Student Companion to James Fenimore Cooper [Hardcover]

The Student Companion to James Fenimore Cooper At the dawn of America's continental empire, James Fenimore Cooper in the early 1800s became the new nation's first major novelist, inaugurating a great period in American literature and bequeathing a number of classic texts including the Leather-Stocking Tales. ThisCompanionto Cooper's writings appeals to high school and college students by outlining Cooper's most frequently assigned novels and establishing their historical backgrounds concerning American Indians and the early United States. Two opening chapters review the author's life and accomplishments, and another offers tips for managing Cooper's style and subject matter. Cooper's breakthrough novelThe Spy(1821), which features George Washington as a major actor, has a chapter of its own. The second half of theCompanionhighlights the Leather-Stocking Tales, with one chapter on the overall saga and five chapters devoted to the individual novels in the series:The Deerslayer,The Last of the Mohicans,The Pathfinder,The Pioneers, andThe Prairie. Altogether thisCompanionshares the spirit of adventure that made Cooper a pioneer of American Romantic literature and his writings a perennial source for ideas and images of Native America, the frontier, and the early modern USA.Craig Whiteis an associate professor of literature at the University of Houston-Clear Lake, where he teaches classic and multicultural American and world literature. His articles on American literature, the history of science, and Native American literature have appeared in Modern Language Quarterly, Prospects, Utopian Studies, and Early American Literature.Literature professor White introduces students and general readers to the major works of American novelist James Fenimore Cooper (1789-1851). Each book in the series of The Leather-Stocking Talesgets its own chapter here, as does Cooper's breakthrough novel,The Spy.l,