Fenimore Cooper's Literary Offences
by Mark Twain
- Pages
- about 18
- Category
- History
- Language
- English
- Reading time
- 19 min at 250 wpm
From the opening
The Pathfinder and The Deerslayer stand at the head of Cooper's
novels as artistic creations. There are others of his works
which contain parts as perfect as are to be found in these, and
scenes even more thrilling. Not one can be compared with
either of them as a finished whole.
The defects in both of these tales are comparatively slight.
They were pure works of art.--Prof. Lounsbury.
The five tales reveal an extraordinary fulness of invention.
... One of the very greatest characters in fiction, Natty
Bumppo....
The craft of the woodsman, the tricks of the trapper, all the
delicate art of the forest, were familiar to Cooper from his
youth up.--Prof. Brander Matthews.
Cooper is the greatest artist in the domain of romantic fiction
yet produced by America.--Wilkie Collins.
It seems to me that it was far from right for the Professor of English
Literature in Yale, the Professor of English Literature in Columbia, and
Wilkie Collins to deliver opinions on Cooper's literature without having
read some of it. It would have been much more decorous to keep silent
and let persons talk who have read Cooper.
Cooper's art has some defects. In one place in 'Deerslayer,' and in the
restricted space of two-thirds of a page, Cooper has scored 114 offences
against literary art out of a possible 115. It breaks the record.
There are nineteen rules governing literary art in the domain of
romantic fiction--some say twenty-two. In Deerslayer Cooper violated
eighteen of them. These eighteen require:
1. That a tale shall accomplish something and arrive somewhere. But the
Deerslayer tale accomplishes nothing and arrives in the air.
2. They require that the episodes of a tale shall be necessary parts of
the tale, and shall help to develop it. But as the Deerslayer tale is
not a tale, and accomplishes nothing and arrives nowhere, the episodes
have no rightful place in the work, since there was nothing for them to
develop.
A short sample. Read the whole book
More to read
- 1601: Conversation as it was by the Social Fireside in the Time of the TudorsMark TwainLiterature & Fiction42 pages
- A Belated Guest (from Literary Friends and Acquaintance)William Dean HowellsHistory19 pages
- A Bit of Old ChinaCharles Warren StoddardHistory17 pages
- A Book of Remarkable CriminalsH. B. IrvingHistory341 pages
- A Book of ScoundrelsCharles WhibleyHistory202 pages
Public-domain text from Project Gutenberg, Standard Ebooks or a similar open source. Copyright differs between countries. Rights holder? See our takedown process.