LITR 5535: American Romanticism

Sample Student Research Project 2006

Anuruddha Ellakkala

Cooper’s Gothic and Milton’s Epic

American Romanticism is a paradise for one to excavate and to trace British-DNA in the body of the hybrid American Romantic literature.  American romantic literature is not only nourished by the American ideological, ontological, theological, and cultural imaginations but also by British religious and cultural values.  Even though American romantic writers are able to generate authentic romantic elements in their writings, their romantic literature is linked to the ancient British biblical references; their writings shadow their British predecessors’ imaginative power.  To some extent, American romantics imitate British writers’ literary works such as John Milton and his epic poem, Paradise Lost.  James Fenimore Cooper is a clear example of that.  Cooper’s The Last of the Mohicans (1826) is clearly influenced by Milton’s epic poem Paradise Lost.

Due to the plethora of romantic elements of Paradise Lost, Cooper can easily imitate Milton. Even though both writers lived in two different worlds and belonged to two different literary traditions, Milton’s theological literary imaginations easily blend with Cooper’s romantic writings.  In other words, as identified in class discussions there are many romantic elements even in realistic writings, though Realism is totally against romantic literature.  But romantic writings are very similar to ideological writings such as Milton’s epic poem.  John B. Lamb points out that “deconstruction or undercutting of Paradise Lost was aptly suited to Gothic fiction” (306).  Milton’s ideological imagination is much closer to Romanticism than to other literary traditions. Milton’s Paradise Lost has many romantic elements that Cooper was able to pursue.  David B. Kesterson says:

Consideration of possible Miltonic influence on Cooper has been precluded mainly by a single statement made by Cooper’s daughter, Susan Fenimore Cooper, that her father ‘could seldom be induced to read more than a page or two of Milton at a time; the great epic poet he considered too correctly cold and classical in sprit, for his theme. . . . (138)

David’s statements about Cooper and his daughter, Susan, are rhetorical and logical, but although Susan tries to deny Milton’s influence on her father’s writing, she unknowingly proves how much her father respected Milton’s Paradise Lost.  She tells that her father regards Paradise Lost as “the great epic” as well as a “classical” poem.  If her words “correctly cold” delineate any negative meaning, it may be due to some austerities of Milton’s language as Dr. White explained to me once when I compared Milton with Spenser.  When I read Cooper, I feel similar austerities with Cooper’s writings in some passages.  According to the daughter’s words, her father did not recommend Milton for her reading.  But, it does not mean Cooper did not love Paradise Lost or that it did not influence Cooper’s writings. 

Milton’s influence over Cooper’s writing is undeniable.  Parallel to Milton’s hell and heaven, Cooper depicts binary gothic pictures of new land its dark, unknown forests and the native people of America.  He compares British colonies to a paradise and the dwellers of the colonies to divine beings.  For example, his description of Alice, the daughter of a British commander, is a person with heavenly “dazzling complexion, fair golden hair and bright blue eyes” (Cooper 9).  Similarly, Cooper compares the American wilderness to a hell and its dark inhabitants to devils.  According to Cooper, Indians are “more like dark glancing specters, or some unearthly beings, than creatures fashioned with the ordinary and vulgar materials of flesh and blood” (Cooper 292).  His story in The Last of the Mohicans focuses on white paradisiacal beings: Heyward, Alice, and David, who cross this devilish land to meet the two sisters’ father, Colonel Munro.  Again, the story is about the horrific attack of dark hellish beings and the deaths of the romantic heroine, Cora, romantic hero, Uncas, and Satanic hero, Magua. 

While Milton’s turmoil with God and Satan is in Heaven, all troubles in The Last of the Mohicans take place in this hellish wilderness. Cooper portrays gothic and hellish characteristics of this wilderness.  He says, “The gray light, the gloomy little area of dark grass, surrounded by its border of brush, beyond which the pines rose, in breathing silence, apparently, into the very clouds, and the death-like stillness of the vast forest, were all in unison to deepen the sensation” ( Cooper 126). The writer’s words “gray light, gloomy little area, dark grass, breathing silence, and death-like stillness” are able to generate parallel hellish characteristics compared to Milton’s hell in Paradise Lost. Milton explains to his readers his Satan’s hell is: 

Regions of sorrow, doleful shades, where peace

And rest can never dwell, hope never comes

That comes to all; but torture without end

Still urges, and a fiery deluge, fed

With ever-burning sulphur unconsumed

Such place Eternal Justice had prepared

For those rebellious, here their prison ordained

In utter darkness, and their portion set

As far removed from God and light of Heav’n (PL, I, 66-74)

According to course objectives, we search for elements such as desire and loss, rebellion, nostalgia, gothic, and sublime to determine the romance elements.  All of these romantic elements are in this single quotation of Milton’s Book I.  In Book I, Milton’s words “sorrow, doleful shades, rest can never dwell, fiery deluge, ever-burning, utter darkness, and light” are celebrated horrific gothic words in American Romanticism.  Further, “God and light” indicate the sublime. 

Cooper’s depiction of frontier wilderness is close to the portrayal of Milton’s ideal of hell.  Interestingly, Jan Lewis says, “Milton’s version of the Fall achieved wide popularity in America at the end of the eighteenth century” (704).  Adding to Lewis’ idea, Paradise Lost would be a popular text book at the beginning of the eighteenth century because the poem is enriched with romantic beauty and Christian religious concepts.  As a rebellious student of Yale University for a considerable amount of time and by being a British seaman for years, why should Cooper not be able to imitate Milton for his writings?  For instance, Joseph Conrad earned his literary achievement because he traveled by British ship.  Conrad also romantically portrayed Milton’s ideological hell and heaven depictions in his Heart of Darkness.  Definitely, Milton was among the reading of British mariners when Cooper served for them as a young soldier and Paradise Lost would be one of young Cooper’s most favorite books, the book later helped him to enrich his romantic writings.

Therefore, when Cooper romanticizes wilderness in the novel, it is very similar to Milton’s hell.  Milton’s hell is “A dungeon horrible, on all sides round / As one great furnace flamed, yet from those flames / No light, but rather darkness visible / Served only to discover sights of woe (PL, I. 58-64).  Milton’s fictitious hell is a horrible gothic place with all negative romantic qualities such as pain and sufferings.  Hell is the eternal place for Satan and his devil allies.  Cooper’s wilderness is also an unfavorable hell-like gothic place for frontier European-American settlers because of Magua and his Indians.  As a soldier and a frontier novelist, Cooper regards Indian habitats as hostile places for white people.  Like Milton’s Satan who is able to escape from hell and attack Paradise, Magua and his people are able to sneak into Anglo-American colonies and ruin them. Cooper describes nature re-taking a colony abandoned due to Indian wars:

Yet frequent throughout the broad barrier of wilderness which once separated the hostile provinces, and form a species of ruins that are intimately associated with the recollections of colonial history, and which are in appropriate keeping with the gloomy character of the surrounding scenery. The roof of bark had long since fallen, and mingled with the soil; but the huge logs of pine, which had been hastily thrown together, still preserved their relative positions, though one angle of the work had given way under the pressure, and threatened a speedy downfall to the remainder of the rustic edifice. (126-7)

The writer shows the destructive ability of nature and the power of the Indians and the evidence of their destruction.   Similar to president Thomas Jefferson and other frontier novelists, Cooper believes white people should posses tribal territories.  Wynette L. Hamilton says, “They [frontier novelists] saw heathen Indians beyond rescue in a low level of civilization, and reasoned that God was helping them to destroy these savages in their Satanic plot against ‘God’s chosen People’” (7).  According to Wynette’ investigation of frontier novelists, Indians are unpredictable, unbelievable, untamable, and intractable.  More than that Indian never assimilate into the civilized culture and they constantly attack white settlers.  As a matter of fact, Cooper especially thinks colonial settlers’ wives and daughters are unprotected from uncivilized Indians like Milton’s Eve from Satan’s eyes. 

In The Last of the Mohicans, Cooper takes Milton’s Satan and Eve plot and he romanticizes it in an American-way.  Cooper’s depiction of Milton’ Eve like young Cora’s terrible death in The Last of the Mohicans suggests white women’s vulnerability at the hands of the savage Indian.  Alan R. Velie explains, “Much of American literature is concerned with conquering the hostile wilderness and ‘Winning the West”’ (75).  Alan says colonial writers encourage expansion of colonial territories.   Similar to other frontier writers, Cooper wants to protect the American paradise.  In the meantime, Cooper wants to shield the children of Milton’s fallen Eve, the American sons and daughters, from the threat of satanic Magua and his allies. Further, Alan reviles:

The legacy of anti-Indian bigotry goes back to Columbus: from the very first contact between the races, whites depicted Indians as super-stitious at best, and evil, even satanic, at worst. Columbus describes the Indians he met on Hispaniola as naked and credulous: they had rings in their noses, and believed that the Spanish were men from heaven. (76-77)

Columbus is the first European explorer and first European person to sight Indian tribes. He could be the first European to declare the Indians as evil and satanic peoples.  Although Columbus does not belong to the world of literature like Milton and Cooper, he is able to generate romantic feelings with this untouched land.  Norton, a writer of Christopher Columbus’ biography, reports that Columbus’ first sight of the “South American mainland; the lushness of nature there made him believe himself near Paradise” (25).  When he gets his first gothic sight of the Indians, Columbus immediately feels he is in a hell.  Soon after, he meets Spanish men and thinks of those men as angels.  In his letters, Columbus is able to create two opposite romantic pictures such as hell and heaven as well as hellish and angelic or civilized and uncivilized human depictions on this newly discovered land.  According to the course objective of American Romanticism, this explorer’s binary depictions directly represent gothic and sublime.  Therefore, if Cooper read Columbus’ romantic imaginations before he composed The Last of the Mohicans, Cooper might think to read Paradise Lost one more time because Milton develops these Romantic elements, in his theological poem, a hundred times better than Columbus did it in his letters.  Cooper can easily match his romantic imagination with Milton’s when he writes The Last of the Mohicans.

            Therefore, one can see Cooper treats his romantic Magua like Milton treats his Satan.  Milton’s God wants to get rid of Satan and his allies form heaven; God needs to make heaven a favorable place for his good angels.  Cooper also likes to see his Satanic Magua and his devilish followers perish from white settlers’ fairyland.  In Paradise Lost, Milton believes God creates Satan’s hell parallel to Paradise.  Not only Cooper but all frontier romantic novelists believe, America like paradise, is created by God for his people.  In the meantime, frontier writers believe that Satan’s hell exists at arm’s length.  It is the Indians’ wilderness.  For example, Rowlandson always illustrates hell and heaven pictures in her captivity story.  She says, “I must turn my back upon the town, and travel with them into the vast and desolate wilderness” (Norton 138).  Similar to Milton’s Adam and Eve who left their Paradise, Rowlandson has to leave her blissful home with evil Indians to a hell-like dim forest.  Milton states, “They hand in hand with wand’ring steps and slow / Through Eden took their solitary way” (PL, XII. 48-49).  Adam and Eve descend to the dark earth from Paradise. 

Parallel to the fall of Milton’s Adam and Eve, Cooper’s Anglo-American settlers have to step into the dark place of the wilderness.  He explains savage wilderness and its devilish troop: “Along the sweeping borders of the woods, hung a dark cloud of savages, eying the passage of their enemies, and hovering, at a distance, like vultures, who were only kept from swooping on their prey, by the presence and restraint of a superior army” (180).  Cora, Alice, Duncan, and David face unimaginable dangers and threats as they cross forbidden territory.  These white settlers journey in Cooper’s The Last of the Mohicans is very similar to the fall of Adam and Eve in Paradise Lost.  After Adam and Eve fall from Paradise, they have to experience death and suffering similar to Cooper’ white group.  Therefore, Cooper and Milton have identical romantic characteristics such as desire and loss and the sublime that we explored in our course objectives.  For this reason, when we read The Last of the Mohicans as a romantic novel, we are unable to negate its similarities to Paradise Lost.

            Similarities of the two villains in both texts show Milton’s romantic marks in Cooper’s writing.  Both writers have two villains are that are romantically heroic and equally destructive.  David is certain about Milton’s inspiration in Cooper’s The Last of the Mohicans; David complains, “The almost certain influence of Milton’s Satan on the hostile Indian chieftains (specifically Magua of The Last of the Mohicans and Mahtoree of The Prairie) of the Leatherstocking novels has been largely ignored by Cooper scholars” (138).  According to David, scholars should positively discuss the relation between these two authors.  Because Milton’s inspiration is not only a shadow in Cooper’s The Last of the Mohicans, but also Cooper’s other Leatherstocking novels mirror Milton’s same image.  According to David, Cooper’s The Prairie is an example for that.  David continues his argument:

. . . In The Last of the Mohicans Cooper borrows both Milton’s frequently used epithet ‘Prince of Darkness’” and also the accompanying physical characteristics of Satan in depicting Magua. It is undeniable, then, that Cooper drew from Paradise lost as he developed the Leatherstocking tales. And it becomes increasingly evident, upon a detailed examination of the parallels between Cooper’s evil Iroquois and Sioux chieftains and Milton’s Satan, that Cooper was extensively influenced by Miilton’s poem. (138-9)

Satan is a powerful figure among the other angels in Paradise Lost.  Milton says his Satan is . . . “above the rest / In shape and gesture proudly eminent” and Satan “Stood like a Tow’r; his form had yet not lost / Less than Arch-Angel ruin’d and th’ excess / Of Glory obscur’d . . . . (PL, I, 589-94).  Satan’s physical power is incomparable to the other angels. Similar to Milton’s portrayal of his romantic Satan, Cooper’s Indians hero, the  Huron Magua, is one of the strongest characters of The Last of the Mohicans.  When Cooper depicts Huron characteristics, he frequently introduces them as “Demons,” and “devils” (Cooper 300).  Moreover, Cooper’s Miltonic Magua is “the Prince of Darkness, brooding on his own fancied wrongs, and plotting evil” (Cooper 300).   Magua is the evil prince of the Indian gothic world.  Satan is the devilish prince of hell.  At the beginning, Cooper attributes a noble position to Magua like Milton gave a royal position to Satan.

Clearly, Cooper follows Milton’s majestic depictions of unfallen Satan when Cooper depicts Magua.  Before Satan’s fall, Milton relates that Satan was “. . . great in power, / In favor and preeminence” (PL, V, 660-61).  Meanwhile, one of Milton’s angels, Raphael, describes Satan as “brighter once amidst the host / Of angels, than that star the stars among” (PL, VII, 132-33).  Stella P. Revard says, “He (Satan) is the one whose power easily conveys one third of God’s angels away from their God” (200).  Probably, Satan’ these qualities of are equivalent to the qualities of God’s Son.  The most powerful characters of Milton’s Paradise Lost are God, Son, and Satan.  Cooper freely takes this Miltonic format and develops Chingachgook, Uncas, and Magua as heroic characters of The Last of the Mohicans.  Interestingly, like Son, Uncas is a sacrificial romantic character in The Last of the Mohicans.  To Milton’s rebellious angels Satan is the only hero.  Similar to that, to Cooper’s savage Indians, “Le Subtil is the sun of his tribe. There have been clouds, and many mountains between him and his nation; but now he shines, and it is a clear sky” (Cooper 174).  Indians believe no one can stop sun-like Magua and they say, “Magua is a great chief” (Cooper 175).  Like Miltonic Satan, Cooper’s Magua is a “cunning savage” and he has politically “dangerous and artful eloquence” (Cooper 262).  Therefore, Cooper’s Magua is able to easily rally his tribes against their enemies.  Cooper’s attribution of Magua’s persuasive power is satanic because Cooper imitates Milton.  David compares Magua:

Like Satan, Magua’s persuasive powers are evident in his oratory as well as in private conferences. As an orator, ‘his fame . . . was undeniable. He never spoke without auditors, and rarely without making converts to his opinions’” (II, 300). In Chapter XI, after he has led his captors, David Gamut, Duncan, Alice, and Cora to a temporary encampment, Magua addresses his warriors, urging them to get their revenge on the white men. Like Satan in his speeches, he opens by calmly and deliberately appealing to their sense of pride in their past. (139-40)

Cooper is able to understand how Milton illustrates his eloquent Satan.  In Book I, while Satan is roaming in hell, Satan provokes his followers’ anger by telling them that God had “tempted our attempt, and wrought our fall” (1.642).  In hell, Satan asks of his followers, “Who can think subjection?” (1.661); in heaven Satan questions the angels, “will ye submit your necks, and choose to bend / the supple knee?” (V. 787-88); he demands “govern, not to serve” God (PL, V, 802); in Paradise he provokes Eve. Satan says:

                        Queen of this universe, do not believe

                        Those rigid threats of death; ye shall not die:

                        How should ye? By the fruit? It gives you life

                        To knowledge. By the Threat’ner? Look on me,

                        Me who have touched and tasted, yet both live,

                        And life more perfect have attained than fate

                        Meant me, by vent’ring higher than my lot.

                        Shall that be shut to man, which to the beast

                        Is open? Or will God incense his ire. (PL, IX, 684-92)

Milton’s Satan is romantically provocative; he is able to wage a dangerous war with God and hold it for days. After God exiles him form heaven, still Satan is heroic and eloquent; he is able misguide his allies.  Finally, Satan sneaks into Paradise and artfully persuades Milton’s Eve to challenge God and to eat forbidden fruit. Cooper closely examines Milton’s artful Satan and sharpens his Magua’s tongue with Satan’s voice.  Cooper says:     

“When he [Magua] spoke of courage, their looks were firm and responsive; when he alluded to their injuries, their eyes kindled with fury; when he mentioned the taunts of the women, they dropped their heads in shame; but when he pointed out their means of vengeance, he struck a cord which never failed to thrill in the breast of an Indian. (Cooper 107)

Similar to the positive reactions Satan’s allies have to his speech, Magua’s eloquent speech heats up Indian blood.  In the meantime, if Magua wants to cool down Indian blood with sad emotions, he can do it too.  When Magua speaks about Indians’s pried history, their red bloods turn into gothic dark.  Cooper’s romantic illustration is a clear reflection of the angry appearance of Milton’s fallen Satan.

Cooper’s depiction of Magua’s fall in The Last of the Mohicans is very similar to the depiction of Satan’s fall in Paradise Lost.  Even though Milton starts his epic with fallen Satan and his hell, later Milton shows Satan majestic position in heaven.  Satan was a kingly person before pride struck him and damages his relationship with God, like Magua before he broke with Colonel Munro.  Milton says his Satan is “High in the midst exalted as a God / Th’Apostate in his Sun-bright Chariot sat” (PL, VI, 99-100). Eventually, Satan’s mind is corrupted by God’s tyrannical power in heaven; he challenges and attacks God.  The cost of the challenge is Satan’s “. . . courage never to submit or yield (PL, I. 107-8).  Finally, “. . . his pride/ Had cast him out from Heav’n, with all his host / Of rebel angels (PL, I. 36-38).  Interestingly, Alan is able to compare Satan’s fall to Magua’s death. Alan,     

The most dramatic example is the death of Magua in The Last of the Mohicans. When Natty Bumppo shoots Magua, the beautiful, evil Iroquois falls to his death in a scene reminiscent of Lucifer’s fall from heaven. The felling of the woods as evil and the Indian as devil figure is even stronger in novelists like Charles Brockden Brown and Hawthorne. (83)

Alan correctly compares Magua’s death to Satan’s fall.  However, I would like to say Cooper imitated Satan’s fall for his Magua before that.  For example, Satan is one of the best companions of God and a happy person in heaven.  Similarly, as Cooper explains “Magua  was born a chief and a warrior among the red Hurons of the lakes; he saw the suns of twenty summers make the snows of twenty winters run off in the stream, before he saw a plale-face; and happy” (101).  Magua was a proud leader for twenty years. Later, he became a friend and a strong supporter of Colonel Munro.  Magua took the side of English and fought against to his own people.  However, White men “taught him to drink the fire-water, and [he] became a rascal” (101). As a matter of fact, Munro “tied up [Magua] before all the pale-face warriors, and whipped [him] like a dog” (Cooper 102).  Magua’s pride was injured like Satan’s.  Magua falls form his desirable position like Satan fall from heaven.  He seeks revenge against Munro and white people like Milton’s Satan seeks revenge against God, Adam and Eve.  Satan’s fall from heaven is the precursor of his victims’, (Adam and Eve) fall from Paradise.  Identically, Cooper’s Magua  falls from his position as chief when he is beaten by white people. Magua’s fall is the main reason for the fall of Cooper’s American Eve, Cora, and American Adam, Uncas.  Therefore, Cooper is heavily influenced by Milton and his epic poem Paradise Lost.

            Cooper lived five or six generation after his British ancestor John Milton. Yet, Cooper’s romantic imaginations are very similar to Milton’s.  Cooper carried his predecessor’s ancestral British gene in his veins, page after page, in The Last of the Mohicans.  He shadows the influence of British Milton’s Paradise Lost. Clearly, Cooper was influenced by Milton and Cooper’s Magua is very identical to Milton’s Satan.  Furthermore, both texts are equally romantic. Milton’s romantic development is ideological because the setting of the poem is paradoxical to heaven; it is theological because Milton takes a biblical story as his theme; Paradise Lost is worthy of Cooper to imitate because Milton’s literary imagination fits into American Romanticism.  Moreover, Cooper borrows romantic elements from Paradise Lost and he chooses the American Wilderness and its inhabitants as his realistic setting; he composes his romantic novel while making a bridge (link) between British literature and American realism because some realistic elements exist in, The Last of the Mohicans.             

 

Works Cited

 

 

Alan, R. Velie. “Gerald Vizenor’s Indian Gothic” MELUS, 17.1 (Spring, 1991 –           Spring,1992): 75-85.  JSTOR. 26 Oct 2006 <http://www.jstor.org/>

Christopher Columbus.  The Norton Anthology of American Literature.  Ed. Nina Baym. 6th ed  New York: Norton, 2003. 25.

Cooper, James Fenimore. The Last of the Mohicans. (1826). New York: Bantam,    1981.

David B. Kesterson. “Milton’s Satan and Cooper’s Demonic Chieftains.” The South Central Bulletin, 29.4 (Winter, 1969): 138-142. JSTOR. 26 Oct 2006 <http://www.jstor.org/>

Jan Lewis. “The Republican Wife: Virtue and Seduction in the Early Republic.” The William and Mary Quarterly, 3rd Ser., 44.4 (Oct., 1987): 689-721. JSTOR. 10 Nov 2006 <http://www.jstor.org/>

John, B. Lamb. “Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein and Milton’s Monstrous Myth.”   Nineteeth-Century Literature, 47.3 (Dec., 1992): 303-19. JSTOR. 10 Nov          2006 <http://www.jstor.org/>

 

Milton, John. “Paradise Lost.” John Milton: The Complete Poems, Ed. Leonard, John.          Nee York: Penguin, 1998. 120-389.

 Rowlandson, Mary. “A Narrative of The Captivity And Restoration.” The Norton Anthology of American Literature.  Ed. Nina Baym. 6th ed  New York: Norton, 2003. 136-152.

Stella Purce Revard. “Satan as Epic Hero.” The War in Heaven: Paradise Lost and the Tradition of Satan’s Rebellion. London, 1980. 198-235 

Wynette L. Hamilton. “The Correlation between Societal Attitudes and Those of         American Authors in the Depiction of American Indians, 1607-1860.”

            American Indian Quarterly, 1.1 (Spring, 1974): 1-26. JSTOR. 26 Oct 2006      <http://www.jstor.org/>