Student Companion to James Fenimore Cooper (Hardcover) (ISBN-13: 9780313334139)

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. This Companion to 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 novel The Spy (1821), which features George Washington as a major actor, has a chapter of its own. The second half of the Companion highlights 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, and The Prairie. Altogether this Companion shares 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.

Author: Craig White
ISBN-10: 0313334137
ISBN-13: 9780313334139
Publisher: Greenwood
Language: English
Published: 09/01/2006
Pages: 232
Format: Hardcover
Weight: 1.08lbs
Size: 9.36h x 6.34w x 0.90d

Review Citation(s):
Reference and Research Bk News 02/01/2007 pg. 300