An Ecological Analysis Of James Fenimore Cooper's The Leatherstocking Tales

James Fenimore Cooper is the important founder of American literature. He firstly adopts the distinct American national themes in the field of novel, and creates the three different genres of historical novel, frontier novel and sea novel. He is also one of the first American writers to gain world fame. Creating novels with vivid American native style, he presents the newly-boomed America to readers abroad, and so is often credited with establishing the United States as a major force in world literature.Cooper is a productive writer, with more than thirty novels in his lifetime, among which the most reputed is undoubtedly the frontier novel The Leatherstocking Tales, consisting of five unifying novels: The Pioneers, The Last of the Mohicans, The Prairie, The Pathfinder and The Deerslayer. In the work, taking the concept of American frontier as the breakthrough, Cooper finds the literary themes that really belong to native America and makes the importance of the frontier and the wilderness in American literature for the first time well illustrated. Meanwhile, this work also establishes Cooper's position as the first great national novelist and makes his influence pervade American literature.In the current context of ecological crisis, this thesis analyzes all the five Leatherstocking novels from the perspective of ecocriticism, exploring the ecological thoughts implied in the work. The whole thesis consists of six parts. The introduction briefs the reasons to choose the topic, the current studies at home and abroad, the thesis purpose and structure. Chapter one gives a general survey of ecocriticism, introducing its origin and development, its practicality and literary significance. Chapter two analyzes the ecological depiction of nature in the work, presenting the wilderness'beauty under Cooper's description and the wilderness'value in Cooper's eyes. Chapter three analyzes the dialectical relationship between man and nature in the work, revealing both the harmony and the conflict. Chapter four discusses the idea of returning to nature in the work through Natty's lifetime in the wilderness. The thesis reaches a conclusion that The Leatherstocking Tales conveys rich ecological thoughts and Cooper has ecological consciousness ahead of his times; rereading Cooper's The Leatherstocking Tales is helpful to awake the ecological conscience of people today, stimulating them to reflect on the relationship between man and nature, undertake the ecological responsibility and finally find the way out of the ecological crisis.