The Last of the Mohicans as a Mixture of Genres Essays -- English Lite

James Fenimore Coopers The Last of the Mohicans as a Mixture of GenresJames Fenimore Coopers The last of the Mohicans is often seen as a simple adventure story within the historical frame of the French and Indian war. Only if we analyze the novel in a contiguous way, we will realize that it goes beyond this label and that its sources are many and varied, giving the work the richness of the genres on which Coopers novel is based. These are romanticism, western, (being its author one of the forerunners of these genres in the U.S.A.), captivity narratives and epic. In works lasting to Romanticism, nature is given a great important role. In fact, the action takes place in the open air, chuck out for the chapters of the siege of Fort William Henry, so it is the setting which predominates along the work. The impede connection between the characters of romantic novels and nature is exemplified in the characters of Chingachgook, Uncas and Hawkeye, which apart from knowing the place where they harp and being completely adapted to it, they consider nature as a divine entity. In his introduction of this novel in the Oxford Classics edition, John Mcwilliams agrees with this affirmation of the final that for Cooper it was more than the place where they move it was the very condition of life, the shaper of moral values and of human behavior, for good and for ill. In a similar way, the selfsame(prenominal) happens in other important romantic American novels such as Nathaniel Hawthornes The Scarlet Letter and Herman Melvilles Moby Dick. In the former, Hester and his daughter Pearl live in close connection with nature as a source of moral freedom, and in the latter, the Nantucketeers consider themselves as part of the sea.The theme of nationalism, a... ...In conclusion, The Last of the Mohicans does not belong totally to a particular genre since it displays some key aspects of epic, it is one of the most important forerunners of western and inherits some aspects of char acters of captivity narratives, facts which help to create an supernumerary example of romantic literature close to Herman Melvilles Moby Dick, works which seem to be adventure stories but in fact they are richer than that due to both their feeling and the variety of their sources.WORKS CITEDCohen, Hennig and Levernier, James eds. and comps. The Indians and their Captives. Wesport, Connetcticut Greenwood Press Inc, 1977. 299 pp.Cooper, James Fenimore. The last of the Mohicans. 3rd ed. Oxford Oxfords World Classics., 1998. 433 pp.Lpez Estrada, Francisco. Poema del Cid. 12th ed. Fuenlabrada, Madrid Odres Nuevos, 1986. 164 pp.www.britannica.com