Аннотация

It seems highly important to present to the Russian reader James Fenimore Cooper not only as the writer of the Indian romances. His works of fiction (including social novels) and non-fiction have to be considered together in their integrity. The author of this article is apt to share the opinion of those scholars (G. Morrison, A. Axelrad) who put emphasis on the practical constancy of Cooper’s conception of the ideal Republic, its main principles, the writer’s uniform world view. He can hardly be characterized as a democrat. Cooper’s political thought was influenced both by liberal ideas, especially during his stay in Europe and his friendship with Lafayette, and by classical republicanism, in particular in the late 1830s-1840s. In his perception of American system of federalism, of representatives’ and women’s role, in his insistence upon the «common weal» of the Republic, in his critical attitude toward parties and commerce, in his moral estimates Cooper’s mind was dominated by the paradigm of civic humanism. Words of the author of «A Letter to His Countrymen»: in the United States «the democrat is the conservative», may be paraphrased, in reference to Fenimore Cooper himself, as: here «the republican is the conservative».