Reader:  Mary Tinsley

Presentation:  Cooper, The Last of the Mohicans (Ch. 25 – 33)

Objective 2:

            To study the contemporaneous movement of “Romanticism,” the narrative genre of “romance,” and the related styles of the “gothic” and “the sublime”. 

            As prior lecture and in-class discussion has firmly established the romantic nature of Cooper’s novel, this presentation will focus primarily on several examples of the “gothic” and “the sublime” in the latter parts of the work. 

The following is an excerpt from p. 328-9:

            “The brook was irregular in its width, sometimes hooting through narrow fissures in the rocks, and at others, spreading over acres of bottom land, forming little areas, that might be termed ponds.  Every where along its banks were the mouldering relics of dead trees, in all stages of decay, from those that groaned on their tottering trunks, to such as had recently been robbed of those rugged coats, that so mysteriously contain their principle of life.  A few long, low, and moss covered piles, were scattered among them, like the memorials of a former and long departed generation.” 

 In this single example one can easily discern many, if not all, the characteristics usually attributed to the “gothic”.  First, the reader may observe the seemingly haunted nature of the wilderness itself.  Innumerable numbers of trees, “in all stages of decay”, combine to form the groaning and decomposing backdrop of Cooper’s tale.  Through the clever use of such descriptions, the author establishes the forest as a force arguably more foreboding than that of the savage tribes that populate the area.  While the interplay of light and dark is not specifically indicated in this particular passage, the mind of the average reader is capable of imagining the shadows at play among these “mouldering relics”.  Another significant element of the gothic involved in this example is the indication of the memory of a tumultuous past on the part of the wilderness.  The trees themselves are alive, covered in trunks containing “their principle of life”, and with the aforementioned allusion to relics, Cooper gives a grave-yard air to these “memorials of a former and long departed generation.” 

• Could one make an argument that there are also elements of “the sublime” at work in this passage?  If so, where?

• How does Cooper’s continual use of gothic elements contribute to the reader’s experience in the final chapters of the book?

• How is Cooper’s personification of the wilderness related to the viewpoint taken by those who exist daily within its boundaries?