Literature Network » James Fenimore Cooper

Is There An Early American Novel?

Content courtesy of

From: Novel
Date: 20061001
Author:Tennenhouse, Leonard

As scholars from Leslie Fiedler to Philip Fisher have demonstrated, James Fenimore Cooper's frontier fiction lends itself to allegorical readings about the founding of a nation at once masculine and American in origin. An obvious tautology informs all such readings: if novels are about history-or should be, in order to qualify as the genuine American article-then we must look to history to tell us what these novels are about. Besides marginalizing so much of the fiction actually produced and consumed in the early republic', reading to validate our historical preconceptions is further ...

Read the rest of this article with a Free Trial at HighBeam Research.

Other Articles on James Fenimore Cooper

About Our Articles: We've partnered with Highbeam Research to provide these article excerpts for your research needs. However, due to copyright laws, we cannot publish the whole article. To view these articles in full length you'll need to use the link above to access the free trial at Highbeam.