A Study of Fenimore Cooper’s The Last of the Mohicans as American Decolonization: Dialectic Encounter Between Europe and Wilderness (America)

Abstract

This study tries to show decolonization in Fenimore Cooper’s The Last of the Mohicans. As a social process, decolonization serves emancipation of colonized nations to get their cultural independence. In literature as a basic component of culture, this process is operated through some strategic techniques as appropriation which is capturing the language of Imperialism (English), transforming it into english to bear the burden of ones own cultural experience and abrogation which is undermining the axiomatically superiority of Imperial culture. Through exceedingly detailed scrutinizing the above mentioned novel based on this approach, the research shows that how Cooper masterly undermines and abrogates European superiority by introducing American independent hero as open minded character or symbol of melting pot as a cultural elements and shortcoming of European; thus, he inaugurates American agency.

Keywords: Abrogation; Agency; Appropriation; Decolonization