LITR 4232: American Renaissance

Sample Student Research Project, spring 2006

Tallia Ortiz

LITR 4232 2006 project

Links Between Cooper and Irving

            Early American Renaissance authors represent a time when the new world represented a look at western frontier life.  Washington Irving and James Fenimore Cooper are two of those early American authors that began creating the perception of the new world for the foreign world to perceive using fiction.  Using literary elements such as the gothic and sublime, Irving might have influenced Cooper in his writing, which may have led to Cooper creating a novel of gothic architectures with romantic aspirations.  The setting, tone, and characters have a progressive affect from Irving’s Sleepy Hollow to Cooper’s The Last of the Mohicans.

            First, in the setting of both Hollow and Mohicans, there is the representation of the gothic from the descriptions of the forests.  For example, in Mohicans, Heyward takes in his environment, “Glancing his eyes around, with vain effort to pierce the gloom that was thickening beneath the leafy arches of the forest, he felt as if, cut off from human aid…” showing the forest as a place where no individual is safe (45).  In Hollow, Ichabod Crane is traveling home late at night and comes upon a tree, “Its limbs were gnarled and fantastic, large enough to form trunks for ordinary trees, twisting down almost to the earth, and rising again into the air” (2180).  Cooper and Irving had the same ideas about what type of setting they were creating for their audience, looking for the fanatical elements that would exaggerate the truth.

            In looking at landscapes, another similarity between the two novels is the use of the sublime when describing the setting.  Irving creates an air of mysterious and intrigue by bringing the supernatural into the picture by having “…something huge, misshapen and towering” (2181).  Cooper uses the same sense of things with, “His awakened imagination, deluded by the deceptive light, converted each waving bush, or the fragment of some fallen tree, into human forms…” (45).  The forests bring on an unearthly hue to the scene of both novels, making the reader want to hurry and finish the page to find out what will occur next.

Although Cooper attempted to maintain an accurate account of the surroundings for his setting, his characters are fictitious.  Cooper accurately portrays Glenn’s Falls (located on the Hudson), “…there are the falls on two sides of us, and the river above and below.”(55).  This leads the reader to be able to create the surroundings in their imagination.  The same effect is in Irving’s Sleepy Hollow as the story starts out with “Found among the papers of the late Diedrech Knickerbocker” attempting to show a historical influence on the text (2165), even though it has no base in fact.  In addition, Cooper used the various traditions of the Indians to help maintain with the realistic Indian culture (Leisy 124).

            Another form of the sublime used in both novels is the use of sound to create a disheartening affect.  Cooper uses sound as an instrument of when Chingachgook begins to morn, “Then a low, deep sound was heard, like the suppressed accompaniment of distant music, rising just high enough on the air to be audible, and yet so indistinctly, as to leave its character…” (345).  The sound is sad but being barely heard gives it the feeling of one of the Indian gods morning for Chingachgook’s son Uncas.  Irving utilizes sound to generate a more horrifying affect in the forest, “No signs of life occurred near him, but occasionally the melancholy chirp of a cricket, or perhaps the guttural twang of a bull-frog from a neighboring marsh…” (2180).  Irving and Cooper integrate specific noises to represent the unobserved intruder. 

The sublime continues to create an illusion in Cooper’s Mohicans.  In Steven Blakemore’s, “Without a Cross: The Cultural Significance of the Sublime and Beautiful in Cooper’s The Last of the Mohicans,” suggests that Cooper linked the sublime with the complexity of the different noises throughout the novel (30).  Blakemore says, “…Cooper amplifies terrifying, discordant sounds.” (31).  For example, when the company is taking refuge in Glenn’s Falls, they hear:

…a cry, that seemed neither human, nor earthly, rose in the outward air, penetrating not only the recesses of the cavern, but to the inmost hearts of all who head it.  It was followed by a stillness apparently as deep as if the waters had been checked in their furious progress at such a horrid and unusual interruption. (59).

Cooper, still ahead of his time, gives the feeling of the movie Jaws when the deathly white sharks fin appears out of the water, unearthly music follows but when it disappears, the music is stopped followed by a long drawn out silence which keeps the audience captivated until the end.

            Both Cooper and Irving use the angularity of the gothic sense to describe their characters.  In Hollow, Irving describes the main character, Ichabod Crane:

He was tall, but exceedingly lank, with narrow shoulders, long arms and legs, hands that dangled a mile out of his sleeves, feet that might have served for shovels, and his whole frame most loosely hung together.  His head was small, and flat at top, with huge ears, large green glassy eyes, and a long snipe nose, so that it looked like a weather-cock perched upon his spindle neck to tell which way the wind blew. (2167)

Irving shows that Ichabod’s body structure is like the gothic churches of old, being full of right angles and oddly dimensions.  Cooper similar describes David Gamut, a main character from Mohicans, as “He had all the bones and joints of other men, without any of their proportions” showing angular symmetry along the same lines of Irving’s description of Ichabod (16).  However some differences occur in their description of certain physical features, “His head was large; his shoulders narrow; his arms long and dangling while his hands were small, if not delicate” (16).  Similarities occur between both Irving and Cooper.  Possibly, Cooper read or had foreknowledge of Irving’s tales and got the idea of basing one of his characters on Ichabod Crane, or maybe Cooper had no prior knowledge and just based him on what he felt.

Irving does not rely heavily on using romantic terms to show his characters charms whereas Cooper uses it fully to his advantage from the beginning of the novel.  For example, when the company stops for a rest:

Uncas acted as attendant to the females, performing all the little offices within his power, with a mixture of dignity and anxious grace, that served to amuse Heyward, who well knew that it was an utter innovation on the Indian customs, which forbid their warriors to descend to any menial employment, especially in favour of their women. (56).

This shows that Cooper added allowances to the Indian customs and lead Uncas on a more romantic journey than the other characters.

Another romantic element is chivalry.  Chivalry, as defined by Gary Dyer in “Irresolute Ravishers and the Sexual Economy of Chivalry in the Romantic Novel,” says that it is “a standard for behavior, often professed to originate in the codes of medieval knighthood, that requires self-abrogation and self-sacrifice from a privileged man in defense of the powerless and disadvantages, who are typically, even characteristically, women” (341).  This is evident in the beginning of Mohicans when “their attendant sprang lightly into the saddle of the war-horse, when the whole three bowed to Webb,” showing that there is a code that is being followed by all the characters present.  Interestingly enough, “…the only woman saved in The Last of the Mohicans is the one who interests the hero but never interests the villain” according to Dyer (359).  Cooper still felt the need to keep the romantic character alive but sacrifice the gothic one, showing that he was still following a set formula, possibly because it sounded better to the audience of that era.

Cooper probably takes the most romantic context with the title of the novel, The Last of the Mohicans, telling a story of the last of a race.  The Mohicans consists of Chingachgook (who is the father) and Uncas (who is the son).  They represent the last of a dying breed, like the cowboys of old.  This romantic exaggeration shows the depths that Cooper was willing to go to give the Indians a more positive outlook than they previously received.

Another difference between Irving and Cooper is the characteristics of the women in each respective novel.  Cora, in Mohicans, is describes using gothic tones, “The tresses of this lady were shining and black, like the plumage of the raven.” (19).  Cora is an unusual character in Cooper’s book because not only is she a woman of color but she is also outspoken while the white Alice is given the angelic appearance even though she says and does very little.  Cooper attempted to show both sides of the female sex but instead somewhat exaggerates their virtues and hindrances.

However, Alice is similar to Katrina in Irving’s Hollow because they both hold the same qualities, “She was a booming lass of fresh eighteen; plump as a partridge; ripe and melting and rosy-cheeked as one of her father’s peaches; and universally famed, not merely for her beauty, but her vast expectations.” (2170).  Katrina is the one character without any source of darkness around her in Hollow, showing that Irving had some romantic illusions in him but instead of flouncing them like Cooper decided instead to keep it down to a minimum.

Cooper and Irving hold several similar qualities in their novels.  They both use the gothic to create characters of abnormal perception but each character is a representative of the church being the singing-master.  In Hollow, Ichabod Crane would, “take his station in front of the church gallery, with a band of chosen singers; where, in his own mind, he completely carried away the palm from the parson” on Sundays being a minstrel in his village and would be “instructing the young folks in psalmody.” (?).  Along the same lines, Cooper’s David Gamut is full of the church spirit and is able to fit among his enemy Indians by, “the power of psalmody” (223).  Hawk-eye, another member of the party, explains why the Indians did not kill David, “The Indians never harm a non-composser.” (224).  This shows how the power of church is reflected in both of these novels.  Irving’s holds a high standard for how, Ichabod, a church-going man should act, such as teaching, whereas Cooper includes a more spiritual guidance of how David should act when he is submerged in a community that is not his own.

In conclusion, Irving and Cooper both have similar styles of writing.  Both use the gothic and sublime to their advantage in creating eerie places with strange characters.  The point where they break off is when they use the romantic elements in their novels.  Irving used little of it, mostly when he describes Katrina is when the romance is evident in Hollow.  Cooper, on the other hand, applies the romantic to most of his situations, even taking some liberties with the Indians in his novels to make them more romantic.  Novels today do not usually encompass all of these traits, instead focusing more so on one than the other.  By incorporating the gothic, sublime, and romantic in their novels, Cooper and Irving set themselves apart and make themselves become more classical authors than temporarily popular authors.

Works Cited

Blakemore, Steven.  “‘Without A Cross’:  The Cultural Significance of the Sublime and Beautiful in Cooper’s The Last of the Mohicans.”  Nineteenth-Century Literature 52 (Jun 1997):  27-57.

Cooper, James Fenimore.  The Last of the Mohicans.  New York:  Penguin Classics, 1986.

Dyer, Gary.  “Irresolute Ravishers and the Sexual Economy of Chivalry in the Romantic Novel.”  Nineteenth-Century Literature 55 (Dec 2000):  340-368.

Lauter, Paul, ed.  The Heath Anthology of American Literature.  Volume B.  Boston:  Houghton Mifflin Company, 2006.

Leisy, Ernest E.  “Folklore in American Literature.”  College English 8 (Dec 1946):  122-129.