The American Abraham: James Fenimore Cooper and the Frontier Patriarch

Warren Motley

doi:10.1017/CBO9780511895319

In this book Warren Motley offers an original interpretation of James Fenimore Cooper's career. Whereas most studies of Cooper have centered on the figure of the Leatherstocking - that solitary model of the self-sufficient American hero untrammeled by civilization - this book examines Cooper's interest in the pioneer patriarchs who built new societies in the wilderness. Throughout his career Cooper explored an essential American problem: how to achieve the right balance between freedom and authority. He did this by retelling the story of the frontier settlement and thereby assessing its successes and failures. Like other writers in the decades before the Civil War, Cooper struggled with the legacy of the Revolutionary fathers - a legacy made more personal in Cooper's case by his father's role as a frontier land developer, judge, and Federalist politician. This book breaks new ground by relating Cooper's artistic development, and his ideas about authority in society, to his efforts to become independent of his father.

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The American Abraham

James Fenimore Cooper and the Frontier Patriarch

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Contents

Frontmatter
pp i-vi

Contents
pp vii-viii

Acknowledgments
pp ix-x

Introduction
pp 1-8

1 - Paradigmatic Tensions: The American Abraham and The Wept of Wish-Ton-Wish
pp 9-39

2 - Family Origins and Patriarchal Designs
pp 40-64

3 - Negotiating a Place in the Patriarchy: Literary Style and the Transfer of Power
pp 65-104

4 - The Prairie and the Family of an Ishmael
pp 105-125

5 - Satanstoe: The Paradigm of Change and Continuity
pp 126-151

6 - The Patriarch as Isolato: In Control from Creation to Apocalypse
pp 152-174

Notes
pp 175-178

Works Cited
pp 179-184

Index
pp 185-188

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The American Abraham

James Fenimore Cooper and the Frontier Patriarch

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