"Fenimore Cooper's Literary Offenses" is an 1895 essay by

Mark Twain Samuel Langhorne Clemens (November 30, 1835 – April 21, 1910), known by his pen name Mark Twain, was an American writer, humorist, entrepreneur, publisher, and lecturer. He was praised as the "greatest humorist the United States has pr ...

, written as a

satire Satire is a genre of the visual, literary, and performing arts, usually in the form of fiction and less frequently non-fiction, in which vices, follies, abuses, and shortcomings are held up to ridicule, often with the intent of shaming o ...

and criticism of the writings of

James Fenimore Cooper James Fenimore Cooper (September 15, 1789 – September 14, 1851) was an American writer of the first half of the 19th century, whose historical romances depicting colonist and Indigenous characters from the 17th to the 19th centuries brought ...

. It draws on examples from '' The Deerslayer'' and '' The Pathfinder'' from Cooper's

Leatherstocking Tales The ''Leatherstocking Tales'' is a series of five novels by American writer James Fenimore Cooper, set in the eighteenth-century era of development in the primarily former Iroquois areas in central New York. Each novel features Natty Bumppo ...

. The essay is characteristic of Twain's biting, derisive and highly satirical style of literary criticism, a form he also used to deride such authors as

Oliver Goldsmith Oliver Goldsmith (10 November 1728 – 4 April 1774) was an Anglo-Irish novelist, playwright, dramatist and poet, who is best known for his novel '' The Vicar of Wakefield'' (1766), his pastoral poem '' The Deserted Village'' (1770), and his ...

George Eliot Mary Ann Evans (22 November 1819 – 22 December 1880; alternatively Mary Anne or Marian), known by her pen name George Eliot, was an English novelist, poet, journalist, translator, and one of the leading writers of the Victorian era. She wrot ...

Jane Austen Jane Austen (; 16 December 1775 – 18 July 1817) was an English novelist known primarily for her six major novels, which interpret, critique, and comment upon the British landed gentry at the end of the 18th century. Austen's plots of ...

, and

Robert Louis Stevenson Robert Louis Stevenson (born Robert Lewis Balfour Stevenson; 13 November 1850 – 3 December 1894) was a Scottish novelist, essayist, poet and travel writer. He is best known for works such as '' Treasure Island'', ''Strange Case of Dr Jekyll ...

Summary

Twain begins by quoting a few critics who praise the works of Cooper:

Brander Matthews James Brander Matthews (February 21, 1852 – March 31, 1929) was an American academic, writer and literary critic. He was the first full-time professor of dramatic literature at Columbia University in New York and played a significant role in est ...

Thomas Lounsbury Thomas Raynesford Lounsbury (January 1, 1838 – April 9, 1915) was an American literary historian and critic, born in Ovid, New York, January 1, 1838. He graduated from Yale College in 1859 and subsequently received honorary degrees from Yale, ...

and Wilkie Collins. He then claims that they have never read the novels themselves, and that Cooper's work is seriously flawed: He goes on to list 18 separate literary rules he feels that Cooper does not follow, such as "The tale shall accomplish something and arrive somewhere. But the "Deerslayer" accomplishes nothing and arrives in the air," and "The author shall use the right word, not its second cousin." Twain continues on with few positive things to say about Cooper's writing, citing several examples from Cooper's writing to illustrate the unbelievable excess of the style.

Reception

Twain's essay has been criticized by proponents of Cooper as unfair and distorted. Cooper scholars Lance Schachterle and Kent Ljungquist write, "Twain's deliberate misreading of Cooper has been devastating....Twain valued economy of style (a possible but not necessary criterion), but such concision simply was not a characteristic of many early nineteenth-century novelists' work." Similarly,

John McWilliams John Dacher McWilliams (July 23, 1891 – March 30, 1975) was a U.S. Representative from Connecticut. He was born in Norwich, Connecticut, to Elizabeth A. (née McClure) and John McWilliams. His father was an immigrant from Ireland. McWil ...

comments: Twain critic Sydney Krause, while agreeing that the "sulfurous grumblings over Cooper rehardly the work of a judicious person," sees Twain's satire as an attack on

Romanticism Romanticism (also known as the Romantic movement or Romantic era) was an artistic, literary, musical, and intellectual movement that originated in Europe towards the end of the 18th century, and in most areas was at its peak in the approximate ...

in general and a formal announcement that Romantic literature "was a literary dead letter in post-Civil War America." Joseph Andriano, writing in ''The Mark Twain Encyclopedia'', says that Twain has "Imposed the standards of Realism on Romance" and that this incongruity is a major source of the humor in the essay. Online excerpt. Everett Emerson (in ''Mark Twain: A Literary Life'') says the essay is "possibly the author's funniest".

Continuation

A second essay, continuing and completing the original essay, was published after Twain's death under the title "Fenimore Cooper's Further Literary Offenses" in ''The New England Quarterly'' (vol XIX, pp. 291–30, September 1946) as edited by Bernard DeVoto. It was reprinted under the title "Cooper's Prose Style" in the collection ''Letters from the Earth'' (on pp 139–150 of the 2004 Harper edition). This essay includes the passage which explains the "114 out of a possible 115" mentioned in the original essay. It is discussed in the "Editor's Notes" in the ''Letters from the Earth'' collection.On p. 301 of the 2004 Harper edition Everett H. Emerson says that the sequel is "less funny but still amusing."

References

External links

''Fenimore Cooper's Literary Offenses''
at the

University of Virginia The University of Virginia (UVA) is a public research university in Charlottesville, Virginia. Founded in 1819 by Thomas Jefferson, the university is ranked among the top academic institutions in the United States, with highly selective ad ...

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Cooper’s Prose Style
at Llumina Press {{DEFAULTSORT:Literary Offenses Of Fenimore Cooper, The Essays by Mark Twain James Fenimore Cooper