Page 19 - TEST BOOK
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Reading Listening Speaking Writing
TOEFL Reading CONTINUE
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show a European influence on his writing. This, in fact, has
become a major criticism of Irving’s writing. While stories
like The Legend of Sleepy Hollow were set in America and
illustrated certain aspects of American life, they were
ultimately derived from European source material. Irving’s
later writings followed this trend with such books as The Life
and Voyages of Christopher Columbus, The Conquest of
Granada, and Tales of the Alhambra. While not all literary
scholars agree, many feel that this focus on essentially
European subjects leaves a stain on Irving’s legacy.
James Fenimore Cooper, whose literary career trailed
that of Irving’s by several years, is now generally
recognized as a more influential figure than Irving in the
emergence of a truly American literature. Cooper’s first
success was The Spy, an adventure novel that dealt with
the American Revolution. Cooper’s most important works,
however, were The Leatherstocking Tales, a set of five
novels following the life of Cooper’s fictional hero Natty
Bumppo. What sets these novels apart is not the quality of
Cooper’s writing, which is mediocre as best, but rather it is
his creation of an entirely American character and his
treatment of uniquely American themes. In Natty Bumppo,
Cooper created what would come to be seen as the
quintessential American hero: rugged, independent,
morally upright, and fearlessly loyal to his beliefs. Cooper’s
work is also the first to portray the American fascination
with the frontier. Throughout the Leatherstocking series,
Bumppo is pushed deeper and deeper into the wilderness
as he seeks to maintain his independence from an ever
expanding civilization. This, too, is an original feature of
Cooper’s writing. In his novels, the protagonist is civilization
itself. This would in time become a major theme of
American literature, the struggle to keep one’s individual
Glossary X identity in the face of an ever encroaching society. This
classics: literary works that have been widely
accepted as representing the best work of their time theme would later be taken up again and again in American
classics, from Thoreau’s Walden, published in 1854, to Ken
Kesey’s One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest, published over
one hundred years later.
[ 22 ] Test Book I
