閱讀庫柏 James Fenimore Cooper在小说之家的作品!!! | |||
一年後，他父親威廉·庫柏法官，把他帶到紐約州中部奧茨高湖畔的庫柏鎮。這兒有他父親的一大片新開發地。 庫柏的父親威廉法官，是英國教友派教徒的後裔，是當地的大地主，曾兩度任國會議員。他在政治上屬於聯邦派，他的思想和社會地位對庫柏有一定的影響。庫柏的母親伊麗莎白·費尼莫爾是瑞典人。 在十二個兄弟姐妹中，庫柏排行十一。他在庫柏鎮一直生活到十二歲。鎮子附近未開發地上殘存的印第安人以及關於印第安人的傳說，給庫柏留下了深刻的印象，並促使他日後第一個在長篇小說中采用印第安題材。一八○一年，父親把他送到紐約州首府奧爾巴尼，在聖彼得牧師傢學習，為進入耶魯大學做準備。十三歲時，庫柏轉到耶魯上學，讀到第三學年，因違犯校規被開除。據說當時他試圖把炸藥放入鎖孔來打開他朋友的房門。 一八○六年十月，庫柏在一艘商船上當了水手，隨船去歐洲，做了十一個月的海上航行。一八○八年一月，他加入海軍，做見習士官。一八○九年十一月，他開始任海軍軍官，從海軍準尉直至升任為海軍上尉。一八一○年，他請了一年長假，在假期中結了婚。一八一一年，庫柏自海軍退役。這五六年的海上生涯，為他後來寫海上小說打下了堅實的基礎。 庫柏的妻子蘇珊·狄蘭色，出身於紐約州著名的大地主家庭，父母在威契斯特縣擁有大片土地。婚後，庫柏就和妻子定居威契斯特，有時則住在庫柏鎮，過着鄉紳生活，直到一八二二年遷往紐約。他在威契斯特，聽到不少關於獨立戰爭時期的故事，這又為他創作革命歷史小說提供了素材。
Early life
Jameson Fenimore Cooper was born in Burlington, New Jersey, the son of William and Elizabeth (Fenimore) Cooper. His father was a United States Congressman. Shortly after his first birthday, his family moved to Cooperstown, New York, a community founded by his father.
At 13, Cooper was enrolled at Yale, but he did not obtain a degree due to being expelled. His expulsion stemmed from a dangerous prank that involved him blowing up another student's door. Another less dangerous prank consisted of training a donkey to sit in a professor's chair. He obtained work as a sailor on a merchant vessel, and at 18, joined the United States Navy. He obtained the rank of midshipman before leaving in 1811.
At age 21, he married Susan DeLancey. They had seven children, five of whom lived to adulthood. The writer Paul Fenimore Cooper was a great-grandson.
[edit]Writings
He anonymously published his first book, Precaution (1820). He soon issued several others. In 1823, he published The Pioneers; this was the first of the Leatherstocking series, featuring Natty Bumppo, the resourceful American woodsman at home with the Delaware Indians and especially their chief Chingachgook. Cooper's most famous novel, Last of the Mohicans (1826), became one of the most widely read American novels of the 19th century. The book was written in New York City, where Cooper and his family lived from 1822 to 1826.
In 1826 Cooper moved his family to Europe, where he sought to gain more income from his books as well as provide better education for his children. While overseas he continued to write. His books published in Paris include The Red Rover and The Water Witch—two of his many sea stories.
In 1832 he entered the lists as a party writer; in a series of letters to the National, a Parisian journal, he defended the United States against a string of charges brought against them by the Revue Britannique. For the rest of his life he continued skirmishing in print, sometimes for the national interest, sometimes for that of the individual, and not infrequently for both at once.
Otsego Hall, Cooper's ancestral home
This opportunity to make a political confession of faith reflected the political turn he already had taken in his fiction, having attacked European anti-republicanism in The Bravo (1831). Cooper continued this political course in The Heidenmauer (1832) and The Headsman: or the Abbaye of Vigneron (1833). The Bravo depicted Venice as a place where a ruthless oligarchy lurks behind the mask of the "serene republic". All were widely read on both sides of the Atlantic, though The Bravo was a critical failure in the United States.
In 1833 Cooper returned to America and immediately published A Letter to My Countrymen, in which he gave his own version of the controversy in which he had been engaged and sharply censured his compatriots for their share in it. This attack he followed up with novels and several sets of notes on his travels and experiences in Europe. His Homeward Bound and Home as Found are notable for containing a highly idealized portrait of himself.
In June 1834, he resolved to reopen his ancestral mansion, Otsego Hall, at Cooperstown, then long closed and falling into decay; he had been absent from the mansion nearly 16 years. Repairs were at once begun, and the house was speedily put in order. At first, he wintered in New York City and summered in Cooperstown, but eventually he made Otsego Hall his permanent abode.
[edit]Reaction
Photograph by Mathew Brady c. 1850
All these books touching upon the topics of politics and of Cooper himself tended to increase the ill feeling between author and public. The Whig press was particularly virulent in its comments, and Cooper plunged into a series of actions for libel. He emerged victorious in all his lawsuits.
After concluding his last case in court, Cooper returned to writing with more energy and success than he had had for several years. He wrote a history of the US Navy, and then returned to the Leatherstocking series with The Pathfinder, or The Inland Sea (1840) and The Deerslayer (1841) and other novels. He then returned to writing on maritime themes, including Ned Myers, or A Life Before the Mast, which is of particular interest to naval historians.
[edit]Later life
He turned again from pure fiction to the combination of art and controversy in which he had achieved distinction with the Littlepage Manuscripts (1845–1846). His next novel was The Crater, or Vulcan's Peak (1847), in which he attempted to introduce supernatural machinery. Jack Tier (1848) was a remaking of The Red Rover, and The Ways of the Hour was his last completed novel.
Cooper spent the last years of his life back in Cooperstown. He died of dropsy on September 14, 1851, the day before his 62nd birthday. His interment was in Christ Episcopal Churchyard, where his father, William Cooper, was buried. Several well-known writers, politicians, and other public figures honored Cooper's memory with a dinner in February 1852; Washington Irving served as a co-chairman for the event, alongside William Cullen Bryant and Daniel Webster.
[edit]Legacy and criticism
Statue in Cooperstown, New York
Cooper was one of the most popular 19th-century American authors, and his work was admired greatly throughout the world. While on his death bed, the Austrian composer Franz Schubert wanted most to read more of Cooper's novels. Honoré de Balzac, the French novelist and playwright, admired him greatly[citation needed]. Cooper's stories have been translated into nearly all the languages of Europe and into some of those of Asia.
Cooper's work is read carefully by law and literature scholars such as Nan Goodman, who argues that several of Cooper's novels, particularly The Pioneers and The Pilot, demonstrate an early 19th century American preoccupation with prudence and negligence in a country where property rights were often still in dispute.
Though some scholars may dispute Cooper being classified as a Romantic, Victor Hugo pronounced him greater than the great master of modern romance[citation needed], and this verdict was echoed by a multitude of less famous readers[who?], who were satisfied with no title for their favorite less than that of the "American Scott.”[citation needed] The Deerslayer and The Pathfinder were criticized by Mark Twain in a satirical but vicious essay, "Fenimore Cooper's Literary Offenses" (1895), which has long been seen as unfair and distorted. As scholars Schachterle and Ljungquist write, "Twain's deliberate misreading of Cooper has been devastating....Twain valued economy of style (a possible but not necessary criterion), but such concision simply was not a characteristic of many early nineteenth-century novelists' work. Writing with the expectation that their readers would often read their works aloud, Scott, Dickens, Thackeray, Cooper, and Melville favored a full, sometimes orotund, style that Twain and his fellow Realists a generation later spurned."
His reputation today rests upon the five Leatherstocking tales and some of the maritime stories. Literary scholar Leslie Fiedler, however, noted that Cooper's "collected works are monumental in their cumulative dullness."
Cooper was also criticized heavily for his depiction of women characters in his work. James Russell Lowell, Cooper's contemporary and a critic, referred to it poetically in A Fable for Critics, writing, ". . . the women he draws from one model don't vary / All sappy as maples and flat as a prairie."
Three dining halls at the State University of New York at Oswego are named in Cooper's remembrance (Cooper Hall, The Pathfinder, and Littlepage) because of his temporary residence in Oswego and for setting some of his works there.
[edit]Bibliography
Date Title: Subtitle Genre Topic, Location, Period
1820 Precaution novel England, 1813–1814
1821 The Spy: A Tale of the Neutral Ground novel Westchester County, New York, 1778
1823 The Pioneers: or The Sources of the Susquehanna novel Leatherstocking, Otsego County, New York, 1793–1794,
1823 Tales for Fifteen: or Imagination and Heart 2 short stories written under the pseudonym: "Jane Morgan"
1824 The Pilot: A Tale of the Sea novel John Paul Jones, England, 1780
1825 Lionel Lincoln: or The Leaguer of Boston novel Battle of Bunker Hill, Boston, 1775–1781
1826 The Last of the Mohicans: A narrative of 1757 novel Leatherstocking, French and Indian War, Lake George & Adirondacks, 1757
1827 The Prairie novel Leatherstocking, American Midwest, 1805
1828 The Red Rover: A Tale novel Newport, Rhode Island & Atlantic Ocean, pirates, 1759
1828 Notions of the Americans: Picked up by a Travelling Bachelor non-fiction America for European readers
1829 The Wept of Wish-ton-Wish: A Tale novel Western Connecticut, Puritans and Indians, 1660–1676
1830 The Water-Witch: or the Skimmer of the Seas novel New York, smugglers, 1713
1830 Letter to General Lafayette politics France vs. US, cost of government
1831 The Bravo: A Tale novel Venice, 18th century
1832 The Heidenmauer: or, The Benedictines, A Legend of the Rhine novel German Rhineland, 16th century
1832 No Steamboats short story
1833 The Headsman: The Abbaye des Vignerons novel Geneva, Switzerland, & Alps, 18th century
1834 A Letter to His Countrymen politics Why Cooper temporarily stopped writing
1835 The Monikins novel Antarctica, aristocratic monkeys, 1830s; a satire on British and American politics.
1836 The Eclipse memoir Solar eclipse in Cooperstown, New York 1806
1836 Gleanings in Europe: Switzerland (Sketches of Switzerland) travel Hiking in Switzerland, 1828
1836 Gleanings in Europe: The Rhine (Sketches of Switzerland, Part Second) travel Travels France, Rhineland & Switzerland, 1832
1836 A Residence in France: With an Excursion Up the Rhine, and a Second Visit to Switzerland travel
1837 Gleanings in Europe: France travel Living, travelling in France, 1826–1828
1837 Gleanings in Europe: England travel Travels in England, 1826, 1828, 1833
1838 Gleanings in Europe: Italy travel Living, travelling in Italy, 1828–1830
1838 The American Democrat : or Hints on the Social and Civic Relations of the United States of America non-fiction US society and government
1838 The Chronicles of Cooperstown history Local history of Cooperstown, New York
1838 Homeward Bound: or The Chase: A Tale of the Sea novel Atlantic Ocean & North African coast, 1835
1838 Home as Found: Sequel to Homeward Bound novel Eve Effingham, New York City & Otsego County, New York, 1835
1839 The History of the Navy of the United States of America history US Naval history to date
1839 Old Ironsides history History of the Frigate USS Constitution, 1st pub. 1853
1840 The Pathfinder, or The Inland Sea novel Leatherstocking, Western New York, 1759
1840 Mercedes of Castile: or, The Voyage to Cathay novel Christopher Columbus in West Indies, 1490s
1841 The Deerslayer: or The First Warpath novel Leatherstocking, Otsego Lake 1740-1745
1842 The Two Admirals novel England & English Channel, Scottish uprising, 1745
1842 The Wing-and-Wing: le Le Feu-Follet (Jack o Lantern) novel Italian coast, Neopolitan Wars, 1745
1843 Autobiography of a Pocket-Handkerchief , also published as
Le Mouchoir: An Autobiographical Romance
The French Governess: or The Embroidered Handkerchief
Die franzosischer Erzieheren: oder das gestickte Taschentuch
novelette Social satire, France & New York, 1830s
1843 Richard Dale
1843 Wyandotte: or The Hutted Knoll. A Tale novel Butternut Valley of Otsego County, New York, 1763–1776
1843 Ned Myers: or Life before the Mast biography of Cooper's shipmate who survived an 1813 sinking of a US sloop of war in a storm
1844 Afloat and Ashore: or The Adventures of Miles Wallingford. A Sea Tale novel Ulster County & worldwide, 1795–1805
1844 Miles Wallingford: Sequel to Afloat and Ashore
British title: Lucy Hardinge: A Second Series of Afloat and Ashore (1844) novel Ulster County & worldwide, 1795–1805
1844 Proceedings of the Naval Court-Martial in the Case of Alexander Slidell Mackenzie, &c.
1845 Satanstoe: or The Littlepage Manuscripts, a Tale of the Colony novel New York City, Westchester County, Albany, Adirondacks, 1758
1845 The Chainbearer; or, The Littlepage Manuscripts novel Westchester County, Adirondacks, 1780s (next generation)
1846 The Redskins; or, Indian and Injin: Being the Conclusion of the Littlepage Manuscripts novel Anti-rent wars, Adirondacks, 1845
1846 Lives of Distinguished American Naval Officers biography
1847 The Crater; or, Vulcan's Peak: A Tale of the Pacific (Mark's Reef) novel Philadelphia, Bristol (PA), & deserted Pacific island, early 19th century
1848 Jack Tier: or the Florida Reefs
a.k.a. Captain Spike: or The Islets of the Gulf novel Florida Keys, Mexican War, 1846
1848 The Oak Openings: or the Bee-Hunter novel Kalamazoo River, Michigan, War of 1812
1849 The Sea Lions: The Lost Sealers novel Long Island & Antarctica, 1819–1820
1850 The Ways of the Hour novel "Dukes County, New York", murder/courtroom mystery novel, legal corruption, women's rights, 1846
1850 Upside Down: or Philosophy in Petticoats play satirization of socialism
1851 The Lake Gun short story Seneca Lake in New York, political satire based on folklore
1851 New York: or The Towns of Manhattan history Unfinished, history of New York City, 1st pub. 1864