詹姆斯-菲尼摩尔-库珀的《布拉沃》(评论)

IF 0.3 3区 文学 0 LITERATURE, AMERICAN
Matthew Redmond
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Today even Cooper's most influential novels—<em>The Spy</em> (1821), <em>The Pioneers</em> (1823), <em>The Red Rover</em> (1827)—are more gestured at than rigorously read, while the lesser lights seldom attract even a passing glance. <em>The Bravo</em>, his 1831 novel about political corruption in eighteenth-century Venice, is among the unnoticed. It is also among the latest of Cooper's works to benefit from the SUNY Press treatment, as that publisher works to deliver \"sound scholarly editions of Cooper's major works, based wherever possible on authorial manuscripts\" (wjfc.org).</p> <p>Granting that all of Cooper's works might merit a certain kind of interest just by being his, it seems reasonable to ask what specifically we gain by livening up <em>The Bravo</em>'s afterlife with a new edition. Certainly, this novel marks a sea change in Cooper's career, as the first of only three novels that he set in Europe. Cooper had left the United States in 1826, and, like innumerable tourists before and since, he found in Italy's culture and history tinder for the imagination. The result is a novel that centers on Jacopo Frontoni, a young man pressed into serving the Venetian government that has unjustly imprisoned his father. In his search for liberty, Frontoni must navigate a power structure as fluid and murky as the canals' waters. His suffering serves as an indictment of the demagogue-infected republic whose bottoming out, the narrator assures us every so often, will come <strong>[End Page 513]</strong> not too many decades hence. In fact, the independent Venice of this novel would succumb to Napoleon in 1797 and to Austria in 1815.</p> <p>For some people, the boon of travel is a clearer perspective on life back home. Getting out of the United States set Cooper's mind only more firmly on his country's problems, even as it widened his perspective on how some of those problems persist across both epochs and oceans. In his send-up of the Venetian government and its failure to represent the best interests of the citizenry, we observe a trenchant critique of Jacksonian democracy. But the novel also represents more deep-seated political concerns. First published in 1831, <em>The Bravo</em> can be situated in a swirl of US cultural productions from the 1830s that were grappling with the subject of the country's long-term prospects. The same question that painter Thomas Cole poses in his <em>The Course of Empire</em> series, Cooper implicitly asks with this novel, How can an American republic expect to remain both coherent and incorrupt into the far future, especially when the rubble of so many great republics, like Rome, litters history's pages? While it revels in the exoticism of its setting, <em>The Bravo</em> never ceases to sound like a kind of field experiment conducted for US eyes. Through the heavy fog of Cooper's Venice and behind its endless moldering columns, one glimpses the Capitol building still under construction.</p> <p>The editors at SUNY Press have delivered a beautiful and imposing volume that wears its scholarly scruples on its sleeve. The introduction, contributed by eminent Americanist Kay Seymour House, reveals Cooper's values and priorities throughout the composition process, making incisive use of his correspondence and the testimony of his zigzagging course across Europe. Besides an extensive and fascinating \"Textual Commentary\" section, the novel boasts an appendix titled \"The Manuscript and Its Transcription,\" which details some of the challenges of the editorial process, including Cooper's not-terribly-decipherable hand, his inconsistent use of Italian forms, and his inconvenient habit of gluing revised text on fresh paper over canceled passages. As for the overall presentation, one could perhaps take issue with the spoiler on the novel's dust jacket, but not remotely with the cover illustration...</p> </p>","PeriodicalId":44043,"journal":{"name":"EARLY AMERICAN LITERATURE","volume":"19 1","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":0.3000,"publicationDate":"2024-08-07","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":"0","resultStr":"{\"title\":\"The Bravo by James Fenimore Cooper (review)\",\"authors\":\"Matthew Redmond\",\"doi\":\"10.1353/eal.2024.a934219\",\"DOIUrl\":null,\"url\":null,\"abstract\":\"<span><span>In lieu of</span> an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:</span>\\n<p> <span>Reviewed by:</span> <ul> <li><!-- html_title --> <em>The Bravo</em> by James Fenimore Cooper <!-- /html_title --></li> <li> Matthew Redmond (bio) </li> </ul> <em>The Bravo</em><br/> <small>james fenimore cooper</small><br/> SUNY Press, 2023 482 pp. <p>When was the last time James Fenimore Cooper had a moment? 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It is also among the latest of Cooper's works to benefit from the SUNY Press treatment, as that publisher works to deliver \\\"sound scholarly editions of Cooper's major works, based wherever possible on authorial manuscripts\\\" (wjfc.org).</p> <p>Granting that all of Cooper's works might merit a certain kind of interest just by being his, it seems reasonable to ask what specifically we gain by livening up <em>The Bravo</em>'s afterlife with a new edition. Certainly, this novel marks a sea change in Cooper's career, as the first of only three novels that he set in Europe. Cooper had left the United States in 1826, and, like innumerable tourists before and since, he found in Italy's culture and history tinder for the imagination. The result is a novel that centers on Jacopo Frontoni, a young man pressed into serving the Venetian government that has unjustly imprisoned his father. In his search for liberty, Frontoni must navigate a power structure as fluid and murky as the canals' waters. His suffering serves as an indictment of the demagogue-infected republic whose bottoming out, the narrator assures us every so often, will come <strong>[End Page 513]</strong> not too many decades hence. In fact, the independent Venice of this novel would succumb to Napoleon in 1797 and to Austria in 1815.</p> <p>For some people, the boon of travel is a clearer perspective on life back home. Getting out of the United States set Cooper's mind only more firmly on his country's problems, even as it widened his perspective on how some of those problems persist across both epochs and oceans. In his send-up of the Venetian government and its failure to represent the best interests of the citizenry, we observe a trenchant critique of Jacksonian democracy. But the novel also represents more deep-seated political concerns. 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引用次数: 0

摘要

以下是内容的简要摘录,以代替摘要:评论者 The Bravo by James Fenimore Cooper Matthew Redmond (bio) The Bravo james fenimore cooper SUNY Press, 2023 482 pp.詹姆斯-菲尼摩尔-库珀上一次风光是什么时候?答案可能是 1992 年,当时迈克尔-曼(Michael Mann)导演的《最后的莫希干人》(The Last of the Mohicans)让我们看到了丹尼尔-戴-刘易斯(Daniel Day-Lewis)饰演的库珀的精彩硬汉角色纳蒂-布姆波(Natty Bumppo)的年轻版本。如果真是这样,那也太久了。如今,即使是库珀最有影响力的小说--《间谍》(1821 年)、《先驱者》(1823 年)和《红色流浪者》(1827 年)--也只是匆匆一瞥,而很少有人认真阅读,而那些较次要的作品甚至连看都很少看一眼。布拉沃》是他 1831 年创作的一部关于十八世纪威尼斯政治腐败的小说,也是不被关注的作品之一。该书也是库珀最新出版的作品之一,因为纽约州立大学出版社致力于提供 "库珀主要作品的可靠学术版本,尽可能以作者手稿为基础"(wjfc.org)。如果说库珀的所有作品只要是他的作品就会引起某种兴趣,那么我们似乎有理由问一问,用一个新版本来活跃《布拉沃》的后世,我们能得到什么。当然,这部小说标志着库珀职业生涯的巨变,是他仅有的三部以欧洲为背景的小说中的第一部。库珀于 1826 年离开美国,像之前和之后无数的游客一样,他在意大利的文化和历史中找到了想象的火花。小说以雅科波-弗朗多尼(Jacopo Frontoni)为中心展开叙述,这位年轻人被迫为威尼斯政府效力,因为威尼斯政府不公正地监禁了他的父亲。在寻求自由的过程中,弗朗多尼必须驾驭像运河水域一样多变、阴暗的权力结构。他的苦难是对蛊惑人心的共和国的控诉,叙述者时不时地向我们保证,几十年后,共和国就会触底反弹[第513页完]。事实上,小说中独立的威尼斯将在 1797 年屈服于拿破仑,在 1815 年屈服于奥地利。对有些人来说,旅行的好处是可以更清楚地了解家乡的生活。走出美国后,库珀更加坚定地思考自己国家的问题,同时也拓宽了他的视野,让他了解到其中一些问题是如何跨越时代和大洋持续存在的。在他对威尼斯政府及其未能代表公民最佳利益的讽刺中,我们看到了对杰克逊民主制的尖锐批评。不过,这部小说也反映了更深层次的政治问题。布拉沃》初版于 1831 年,可以将其置于 19 世纪 30 年代美国文化产品的漩涡之中,当时的美国正在努力解决国家长期前景的问题。与画家托马斯-科尔在其《帝国的进程》系列中提出的问题一样,库珀在这部小说中也隐含地提出了同样的问题:美国的共和国如何才能在遥远的未来保持连贯性和廉洁性,尤其是当罗马等许多伟大共和国的废墟遍布历史书页的时候?虽然《布拉沃》陶醉于其背景的异国情调,但它从未停止过让人联想到一种为美国人所做的实地实验。透过库珀笔下威尼斯的重重迷雾,在其无尽的倒塌的圆柱背后,人们可以瞥见仍在建设中的国会大厦。纽约州立大学出版社的编辑们推出了这本精美而气势恢宏的著作,并将其学术顾忌昭然若揭。著名美国学家凯-西摩-豪斯(Kay Seymour House)撰写的导言揭示了库珀在整个创作过程中的价值观和优先事项,并精辟地利用了他的通信和他在欧洲曲折前进的见证。除了内容广泛、引人入胜的 "文本评论 "部分外,小说还附录了题为 "手稿及其誊写 "的附录,其中详细介绍了编辑过程中遇到的一些难题,包括库珀难以辨认的字迹、意大利文格式的不连贯使用,以及将修改后的文本粘在新纸上以覆盖已取消段落的不便习惯。至于小说的整体表现形式,人们也许会对小说封套上的 "剧透 "提出异议,但对封面插图却不会有任何意见...
本文章由计算机程序翻译,如有差异,请以英文原文为准。
The Bravo by James Fenimore Cooper (review)
In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:

Reviewed by:

  • The Bravo by James Fenimore Cooper
  • Matthew Redmond (bio)
The Bravo
james fenimore cooper
SUNY Press, 2023 482 pp.

When was the last time James Fenimore Cooper had a moment? The answer might be 1992, when Michael Mann's The Last of the Mohicans gave us Daniel Day-Lewis as a smoldering young version of Cooper's wonderfully crusty character Natty Bumppo. If that's the case, it has been too long. Today even Cooper's most influential novels—The Spy (1821), The Pioneers (1823), The Red Rover (1827)—are more gestured at than rigorously read, while the lesser lights seldom attract even a passing glance. The Bravo, his 1831 novel about political corruption in eighteenth-century Venice, is among the unnoticed. It is also among the latest of Cooper's works to benefit from the SUNY Press treatment, as that publisher works to deliver "sound scholarly editions of Cooper's major works, based wherever possible on authorial manuscripts" (wjfc.org).

Granting that all of Cooper's works might merit a certain kind of interest just by being his, it seems reasonable to ask what specifically we gain by livening up The Bravo's afterlife with a new edition. Certainly, this novel marks a sea change in Cooper's career, as the first of only three novels that he set in Europe. Cooper had left the United States in 1826, and, like innumerable tourists before and since, he found in Italy's culture and history tinder for the imagination. The result is a novel that centers on Jacopo Frontoni, a young man pressed into serving the Venetian government that has unjustly imprisoned his father. In his search for liberty, Frontoni must navigate a power structure as fluid and murky as the canals' waters. His suffering serves as an indictment of the demagogue-infected republic whose bottoming out, the narrator assures us every so often, will come [End Page 513] not too many decades hence. In fact, the independent Venice of this novel would succumb to Napoleon in 1797 and to Austria in 1815.

For some people, the boon of travel is a clearer perspective on life back home. Getting out of the United States set Cooper's mind only more firmly on his country's problems, even as it widened his perspective on how some of those problems persist across both epochs and oceans. In his send-up of the Venetian government and its failure to represent the best interests of the citizenry, we observe a trenchant critique of Jacksonian democracy. But the novel also represents more deep-seated political concerns. First published in 1831, The Bravo can be situated in a swirl of US cultural productions from the 1830s that were grappling with the subject of the country's long-term prospects. The same question that painter Thomas Cole poses in his The Course of Empire series, Cooper implicitly asks with this novel, How can an American republic expect to remain both coherent and incorrupt into the far future, especially when the rubble of so many great republics, like Rome, litters history's pages? While it revels in the exoticism of its setting, The Bravo never ceases to sound like a kind of field experiment conducted for US eyes. Through the heavy fog of Cooper's Venice and behind its endless moldering columns, one glimpses the Capitol building still under construction.

The editors at SUNY Press have delivered a beautiful and imposing volume that wears its scholarly scruples on its sleeve. The introduction, contributed by eminent Americanist Kay Seymour House, reveals Cooper's values and priorities throughout the composition process, making incisive use of his correspondence and the testimony of his zigzagging course across Europe. Besides an extensive and fascinating "Textual Commentary" section, the novel boasts an appendix titled "The Manuscript and Its Transcription," which details some of the challenges of the editorial process, including Cooper's not-terribly-decipherable hand, his inconsistent use of Italian forms, and his inconvenient habit of gluing revised text on fresh paper over canceled passages. As for the overall presentation, one could perhaps take issue with the spoiler on the novel's dust jacket, but not remotely with the cover illustration...

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来源期刊
EARLY AMERICAN LITERATURE
EARLY AMERICAN LITERATURE LITERATURE, AMERICAN-
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0.30
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33.30%
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