James Fenimore Cooper

The Bravo James Fenimore Cooper

The Bravo is a novel by James Fenimore Cooper first published in 1831 in three volumes. Inspired by a trip to Europe where he traveled through much of Italy, the novel is set in Venice. The Bravo is the first of Cooper's three novels to be set in Europe. This group of three novels, which one critic would call Cooper's "European trilogy", include The Heidenmauer and The Headsman. Like his other novels set in Europe, The Bravo was not very well received in the United States. The book largely focuses on political themes, especially the tension between the social elite and other classes. The Bravo deals with many political themes. Cooper would later explain that he wrote the novel because " the great political contest of the age was not, as is usually pre- tended, between the two antagonist principles of monarchy and democracy, but in reality between those who, under the shallow pre- tence of limiting power to the elite of society, were contending for exclusive advantages at the expense of the mass of their fellow-creature." He saw under Europe's old order and lush surface, "an oppressive social order without any sense of divine law in nature" which sat in antithesis to America's unexplored wilderness and less structured society. To Cooper, Venice's government is unable to meet the demands of its citizens, even representing its aristocrats as victims.