ABSTRACT
There are at least four angles from which Satanstoe can be usefully approached. Most obviously, it can be approached as the first part of the Corny Littlepage, or Anti-Rent, trilogy, a series of novels which taken together form the first family chronicle novel in American literature. James Fenimore Cooper failed to make the Littlepage Trilogy into a coherent and effective family chronicle novel. The Littlepage Trilogy is ostensibly a series of narratives written by members of succeeding generations of the Littlepage family with the disinterested object of describing 'American society, in its more familiar aspects'. In Satanstoe Corny Littlepage tells the story of his courtship of Anneke Mordaunt. The structure of the main narrative is extremely simple, consisting as it does of four large movements, the climax of each being achieved when Corny acts successfully as the protector of Anneke.
