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

pile 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 legend in a proximate way, we will realize that it goes beyond this label and that its sources are many and varied, openhanded the work the richness of the genres on which Coopers novel is based. These are romanticism, western, (being its author mavin of the forerunners of these genres in the U.S.A.), captivity narratives and epic. In works rifleing to Romanticism, nature is inclined a great important role. In fact, the action takes mall in the open air, except for the chapters of the siege of Fort William Henry, so it is the setting which predominates along the work. The close linkup 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 live and being completely adapted to it, they moot nature as a divine entity. In his introduction of this novel in the Oxford Classics edition, John Mcwilliams agrees with this affirmation of the concluding 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 world behavior, for good and for ill. In a similar way, the same happens in otherwise important romantic American novels such as Nathaniel Hawthornes The Scarlet earn 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 contract 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 1 of the most important forerunners of western and inherits some aspects of characters of captivity narratives, facts which help to pretend an special example of romantic literature close to Herman Melvilles Moby Dick, works which come along to be adventure stories but in fact they are richer than that collect to both their quality 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