Comparison of Cooper and Twain
- This is a preview of the essay.
To view the full text you must login!
After reading Twains Fenimore Coopers Literary Offenses, it seems as though Mark Twains criticisms seemed rather funny in a way. Looking at Twains details of Fenimore Coopers Literary Offenses I find an element of truth. It is hard to argue against his charges that Cooper rather lacked in his ability to engage his characters in brief conversation. In Twains rule number five of romantic fiction we see that:
They require that when the personages of a tale deal in conversation, the talk shall sound like human talk, and be talk such as human beings would be likely to talk in the given circumstances, and have a discoverable meaning, also a discoverable purpose, and a show of relevancy, and remain in the neighborhood of the subject at hand, and be interesting to the reader, and help out the tale, and stop when the people cannot think of anything more to say. (Twain, Rule 5)
Though Mark Twain violated his own rule while explaining the rule, it is nonetheless a sound requirement. In this area, Cooper seems to have difficulty. He permitted Natty Bumppo to deliver verbose speeches detailing his life philosophy, mastery of the woodcraft art, his favorite pleasures, personal hatreds, biographical history, and accounts of his great hunting successes, when a simple greeting would have been enough. He simply did not know when to say when. That seemed to be his problem. Twain on the other hand has the same problem with his other novels...