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The Prairie A Tale (Cooper, James Fenimore, Works.)
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The Prairie A Tale (Cooper, James Fenimore, Works.) Unknown - 1985

by James Fenimore Cooper; James Paul Elliott


Summary

Deep in the heart of the newly acquired Louisiana Purchase, five hundred miles beyond the Mississippi River, a group of travelers in the year 1805 pushes yet farther westward over the prairie. Called "squatters" and equipped with covered wagons, livestock, farming implements, and household furnishings, they give every appearance of being ordinary settlers except for the fact they have bypassed the fertile river bottoms for the less productive Great Plains. This group is comprised of the rough, semiliterate Ishmael and Esther Bush, now in their fifties; their numerous children, including seven grown sons; Esther's brother, Abiram White; Ellen Wade, a niece, whose bearing bespeaks a more refined background; and Dr. Obed Bat, an eccentric naturalist. In search of a camping place for the night, they are suddenly confronted by a colossal figure who momentarily fills them with superstitious awe. It is Natty Bumppo, whose form, greatly magnified by an optical illusion, is outlined against the setting sun on the horizon. Once a hunter and scout but now reduced in his old age to trapping, Natty is almost as startled as the newcomers by the encounter. It has been months since the octogenarIan has seen white people so far beyond the settlements. He leads the Bush party to a campsite which will provide for their basic needs: water, fuel, and fodder for the animals.

From the publisher

In the spring of 1826, soon after the publication of The Last of the Mohicans, James Fenimore Cooper immersed himself in The Prairie. In taking Natty Bumppo from his beloved forests of New York state to the Great American Plains, Cooper was in part fulfilling his own prophecy at the end of The Pioneers. Though he was certainly recalling the periodic westward removals of Daniel Boone, one of the prototypes of Natty Bumppo, he was also responding to the ever-increasing public interest in Jefferson's Louisiana Purchase. No characterization more clearly exhibits the firmness of Cooper's vision than that of Natty Bumppo. As his colossal entrance implies, Cooper has reconceived him, and through him, the world in which he moves. Though descended from the garrulous hunter of The Pioneers and reduced to the lowly occupation of a trapper, his moral stature has undergone an apotheosis. Though he is again in The Prairie the loyal guide he was in The Last of the Mohicans, his words here take on even more striking moral force. He is both the spokesman for and the representation of, the most basic rhythm of existence, the natural cycle of life which must end in death. The metaphor of the prairie as the sea, shaped by Cooper's meditation on the relationships between Nature, God, and Man, seems to have had a fertile hold on his imagination. The sea is, as he knew by personal experience, a place of isolation and emptiness on whose surface man lives a precarious life. Imagistically Cooper's plot sets his little bands--the groups of outcasts led by Natty, Ishmael's family, the Sioux, and the Pawnees--to converge and tack away from each other. There is also much in the bursts of action--escapes, captures, shifting alliances, steering by moonlight--that evokes sea life. This same metaphor also points us to a central theme of The Prairie. Beyond the fast-paced action, the novel becomes a meditation on the ways of establishing justice between men.

Details

  • Title The Prairie A Tale (Cooper, James Fenimore, Works.)
  • Author James Fenimore Cooper; James Paul Elliott
  • Binding unknown
  • Publisher State Univ of New York Pr
  • Date March 1985
  • ISBN 9780873953634
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The Prairie
Stock Photo: Cover May Be Different

The Prairie

by J. Fenimore Cooper

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Hardcover
ISBN 13
9780873953634
ISBN 10
0873953630
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Description:
The Mershon Company, New York Hardcover, No Dj, Reprint, G+, 430 pages. Dk green cloth cover with gold lettering and spine decoration. Flyleaf and title page have top right corner bent. Title page has 1" tear on lower right edge. Back paste down is hinged for approximately 1". Top of pages is gilded. Pages are lightly yellowed. Book is still solid. Unable to find date of printing.. Hardcover.
Item Price
$18.00
$4.50 shipping to USA