Email this article 
Hide
Show all
Competing Environmental Ethics in Cooper’s The Pioneers
Abstract
This essay examines the environmental worthiness of James Fenimore Cooper’s The Pioneers and analyzes the various and competing environmental ethics that Cooper introduces in this novel through his descriptions of the different relationships between humans and the natural world. Among these different environmental ethics are the anthropocentric view of nature, the idea that the natural environment should be valued only for the satisfaction of human needs and interests, and the view that nature has intrinsic value and that it should be valued for its own sake. This essay also examines Cooper’s own preferences and attitudes towards these different environmental ethics. It highlights Cooper’s deep regret and disappointment at the thoughtless destruction of nature, the rapid disappearance of wildlife from the American wilderness and the degradation of the nonhuman natural environment. For these reasons, this essay underlines Cooper’s stature as a pioneer of American literary environmentalism and as an early precursor of the modern Environmental Movement.
Keywords: Cooper, nature, environment, anthropocentrism, extrinsic value, intrinsic value
Full Text:
PDFReferences
Primary Source
Cooper, James Fenimore. The Pioneers or the Sources of the Susquehanna: A Descriptive Tale. New York: Signet Classics, 2007.
Secondary Sources
Birdsall, Ralph. The Story of Cooperstown. Boston: IndyPublish, 2010.
Branch, Michael P. “Five Generations of Literary Coopers: Intergenerational Valuations of the American Frontier.” Susan Fenimore Cooper: New Essays on Rural Hours and Other Works. Ed. Rochelle Johnson and Daniel Patterson. Athens: U. of Georgia Press, 2001. 61-80.
Buell, Lawrence. The Environmental Imagination: Thoreau, Nature Writing, and the Formation of American Culture. Cambridge, MA: Harvard U. Press, 1995.
Dunwell, Frances F. The Hudson: America’s River. New York: Columbia U. Press, 2008.
Ferkiss, Victor. Nature, Technology and Society: Cultural Roots of the Current Environmental Crisis. New York: New York U. Press, 1993.
Krauthammer, Anna. The Representation of the Savage in James Fenimore Cooper and Herman Melville. New York: Peter Lang, 2008.
Martin, Terence. “James Fenimore Cooper and the Writers of the Frontier.” Columbia Literary History of the United States. Ed. Emory Elliott et al. New York: Columbia U. Press, 1988. 240-61.
Merchant, Carolyn. Ecological Revolutions: Nature, Gender, and Science in New England. Chapel Hill: U. of North Carolina Press, 2010.
Metcalf, Allan, and David K. Barnhart. America in So Many Words: Words That Have Shaped America. Boston: Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, 1997.
Person, Leland S. “Cooper’s Otsego: Land to Rove for a Man’s Life.” Reading Cooper, Teaching Cooper. Ed. Jeffrey Walker. New York: AMS Press, 2007. 263-80.
Philbrick, Thomas. “Cooper’s The Pioneers: Origins and Structure.” James Fenimore Cooper: A Collection of Critical Essays. Ed. Wayne Fields. New Jersey: Prentice Hall, 1979. 58-79.
Rans, Geoffrey. Cooper’s Leather-Stocking Novels: A Secular Reading. Chapel Hill: U. of North Carolina Press, 1991.
Rothman, Hal K. The Greening of a Nation? Environmentalism in the United States since 1945. Fort Worth, Texas: Harcourt Brace College Publishers, 1998.
Steinberg, Ted. Down to Earth: Nature’s Role in American History. New York: Oxford U. Press, 2002.
Stradling, David. The Nature of New York: An Environmental History of the Empire State. New York: Cornell U. Press, 2010.
Taylor, Alan. William Cooper’s Town: Power and Persuasion on the Frontier of the Early American Republic. New York: Vintage Books, 1995.
Thomas, Brook. Cross Examination of Law and Literature: Cooper, Hawthorne, Stowe, and Melville. New York: Cambridge U. Press, 1987.
Valtiala, Kaarle-Juhani. James Fenimore Cooper’s Landscapes in the Leather-Stocking Series and Other Forest Tales. Helsinki: Academia Scientiarum Fennica, 1998.
Wegner, Robert. “A Proud Tradition.” Quality Whitetails: The Why and How of Quality Deer Management. Ed. Karl V. Miller and R. Larry Marchinton. Mechanicsburg, PA: Stackpole Books, 1995. 253-73.
White, Craig. Student Companion to James Fenimore Cooper. Westport: Greenwood Publishing Group, 2006.
Woods, Kerri. Human Rights and Environmental Sustainability. Cheltenham: Edward Elgar Publishing, 2010.
Yadav, P. R. Vanishing and Endangered Species. New Delhi: Discovery Publishing House, 2004.
Electronic Source
Valen, Nelson Van. “James Fenimore Cooper and the Conservation Schism.” New York History 62, no. 3 (July 1981): 289-306. James Fenimore Cooper Society Website. 1981.
New York State Historical Association. 5 Aug. 2012. .
Refbacks
- There are currently no refbacks.
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License.
2010-2023 (CC-BY) Australian International Academic Centre PTY.LTD.
Advances in Language and Literary Studies
You may require to add the 'aiac.org.au' domain to your e-mail 'safe list’ If you do not receive e-mail in your 'inbox'. Otherwise, you may check your 'Spam mail' or 'junk mail' folders.