: defeminization, "indianization," and rape. Haberly argues that Cora's gifts are representative of these fears. According to Haberly, by the end of the novel Cooper suggests that "white women and their intrusive, destructive power must be removed before the ideal harmony of the frontier can exist again."

Harris, Janet. "Longfellow's Poems on Slavery." Colby Library Quarterly 14 (1978): 84 - 92. Harris' essay is an attempt to reclaim Longfellow from critics who have dismissed his work due to its popularity. The article focuses primarily on Poems on Slavery, which Harris argues must be examined in the context of the Maine anti-slavery movement. Harris places Poems on Slavery in a dialogue between advocates of resettlement and advocates of emancipation and cites Longfellow's influences, including Toussaint l'Overture, Benjamin Lundy, Charles Sumner, and Ferdinand Freiligrath. Harris also refers to the critical reception of the work and its inclusion in publications by the New England Anti-Slavery Tract Association.

Newman, Andrew. "Sublime Translation in the Novels of James Fenimore Cooper and Walter Scott." Nineteenth-Century Literature 59.1 (2004): 1 - 26. Newman argues that, in the Leatherstocking Tales, "the natural sublime offers a dynamic context for communication across the great divide" between subject and object worlds (2). This motif, Newman argues, is adapted from Sir Walter Scott's romances and involves a transfer of power, shifting the attributes of sublimity from the object to the "subject or faculty of reason within the viewing subject" (3). In his argument, Newman pays special attention to the use of sound in Cooper's novels.

Pitcher, E.W. "Anticipated Torments and Indian Tortures in The Last of the Mohicans." ANQ 7.4 (1994): 215 - 19. Pitcher notes similarities between torture in The Last of the Mohicans and descriptions of torture in the Mannheim Anthology, a collection of captivity narratives. Pitcher argues that Cooper develops a level of intertextuality in his work that relies on the reader's familiarity with such captivity narratives.

Romero, Lora. "Vanishing Americans: Gender, Empire, and New Historicism." American Literature 43.3 (1993): 385 - 404. Romero places Cooper and The Last of the Mohicans firmly within the "cult of the vanishing American" as identified by Brian W. Dippie. To this end, Romero notes the repetition of images of falling Indians in Cooper's novel and explores the relationship between the idea of the "prodigy," education discourse, and home and empire. Romero concludes that the image of the "precipitous aboriginal" serves to ensure the transformation of Native Americans into vanishing Americans.

Tichi, Cecelia. "Longfellow's Motives for the Structure of 'Hiawatha'." American Literature 42.4 (1971): 548 - 53. Tichi argues that, in "Hiawatha," Longfellow presents an argument that relates to his attitude toward notions of cultural continuity between Europe and North America. Citing Longfellow's 1825 statement that "Indian materials" will help develop North America as a location for classic literature, Tichi suggests that Longfellow intended to present native materials in a manner which gave them parity with the legendary place of Europe.

Wallace, James D. "Race and Captivity in Cooper's the Wept of Wish-Ton-Wish." American Literary History 7.2 (1995): 189 - 209. Wallace criticizes Leslie Fiedler's influential reading of The Last of the Mohicans as anachronistic and develops his own argument that captivity in Cooper's work functions as a means to overcome racial barriers. Wallace provides useful contextual information, including some discussion of potential sources for Cooper.