A Post-Colonial Study of Fenimore Cooper’s The Last of the Mohican: Relativity, Racism, Hybridity, and American Dream
- Hajiali Sepahvand
Abstract
The study tries to explore some post-colonial themes in J. Fenimore Cooper’s Last of Mohican. For doing so, it traces the elements including: relativity, racism, hybridity, and American Dream by which Cooper abrogates legitimized superiority of Europe and inferiority of American, although he has appropriated European English and changed it for American local needs. In fact, he reveals the post-colonial condition of America to define Americanism, American identity, hero, and myth in his novel. In actuality, the real concern of a colonized person, like Cooper, is to object to colonizers; therefore, we investigate his novel which was shaped in the transitional period of colonization to their independence as the reflection of internal voice of a nation against invaders. The article came to the conclusion that Cooper, by his novel, serves to introduce American autonomous novel and literature which is the greatest manifestation of culture. That is, he tries to announce American cultural independence through literature, namely decolonization.
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- DOI:10.5539/ells.v3n4p7