The Deerslayer The Deerslayer The Deerslayer, or The First War-path (1841) was the last of James Fenimore Cooper's "Leatherstocking Tales" to be written. Its 1740-1745 time period makes it the first installment chronologically and in the lifetime of the hero of the Leatherstocking tales, Natty Bumppo. The novel's setting on Otsego Lake in central, upstate New York, is the same as that of "The Pioneers", the first of the "Leatherstocking Tales" to be published (1823). "The Deerslayer" is considered to be the prequel to the rest of the series. Fenimore Cooper begins his work by relating the astonishing advance of civilization in
The Canterbury Tales of Dante and Virgil in "The Divine Comedy". New research suggests that the General Prologue, in which the innkeeper and host Harry Bailey introduces each pilgrim, is a pastiche of the historical Harry Bailey's surviving 1381 poll-tax account of Southwark's inhabitants. "The Decameron" by Giovanni Boccaccio contains more parallels to "The Canterbury Tales" than any other work. Like the "Tales", it features a number of narrators who tell stories along a journey they have undertaken (to flee from the Black Death). It ends with an apology by Boccaccio, much like Chaucer's Retraction to the "Tales". A quarter of the tales