Lisa Barrier Final Paper

Dr. Cole Group 7: Books in the Stacks

EN 367

December 2009

The Legacy of Cooper’s The Last of the Mohicans

The public’s reception of James Fenimore Cooper’s The Last of the Mohicans went through many ups and downs. Although written in 1826, the book did not until the early 1900s reach the status of a classic American novel. But this does not mean that the novel saw no initial popularity, for the work was actually very well received by the 19^th century readers: “for an entire century after its publication, it remained the most internationally acclaimed and widely translated of Cooper’s works” (Peck 7). Nonetheless, the popularity of the novel fluctuated greatly in the 20^th century, mainly depending on how people chose to read The Last of the Mohicans and how they related to the novel their own lives and the country’s social problems; many attribute this fluctuation of reception to the novel’s ambiguity, allowing it to apply to different times and societies: “Despite its precise subtitle—‘a narrative of 1757’—and its use of specific geographical settings, actual characters and events, in terms of historical consequence The Last of the Mohicans seems to float free of real place and time” (Butler 117). The many different themes and motifs of the novel, such as the racial and religious differences, displacement, war, adventure, nature, the frontier, and the discovering of an American identity, add to the novel’s ability to relate to a number of different time periods, people, and social issues.

Before I began my research on the novel and its history, I focused on getting a general summary or analysis of The Last of the Mohicans. The novel takes place in 1757, during the French and Indian War, placing the characters in a time characterized by frontier adventures and the early American search for identity. The girls, Cora and Alice, accompanied by Heyward and Magua, are on a journey to reunite with their father when they run into Hawkeye, Chingachgook, and Uncas; the latter three prove that Magua is actually a Huron intending to lead the party astray or into Huron territory, and take it upon themselves to save the British group from danger. Although a basic adventure story, the novel includes a great deal of racial references, especially in its association of the Native Americans with savagery (especially Magua and the Hurons); the race issue makes very controversial the love between Uncas and Cora, who is actually only half white. The novel overall presents a very chaotic scene in part because of its adventure elements and also because of its wide variety of different themes and mini-stories.

To study the novel’s overall history, and to discover which periods of time in which the book and its ambiguity appealed to readers the most, I began with a study of Cooper’s influence on past Loyola readers, analyzing the editions of The Last of the Mohicans that made it to the Loyola Notre Dame Library stacks. From the study of the paratextual elements of these editions, I singled out one edition, from 1963, that led me to establish a general idea of how frequently and for what reason the Loyola readers checked out and read the novel. The edition and its apparent use coincided with much of my outside historical research of the novel’s reception, proving that Loyola readers were not, in the use of the novel, far off base.

My initial thoughts on working with the editions of Cooper’s The Last of the Mohicans from the Loyola Notre Dame Library stacks were that the different editions, from the outside cover and spine, all looked similar; only one edition displayed an illustration while a majority of the editions adhered to the basic plain color, simple writing on the spine structure that suggests a strictly academic purpose. Further analysis of the interior elements of the editions proved my initial thoughts- that the editions are all pretty much the same- completely false. It is from this further analysis that led me to choose the 1963 edition of the novel, the edition that appears much like the others from its cover and spine but actually includes a considerable amount of Loyola and societal history. The main thing that struck me about this edition was the long list of page numbers that I found penciled in on piece of flyleaf in the back of the book, proving that the novel was looked at in close detail, most likely for academic purposes, by a student or faculty member. I then pieced together the dates on the library card that the edition was checked out and discovered that the novel was used mostly in the late ‘60s, ‘70s, and ‘80s by both students, marked by their name and id number, and faculty members, marked by the abbreviation “fac”.

To gain a general sense of why Loyola readers and faculty read the book, I first looked to that page of penciled-in annotations and looked closely at every noted page, a total of 74 marked pages. On each of these pages, the particular reader placed a check mark next to certain passages, emphasizing the theme or idea that he or she planned on pursuing. I gathered from these noted passages that the reader, either student or faculty member, was particularly concerned with the novel’s use of race and religion to convey the main differences between the Mohicans, the Hurons, and the British. This reader highlighted the emphasis on the “savage” attributes of certain Native Americans in comparison with the “whiteness” of their counterparts, the British, and also paid close attention to the use of the phrase “men without a cross,” the phrase that established the difference between pure Native Americans and pure men of white descent: “None the less, they remain fundamentally of another race, Indians without a cross of white blood just as the scout is without a cross of red” (McWilliams xii). The reader also marks passages in which the characters point out the differences between the natural religion of the Native Americans and the written religion of the white men, emphasizing the difference between experience and written knowledge: “your young white, who gathers his learning from books, and can measure what he knows by the page, may conceit that his knowledge, like his legs, outruns that of his father; but where experience is the master, the scholar is made to know the value of years, and respects them accordingly” (Cooper 244-245). From a controversial aspect, the reader even marks citations that consider the love between Cora and Uncas, or the love between two people of different race and religion.

My findings with the noted pages led me to investigate the faculty use of the 1963 edition, or the use of Father John R. Donahue and Professor Mair. In 1973, Father Donahue checked out the novel, most likely for academic purposes; Fr. Donahue is now a research professor of theology at Loyola University and in the past was a “president of the Catholic Biblical Association and noted Scripture author and writer” (Missionary Society of St. Paul). His concern for theology may have led him to check out the novel for its religious emphasis, either to discuss his findings with his students or for his own educational benefit. Professor Mair checked out the novel sometime between 1980 and 1982 (the date on the library card is unclear) for a “January Term Reserve,” proving that this edition was indeed used in the Loyola college curriculum. Professor Mair was known for his role as a professor of Political Science, but also “specialized in international politics and European government, teaching courses such as international relations, comparative government and contemporary history” (Jolley). Mair’s interest in history and international relations may have led him to include in his curriculum The Last of the Mohicans as a source of early American history or an example of the differences between two opposing cultures. The fact that both Father Donahue and Professor Mair checked out the novel in the 1970s and early 1980s suggests that in the late 20^th century the novel had a particularly heavy social impact, especially in the classroom.

The use of the 1963 edition of The Last of the Mohicans and the ways in which the novel was read by Loyola in the late 20^th century bring about the questions of how the novel was used initially and how, over the centuries, this use changed. To research the history of the reception of the novel, I looked mainly to The Lasting of the Mohicans: History of an American Myth. When the novel first came out, Cooper most likely intended it to be read by middle-class, educated males:

What kind of audience was Cooper aiming for? We can say with some certainty that it was intended to be middle class, educated, and monied—the same book-buying public that was interested in European authors like Walter Scott…Also, the readership was meant to be male: in the preface, Cooper makes a point of warning off ‘the more imaginative sex’ because the subject matter is too ‘shocking’ for them (Barker and Sabin 17-18).

In the years following the novel’s publication, Cooper was very successful with the American and British public, establishing himself as the first significant American literary figure. However, The Last of the Mohicans saw much negative literary criticism, mainly because “stylistically the book was badly written, repetitive, and lacked pace and characterization, even if it’s historical veracity was praiseworthy” (Barker and Sabin 27). Interestingly enough, the critical reception of the book completely changed in the early 1990s, around the time that the novel and Cooper were considered components of classical American literature. Instead of criticizing the novel for its poor writing, literary essays now responded negatively to Cooper’s historical approach: “The period 1900 to the present witnessed a predictable see-sawing of opinion…the first few decades of the new century were notable for essays that exactly reversed the nineteenth century critics’ assessment, praising the book’s style, pacing, and characterization while attacking its pretensions to ‘history’” (Barker and Sabin 28).

Not until the late 1960s did The Last of the Mohicans become a symbol of American racial issues and therefore a common literary work of study, known in the classroom for both its status as an American classic and its controversial depiction of racial conflict. Although early 20^th century critics praised Cooper for his characterization of the Native Americans, many later 20^th century critics actually condemned his representations as stereotypical: “They demonstrate the ways in which Cooper’s characterizations of Indians, no matter how distinguishable one Indian ‘type’ is from another in his fiction, belong to the larger racial stereotypes that pervaded American thought in the nineteenth century” (Peck 8). Barker and Sabin, writers of The Lasting of the Mohicans, focus on the application of the novel to the social movements of the late ‘60s, ‘70s, and ‘80s, especially to the civil rights movement and the rise of “Red Power,” both of which emphasized Cooper’s racial attitude towards the Native Americans: “In particular, the 1960s and ‘70s was the era of civil rights and the associated rise of ‘Red Power’…and these movements inevitably provoked much debate about Cooper’s attitudes” (Barker and Sabin 28). The Last of the Mohicans was even applied, in the late 1980s to the “Green” and feminist movements [“In the 1980s, a similar process led to the emergence of ‘Green’ appraisals of the text (focusing on its treatment of the wilderness) and even feminine criticism” (Barker and Sabin 28)], proving that the ambiguity of the novel allowed it to appeal to many different social groups and historical American issues. Barker and Sabin’s findings on the history of the reception of the novel coincide with my own findings of Loyola’s reception of the literary work for the 1963 edition of The Last of the Mohicans was most frequently checked out between 1967 and 1991 (and checked out a total of ten times in the 1970s), suggesting that the Loyola students and faculty members read the book in light of the social issues associated with it.

From my paratextual analysis of the different editions of the novel, I cannot generate an idea as to how the work will be received in the future, especially since the use of library books has greatly decreased since the late 20^th century and therefore I cannot trace how often the book has been read. The most recent check out of the 1963 edition was in October of 2002, suggesting that the novel is in fact still read by Loyola students or included in the college curriculum. Unfortunately, if I were to ask the population outside of Loyola or outside of the literature classroom what they thought about The Last of the Mohicans, many would comment on the 1992 film or its award-winning soundtrack; my own high school experience, in which my sophomore year English class watched the movie instead of reading the actual classical novel, proves that my assumptions about my generation’s reception of the novel are not far off. However, the novel’s fluctuating history of popularity and ability to relate to a number of different social issues suggests that Cooper and his work might in the near future return to the literary and social scene, maybe even in reference to a social issue that the American culture has yet to touch upon.

Works Cited

Cooper, James Fenimore. The Last of the Mohicans. New York: Thomas Nelson and Sons, 1963. Print.

Barker, Martin, and Robert Sabin. The Lasting of the Mohicans: History of an American Myth. Mississippi: University Press of Mississippi, 1995. Print.

Butler, Michael D. “Narrative Structure and Historical Process in The Last of the Mohicans”. American Literature 48 (1976): 117-139. JSTOR. Web. 11 December 2009.

Peck, Daniel H. “Introduction”. New Essays on The last of the Mohicans. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1992. 1-24. Print.

McWilliams, John. The Last of the Mohicans. New York: Oxford University Press, 1983. Print.

“Father John R. Donahue, SJ, to offer annual Hecker Lecture”. Paulist Fathers. 2009. Missionary Society of St. Paul. 11 December 2009. < http://www.paulist.org/pressroom/father-john-r-donahue-sj-to-offer-annual-hecker-lecture/>

Jolley, Courtney. “Loyola Mourns Political Science Professor Hans Mair”. Loyola.edu. Loyola University Maryland. 11 December 2009. < http://www.loyola.edu/newsroom/news/07/0911_hansmair.html>