9. James Fenimore Cooper, The Pioneers, or The Sources of the Susquehanna; a Descriptive Tale (1823)

Abstract

This discussion of James Fenimore Cooper’s novel The Pioneers (1823) places it within the context of Cooper’s other writings, as well as within the historical and cultural contexts of his times and of nineteenth-century literary criticism. The historical contextualization provides the basis for a close reading of the novel, concentrating on major issues and themes, like property, progress and civilization, as well as native and settler conflicts, but also on the major structural, compositional and narrative strategies, like landscape description, plot structure, and compositional order. The essay concludes with a brief assessment of the novel’s critical reception, focusing on some of its most consequential studies that informed major critical debates on Cooper’s work, but also U.S. literary and cultural criticism at large. The discussion will focus on the relationship between the literary aesthetics and politics of Cooper’s historical romance, the underlying concepts of history and narrative authority and, finally, on the problematic relationship between law, property and legitimacy.