Fenimore Cooper's Literary Offences

Mark Twain · inglés

Mark Twain's 1895 essay «Fenimore Cooper's Literary Offences» is one of the most famous—and most gleefully cruel—pieces of literary criticism in American letters.

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Mark Twain's 1895 essay «Fenimore Cooper's Literary Offences» is one of the most famous—and most gleefully cruel—pieces of literary criticism in American letters. Twain dismantles the reputation of James Fenimore Cooper, author of the «Leatherstocking Tales» and long celebrated as the father of American romantic fiction. He opens by ridiculing three eminent critics who praised Cooper without, apparently, having read him; then he lays down nineteen rules of romantic fiction and shows that Cooper broke eighteen of them. What keeps the essay alive after more than a century is not just its cruelty but its precision: every charge is pinned to a specific scene—six Indians failing to drop onto a passing boat, a stream that changes width for no reason, dialogue that swings from Yale lecture to plantation dialect within a paragraph, a roll-call of thirty words Cooper used «almost right» but not quite. For modern readers the essay is two things at once: high entertainment that produces audible laughter, and a small masterclass in what it means to write with precision.

Autor

Mark Twain

{"en": "Mark Twain (1835-1910), born Samuel Langhorne Clemens, was an American humorist, novelist, and lecturer. Author of The Adventures of Tom Sawyer and Adventures of Huckleberry Finn—works long considered foundational to American literature—Twain also produced a fierce body of essays and criticism. This 1895 satirical demolition of Fenimore Cooper, published in the North American Review, remains one of the most influential pieces of comic literary criticism ever written in English.", "id": "Mark Twain (1835-1910), nama asli Samuel Langhorne Clemens, adalah humoris, novelis, dan pembicara Amerika. Pengarang The Adventures of Tom Sawyer dan Adventures of Huckleberry Finn—dua karya yang lama dianggap sebagai fondasi sastra Amerika—Twain juga menghasilkan kumpulan esai dan kritik yang tajam. Esai satir 1895 ini, yang menghancurkan reputasi Fenimore Cooper dan diterbitkan di North American Review, tetap menjadi salah satu kritik sastra komik paling berpengaruh yang pernah ditulis dalam bahasa Inggris."}