please reply to the following response
Steve Rogers
Hello Diane,
Well said! And speaking of romanticism, James Fenimore Cooper, as we know, was a major American novelist who authored books such as The Last of the Mohicans, and he romanticized land and the Native American culture. Cooper celebrated the frontiersman as a hero. I think this period of literature began the diversity. Westward expansion was certainly an imperative. The move west produced distinct communities. It also introduced a new East–West axis to colonies previously oriented North–South. The Westward Move relocated people further from historical colonial sites and further distanced people physically and emotionally from England. New trade routes were introduced as well as new literary demand (literary in the broadest sense). New settlers wrote letters to people in the East, kept journals, and developed new oral traditions, which were later written down. Perhaps James Fennimore Cooper’s treatment of “the Indian” offended Twain.
But how does the period literature reflect a tension between existing American traditions and changing social and technological realities? What comparisons can we make between Cooper’s work and that of Fitzgerald?
Thanks.