eprintid: 13412
rev_number: 4
eprint_status: archive
userid: 1
dir: disk0/00/01/34/12
datestamp: 2012-08-02 12:01:30
lastmod: 2014-04-04 00:35:03
status_changed: 2012-08-15 09:06:59
type: masterThesis
metadata_visibility: show
creators_name: Taylor, Michael
title: The American Indian as a Souvenir: Antiquarianism, Exoticism, and Sentimentalism in Cooper's "The Pioneers"
ispublished: pub
subjects: ddc-420
divisions: i-90200
keywords: American Indians , Native Americans , James Fenimore Cooper , The Pioneers , Antiquarianism , Exoticism , Sentimentalism , Souvenir
abstract: In his 1828 publication, Notions of the Americans: Picked up by a Traveling Bachelor, James Fenimore Cooper laments, “I have never seen a nation so much alike in my life. . . . There is no costume for the peasant, (there is scarcely a peasant at all,) no wig for the judge, no baton for the general, no diadem for the Chief Magistrate,”  arguing that this universal sameness in the United States proves one of its greatest obstacles to composing an estimable national literature. Cooper’s complaint, however, seems anachronistic, and thus hints at an almost self-marketing scheme in that Cooper had already published the first three novels—The Pioneers, The Last of the Mohicans, and The Prairie—and was yet to publish the remaining two novels of his Leather-Stocking Tales, in which he had already discovered a costume more exotic than that of any European peasant or judge: the American Indian. Driven by this sensed self-promotion, and bolstered by the theoretical backdrop of Susan Stewart’s work, On Longing, my thesis explores Cooper’s utilization of the literary devices of antiquarianism, exoticism, and sentimentalism to transform the American Indian into an international souvenir.
abstract_translated_lang: eng
date: 2012
date_type: published
id_scheme: DOI
id_number: 10.11588/heidok.00013412
ppn_swb: 1651644012
own_urn: urn:nbn:de:bsz:16-opus-134129
language: eng
bibsort: TAYLORMICHTHEAMERICA2012
full_text_status: public
citation:   Taylor, Michael  (2012) The American Indian as a Souvenir: Antiquarianism, Exoticism, and Sentimentalism in Cooper's "The Pioneers".  [Master's thesis]     
document_url: https://archiv.ub.uni-heidelberg.de/volltextserver/13412/1/The_American_Indian_as_a_Souvenir.pdf