Carol J. Singley
- Published in print:
- 2011
- Published Online:
- May 2011
- ISBN:
- 9780199779390
- eISBN:
- 9780199895106
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Oxford University Press
- DOI:
- 10.1093/acprof:oso/9780199779390.003.0003
- Subject:
- Literature, American, 19th Century Literature
Nathaniel Hawthorne explores nonnormative kinship structures in The Scarlet Letter. Hester Prynne successfully defends her right to custody of her daughter, Pearl, when the Salem magistrates threaten ...
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Nathaniel Hawthorne explores nonnormative kinship structures in The Scarlet Letter. Hester Prynne successfully defends her right to custody of her daughter, Pearl, when the Salem magistrates threaten to place her for adoption. In this landmark novel of 1850, Hawthorne rejects the adoption plot as practiced by the domestic novelists he famously excoriated. His portrait of an adulterous mother in control of her motherhood stands in striking contrast to a body of fiction in which mothers tearfully relinquish their children to others. Through the trope of adoption—in this case averted—Hawthorne examines historical as well as contemporary configurations of family and explores the strength of bonds of blood and care necessary to form a stable society.Less
Nathaniel Hawthorne explores nonnormative kinship structures in The Scarlet Letter. Hester Prynne successfully defends her right to custody of her daughter, Pearl, when the Salem magistrates threaten to place her for adoption. In this landmark novel of 1850, Hawthorne rejects the adoption plot as practiced by the domestic novelists he famously excoriated. His portrait of an adulterous mother in control of her motherhood stands in striking contrast to a body of fiction in which mothers tearfully relinquish their children to others. Through the trope of adoption—in this case averted—Hawthorne examines historical as well as contemporary configurations of family and explores the strength of bonds of blood and care necessary to form a stable society.
Sylvia Jenkins Cook
- Published in print:
- 2008
- Published Online:
- May 2008
- ISBN:
- 9780195327809
- eISBN:
- 9780199870547
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Oxford University Press
- DOI:
- 10.1093/acprof:oso/9780195327809.003.0004
- Subject:
- Literature, American, 19th Century Literature
This chapter looks at three male novelists who emerged from the romantic movement in America: Sylvester Judd, Nathaniel Hawthorne, and Herman Melville. In contrast to the majority of the Dial's ...
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This chapter looks at three male novelists who emerged from the romantic movement in America: Sylvester Judd, Nathaniel Hawthorne, and Herman Melville. In contrast to the majority of the Dial's transcendental contributors, all three acknowledged in their writing the dynamic changes in the conditions and aspirations of working-class women and the impact of their intrusion into the cultural and literary discourse of the day. In different ways, each of them reflected in his fiction transformations in literary genre, method, and content in response to this new social consciousness. In doing so, like the working women who contributed to the Lowell Offering, they emphasized the primacy of fiction as a literary mode adaptable both to new authorial concerns and a new reading audience.Less
This chapter looks at three male novelists who emerged from the romantic movement in America: Sylvester Judd, Nathaniel Hawthorne, and Herman Melville. In contrast to the majority of the Dial's transcendental contributors, all three acknowledged in their writing the dynamic changes in the conditions and aspirations of working-class women and the impact of their intrusion into the cultural and literary discourse of the day. In different ways, each of them reflected in his fiction transformations in literary genre, method, and content in response to this new social consciousness. In doing so, like the working women who contributed to the Lowell Offering, they emphasized the primacy of fiction as a literary mode adaptable both to new authorial concerns and a new reading audience.
Louis P. Masur (ed.)
- Published in print:
- 1995
- Published Online:
- October 2011
- ISBN:
- 9780195098372
- eISBN:
- 9780199853908
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Oxford University Press
- DOI:
- 10.1093/acprof:oso/9780195098372.003.0009
- Subject:
- History, American History: 19th Century
Nathaniel Hawthorne's letters showed vitality and independence. He tweaked his dear English friends for supporting the Confederacy and he derided his abolitionist neighbors for their simplicity. He ...
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Nathaniel Hawthorne's letters showed vitality and independence. He tweaked his dear English friends for supporting the Confederacy and he derided his abolitionist neighbors for their simplicity. He marveled at how war-spirit galvanized the nation and even proclaimed a desire to shoulder a musket himself. However, he failed to see what would be gained from the slaughter and was more than willing to let the Confederacy go provided that the border states—Virginia, Maryland, Kentucky, and Missouri—remained with the Union. In Washington, D.C. Hawthorne became part of a Massachusetts delegation that called at the White House and met Abraham Lincoln. He returned to Concord and completed the manuscript of “Chiefly About War-Matters.” The essay was a searching meditation on the war, simultaneously patriotic and treasonous, lyrical and satirical. James Fields, editor of the Atlantic Monthly, liked the piece, but asked Hawthorne to alter his description of Lincoln which Hawthorne later refused.Less
Nathaniel Hawthorne's letters showed vitality and independence. He tweaked his dear English friends for supporting the Confederacy and he derided his abolitionist neighbors for their simplicity. He marveled at how war-spirit galvanized the nation and even proclaimed a desire to shoulder a musket himself. However, he failed to see what would be gained from the slaughter and was more than willing to let the Confederacy go provided that the border states—Virginia, Maryland, Kentucky, and Missouri—remained with the Union. In Washington, D.C. Hawthorne became part of a Massachusetts delegation that called at the White House and met Abraham Lincoln. He returned to Concord and completed the manuscript of “Chiefly About War-Matters.” The essay was a searching meditation on the war, simultaneously patriotic and treasonous, lyrical and satirical. James Fields, editor of the Atlantic Monthly, liked the piece, but asked Hawthorne to alter his description of Lincoln which Hawthorne later refused.
Louis P. Masur (ed.)
- Published in print:
- 1995
- Published Online:
- October 2011
- ISBN:
- 9780195098372
- eISBN:
- 9780199853908
- Item type:
- book
- Publisher:
- Oxford University Press
- DOI:
- 10.1093/acprof:oso/9780195098372.001.0001
- Subject:
- History, American History: 19th Century
Drawing on a wide range of material, including diaries, letters, and essays, this book captures the reactions, as the American Civil War was waged, of writers such as Nathaniel Hawthorne, Harriet ...
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Drawing on a wide range of material, including diaries, letters, and essays, this book captures the reactions, as the American Civil War was waged, of writers such as Nathaniel Hawthorne, Harriet Beecher Stowe, Ralph Waldo Emerson, Frederick Douglass, Herman Melville, Walt Whitman, Henry Adams, and Louisa May Alcott.Less
Drawing on a wide range of material, including diaries, letters, and essays, this book captures the reactions, as the American Civil War was waged, of writers such as Nathaniel Hawthorne, Harriet Beecher Stowe, Ralph Waldo Emerson, Frederick Douglass, Herman Melville, Walt Whitman, Henry Adams, and Louisa May Alcott.
John Gatta
- Published in print:
- 2004
- Published Online:
- January 2005
- ISBN:
- 9780195165050
- eISBN:
- 9780199835140
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Oxford University Press
- DOI:
- 10.1093/0195165055.003.0006
- Subject:
- Religion, Religion and Literature
Among the divergent forms of nature writing that flourished in nineteenth-century America, the “Old Manse” preface by Hawthorne reflects a distinctive mood of contentment about the author’s residence ...
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Among the divergent forms of nature writing that flourished in nineteenth-century America, the “Old Manse” preface by Hawthorne reflects a distinctive mood of contentment about the author’s residence in Concord, Massachusetts. This essay’s conception of nature is based not on a wilderness aesthetic, but on a pastoral sense of human interaction with the green world—a sense that Hawthorne associates in turn with Christian theological terms of grace and incarnation. The holiness of gardening likewise informs writing of this period by women such as Celia Thaxter and Margaret Fuller. The religious intensity of Walt Whitman’s ecopoetic worldview, epitomized by “Song of Myself,” ranges from the astronomical heights to the lowly plants mentioned in section 5 of this poem. Unlike Whitman’s oceanic poems, Herman Melville’s portrayal of the sea in Moby-Dick exposes nature’s underlying savagery and vulturism—but also raises deep questions about the divinely inscrutable freedom of Creation embodied by the great white whale.Less
Among the divergent forms of nature writing that flourished in nineteenth-century America, the “Old Manse” preface by Hawthorne reflects a distinctive mood of contentment about the author’s residence in Concord, Massachusetts. This essay’s conception of nature is based not on a wilderness aesthetic, but on a pastoral sense of human interaction with the green world—a sense that Hawthorne associates in turn with Christian theological terms of grace and incarnation. The holiness of gardening likewise informs writing of this period by women such as Celia Thaxter and Margaret Fuller. The religious intensity of Walt Whitman’s ecopoetic worldview, epitomized by “Song of Myself,” ranges from the astronomical heights to the lowly plants mentioned in section 5 of this poem. Unlike Whitman’s oceanic poems, Herman Melville’s portrayal of the sea in Moby-Dick exposes nature’s underlying savagery and vulturism—but also raises deep questions about the divinely inscrutable freedom of Creation embodied by the great white whale.
Jessie Morgan-Owens
- Published in print:
- 2016
- Published Online:
- January 2017
- ISBN:
- 9781784991500
- eISBN:
- 9781526115003
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Manchester University Press
- DOI:
- 10.7228/manchester/9781784991500.003.0003
- Subject:
- Art, Art History
When she edits the American Notebooks in the 1860s, Sophia Hawthorne will find passages that she calls ‘photographic studies.’ In this essay, Jessie Morgan-Owens examines each of Sophia Hawthorne’s ...
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When she edits the American Notebooks in the 1860s, Sophia Hawthorne will find passages that she calls ‘photographic studies.’ In this essay, Jessie Morgan-Owens examines each of Sophia Hawthorne’s photographic analogies by considering, at her invitation, the relationship between these realist nonfictional records and Nathaniel Hawthorne’s romantic fiction. When considered in light of the Hawthornes’ appropriation of the photographic and reflective as metaphors for a world they felt exceeded representation, Morgan-Owens’ analysis of these scenes reveals that photography’s significance extends beyond conventional alignments with the indexical real. For the Hawthornes—and as Morgan-Owens suggests, for American writing at mid-nineteenth-century in general—“to daguerreotype” implied a reflective surface in both senses of the word. In addition to the realist discourse of minuteness, accuracy and preservation associated with the written culture of early photography, there is a substantial supplemental system that gestures toward the invisible, the unsaid, and the unseen.Less
When she edits the American Notebooks in the 1860s, Sophia Hawthorne will find passages that she calls ‘photographic studies.’ In this essay, Jessie Morgan-Owens examines each of Sophia Hawthorne’s photographic analogies by considering, at her invitation, the relationship between these realist nonfictional records and Nathaniel Hawthorne’s romantic fiction. When considered in light of the Hawthornes’ appropriation of the photographic and reflective as metaphors for a world they felt exceeded representation, Morgan-Owens’ analysis of these scenes reveals that photography’s significance extends beyond conventional alignments with the indexical real. For the Hawthornes—and as Morgan-Owens suggests, for American writing at mid-nineteenth-century in general—“to daguerreotype” implied a reflective surface in both senses of the word. In addition to the realist discourse of minuteness, accuracy and preservation associated with the written culture of early photography, there is a substantial supplemental system that gestures toward the invisible, the unsaid, and the unseen.
Chris Baldick
- Published in print:
- 1990
- Published Online:
- October 2011
- ISBN:
- 9780198122494
- eISBN:
- 9780191671432
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Oxford University Press
- DOI:
- 10.1093/acprof:oso/9780198122494.003.0004
- Subject:
- Literature, 19th-century and Victorian Literature
Mary Shelley was not alone in fictionalizing the various preoccupations that we find at work in Frankenstein. The more familiar home of such Frankensteinian themes, though, lay in the European and ...
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Mary Shelley was not alone in fictionalizing the various preoccupations that we find at work in Frankenstein. The more familiar home of such Frankensteinian themes, though, lay in the European and American short-story tradition, where the emergent sub-genres of horror story, science fiction, and detective tale mingled productively in the early part of the century. In many of the best tales of E. T. A. Hoffmann and Nathaniel Hawthorne, artists of various kinds discover the destructive and damning qualities of their own creations. What is repeatedly shown in these tales of transgression is how the secret skill that makes the protagonist independent and severs his social ties becomes an obsessional end in itself and masters the master. It is not just that, as a matter of their personal experience, Herman Melville was able to describe actual labour whereas Elizabeth Gaskell could give us only the domestic sickbed or the riot at the factory gates.Less
Mary Shelley was not alone in fictionalizing the various preoccupations that we find at work in Frankenstein. The more familiar home of such Frankensteinian themes, though, lay in the European and American short-story tradition, where the emergent sub-genres of horror story, science fiction, and detective tale mingled productively in the early part of the century. In many of the best tales of E. T. A. Hoffmann and Nathaniel Hawthorne, artists of various kinds discover the destructive and damning qualities of their own creations. What is repeatedly shown in these tales of transgression is how the secret skill that makes the protagonist independent and severs his social ties becomes an obsessional end in itself and masters the master. It is not just that, as a matter of their personal experience, Herman Melville was able to describe actual labour whereas Elizabeth Gaskell could give us only the domestic sickbed or the riot at the factory gates.
Karin E. Gedge
- Published in print:
- 2003
- Published Online:
- January 2005
- ISBN:
- 9780195130201
- eISBN:
- 9780199835157
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Oxford University Press
- DOI:
- 10.1093/0195130200.003.0005
- Subject:
- Religion, History of Christianity
Nineteenth-century American readers regularly encountered powerful and paradoxical images of clergy and women in many fictive genres, a reflection of the cultural tensions manifested in the ...
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Nineteenth-century American readers regularly encountered powerful and paradoxical images of clergy and women in many fictive genres, a reflection of the cultural tensions manifested in the contemporary pastoral relationship. Sensational novelists such as George Lippard exposed the monstrous incongruity of the “reverend rake.” Sentimental novelist Susan Warner constructed a romantic clerical hero who was both benevolent and despotic in his relationship with the female protagonist, while Harriet Beecher Stowe’s minister was impotent, dependent on the women who supported him. Nathaniel Hawthorne’s enduring Scarlet Letter portrayed the pastor as an unworthy saint and Hester Prynne as the worthy sinner. Even pious memoirs and parsonage novels acknowledged the intrusion of sexuality, “something peculiar and insidious” in Stowe’s words, which inevitably corrupted the spiritual relationship between pastors and women. Only transforming it into a marital relationship could, to some degree, resolve the inherent sexual tension.Less
Nineteenth-century American readers regularly encountered powerful and paradoxical images of clergy and women in many fictive genres, a reflection of the cultural tensions manifested in the contemporary pastoral relationship. Sensational novelists such as George Lippard exposed the monstrous incongruity of the “reverend rake.” Sentimental novelist Susan Warner constructed a romantic clerical hero who was both benevolent and despotic in his relationship with the female protagonist, while Harriet Beecher Stowe’s minister was impotent, dependent on the women who supported him. Nathaniel Hawthorne’s enduring Scarlet Letter portrayed the pastor as an unworthy saint and Hester Prynne as the worthy sinner. Even pious memoirs and parsonage novels acknowledged the intrusion of sexuality, “something peculiar and insidious” in Stowe’s words, which inevitably corrupted the spiritual relationship between pastors and women. Only transforming it into a marital relationship could, to some degree, resolve the inherent sexual tension.
Jeffory A. Clymer
- Published in print:
- 2012
- Published Online:
- January 2013
- ISBN:
- 9780199897704
- eISBN:
- 9780199980123
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Oxford University Press
- DOI:
- 10.1093/acprof:oso/9780199897704.003.0002
- Subject:
- Literature, African-American Literature, American, 19th Century Literature
Chapter 2 examines the relationship between the law of partus sequitur ventrem, which decreed that a child’s legal status derived from its mother, and the notion that racial identity was ...
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Chapter 2 examines the relationship between the law of partus sequitur ventrem, which decreed that a child’s legal status derived from its mother, and the notion that racial identity was genealogically determined and expressed by “black” or “white” blood. This chapter argues that the legal two-step of partus and blood created as many problems of familial lines and property ownership as it purportedly solved. The chapter examines the dilemmas of race, family, and property in Gary v. Stevenson (Arkansas, 1858), a lawsuit in which a white-appearing young slave sued for freedom by claiming he had a white mother, as well as Mary Andrews Denison’s novel Old Hepsy (1858), and Nathaniel Hawthorne’s The House of the Seven Gables (1851). These novels and law case jointly illuminate shared problems: who counts as family; what justifies legal title; and how are family identity and legal title made knowable?Less
Chapter 2 examines the relationship between the law of partus sequitur ventrem, which decreed that a child’s legal status derived from its mother, and the notion that racial identity was genealogically determined and expressed by “black” or “white” blood. This chapter argues that the legal two-step of partus and blood created as many problems of familial lines and property ownership as it purportedly solved. The chapter examines the dilemmas of race, family, and property in Gary v. Stevenson (Arkansas, 1858), a lawsuit in which a white-appearing young slave sued for freedom by claiming he had a white mother, as well as Mary Andrews Denison’s novel Old Hepsy (1858), and Nathaniel Hawthorne’s The House of the Seven Gables (1851). These novels and law case jointly illuminate shared problems: who counts as family; what justifies legal title; and how are family identity and legal title made knowable?
Paul Giles
- Published in print:
- 2011
- Published Online:
- October 2017
- ISBN:
- 9780691136134
- eISBN:
- 9781400836512
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Princeton University Press
- DOI:
- 10.23943/princeton/9780691136134.003.0003
- Subject:
- Literature, Criticism/Theory
This chapter examines how the notion of medieval American literature not only makes a paradoxical kind of sense but might be seen as integral to the construction of the subject more generally. It ...
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This chapter examines how the notion of medieval American literature not only makes a paradoxical kind of sense but might be seen as integral to the construction of the subject more generally. It argues that antebellum narratives situate native soil on a highly charged and fraught boundary between past and present, circumference and displacement. In itself, the idea of medieval American literature is hardly more peculiar than F. O. Matthiessen's conception of an “American Renaissance.” Matthiessen sought to justify his subject by aligning nineteenth-century American writers such as Ralph Waldo Emerson and Nathaniel Hawthorne with seventeenth-century English forerunners such as William Shakespeare and Ben Jonson. The chapter considers resonances of medievalism within nineteenth-century American culture and how many antebellum writers consciously foreground within their texts the shifting, permeable boundaries of time and space, suggesting how fiction and cartography, the writing of history and the writing of geography, are commensurate with each other.Less
This chapter examines how the notion of medieval American literature not only makes a paradoxical kind of sense but might be seen as integral to the construction of the subject more generally. It argues that antebellum narratives situate native soil on a highly charged and fraught boundary between past and present, circumference and displacement. In itself, the idea of medieval American literature is hardly more peculiar than F. O. Matthiessen's conception of an “American Renaissance.” Matthiessen sought to justify his subject by aligning nineteenth-century American writers such as Ralph Waldo Emerson and Nathaniel Hawthorne with seventeenth-century English forerunners such as William Shakespeare and Ben Jonson. The chapter considers resonances of medievalism within nineteenth-century American culture and how many antebellum writers consciously foreground within their texts the shifting, permeable boundaries of time and space, suggesting how fiction and cartography, the writing of history and the writing of geography, are commensurate with each other.
Carl J. Richard
- Published in print:
- 2012
- Published Online:
- September 2012
- ISBN:
- 9780199588541
- eISBN:
- 9780191741845
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Oxford University Press
- DOI:
- 10.1093/acprof:oso/9780199588541.003.0014
- Subject:
- Classical Studies, Literary Studies: Classical, Early, and Medieval
This chapter demonstrates that most of the American Romantics who created the United States' first national literature, including Ralph Waldo Emerson and Nathaniel Hawthorne, were the products of an ...
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This chapter demonstrates that most of the American Romantics who created the United States' first national literature, including Ralph Waldo Emerson and Nathaniel Hawthorne, were the products of an educational system dominated by the study of Latin. It shows that their intense training in the Latin authors was often supplemented by tours of Roman sites in Italy that profoundly affected them and reinforced their support for the classical education of future generations. It reveals how the Romans influenced the Romantics' conception of nature, mythology, and natural law. Finally, it demonstrates that the Romantics were so steeped in the Roman classics that they were generally unable to distinguish the Greek heritage from Roman adaptations of it. Thus, it shows that both the traditional interpretation of Romanticism as anticlassical, and the more recent revision that depicts Romantic classicism as almost exclusively Greek, require significant modification.Less
This chapter demonstrates that most of the American Romantics who created the United States' first national literature, including Ralph Waldo Emerson and Nathaniel Hawthorne, were the products of an educational system dominated by the study of Latin. It shows that their intense training in the Latin authors was often supplemented by tours of Roman sites in Italy that profoundly affected them and reinforced their support for the classical education of future generations. It reveals how the Romans influenced the Romantics' conception of nature, mythology, and natural law. Finally, it demonstrates that the Romantics were so steeped in the Roman classics that they were generally unable to distinguish the Greek heritage from Roman adaptations of it. Thus, it shows that both the traditional interpretation of Romanticism as anticlassical, and the more recent revision that depicts Romantic classicism as almost exclusively Greek, require significant modification.
David E. Shi
- Published in print:
- 1996
- Published Online:
- October 2011
- ISBN:
- 9780195106534
- eISBN:
- 9780199854097
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Oxford University Press
- DOI:
- 10.1093/acprof:oso/9780195106534.003.0002
- Subject:
- History, History of Ideas
Genteel idealism, domestic idealism, and transcendental idealism dominated the intellectual landscape during the 1830s and 1840s, but three of America's most powerful and enduring writers fell ...
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Genteel idealism, domestic idealism, and transcendental idealism dominated the intellectual landscape during the 1830s and 1840s, but three of America's most powerful and enduring writers fell outside such categories. Edgar Allan Poe, Herman Melville, and Nathaniel Hawthorne rebelled against the static conservatism of the genteel tradition, displayed a jealous disgust at the popular female sentimentalists, and castigated the Transcendentalists for their irrepressible optimism and airy metaphysics. Hawthorne, Melville, and Poe found their guiding motive in the deep recesses of the tormented soul rather than in the wonders of nature or what Hawthorne called the “white sunshine of actual life.” Although each wrote fictional works remarkable for their accurate details and realizing effects, their outlooks were essentially idealistic—or romantic—in their common desire to probe the heart of the self and explore the hidden spheres of feeling and spirit.Less
Genteel idealism, domestic idealism, and transcendental idealism dominated the intellectual landscape during the 1830s and 1840s, but three of America's most powerful and enduring writers fell outside such categories. Edgar Allan Poe, Herman Melville, and Nathaniel Hawthorne rebelled against the static conservatism of the genteel tradition, displayed a jealous disgust at the popular female sentimentalists, and castigated the Transcendentalists for their irrepressible optimism and airy metaphysics. Hawthorne, Melville, and Poe found their guiding motive in the deep recesses of the tormented soul rather than in the wonders of nature or what Hawthorne called the “white sunshine of actual life.” Although each wrote fictional works remarkable for their accurate details and realizing effects, their outlooks were essentially idealistic—or romantic—in their common desire to probe the heart of the self and explore the hidden spheres of feeling and spirit.
Robert Milder
- Published in print:
- 2013
- Published Online:
- March 2015
- ISBN:
- 9780199917259
- eISBN:
- 9780190252908
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Oxford University Press
- DOI:
- 10.1093/acprof:osobl/9780199917259.003.0002
- Subject:
- Literature, American, 19th Century Literature
This chapter focuses on Salem, Massachusetts, as a “habitation” of Nathaniel Hawthorne's writings, a psychological locale rather than a physical and cultural one. It examines the paradox of ...
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This chapter focuses on Salem, Massachusetts, as a “habitation” of Nathaniel Hawthorne's writings, a psychological locale rather than a physical and cultural one. It examines the paradox of Hawthorne's relationship to Salem, his ancestral home and ground of identity. It also considers Hawthorne's aesthetic development during the Salem years. Finally, it analyzes some of Hawthorne's works of fiction related to Salem, including the short stories “The Haunted Mind,” “Fancy’s Show Box,” “Alice Doane’s Appeal,” and “Young Goodman Brown,” as well as the novels Fanshawe (1828) and Twice-Told Tales (1837).Less
This chapter focuses on Salem, Massachusetts, as a “habitation” of Nathaniel Hawthorne's writings, a psychological locale rather than a physical and cultural one. It examines the paradox of Hawthorne's relationship to Salem, his ancestral home and ground of identity. It also considers Hawthorne's aesthetic development during the Salem years. Finally, it analyzes some of Hawthorne's works of fiction related to Salem, including the short stories “The Haunted Mind,” “Fancy’s Show Box,” “Alice Doane’s Appeal,” and “Young Goodman Brown,” as well as the novels Fanshawe (1828) and Twice-Told Tales (1837).
Maurice S. Lee
- Published in print:
- 2019
- Published Online:
- May 2020
- ISBN:
- 9780691192925
- eISBN:
- 9780691194219
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Princeton University Press
- DOI:
- 10.23943/princeton/9780691192925.003.0003
- Subject:
- Literature, 19th-century Literature and Romanticism
This chapter analyzes how literary meaning can be recovered under conditions of information overload. It discusses revitalizing debates over New Historical evidentiary practices that have become ...
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This chapter analyzes how literary meaning can be recovered under conditions of information overload. It discusses revitalizing debates over New Historical evidentiary practices that have become exponentially more powerful with the rise of digital databases. The chapter also discusses how the nineteenth century's expansion of archives and concomitant attention to bibliographic processes impelled some literary thinkers to assert a special authority in matters of archival searching. As if to vindicate the value of literary judgment, Nathaniel Hawthorne and Charles Dickens imagine the aesthetic retrieval of exceptionally meaningful texts, though in doing so they turn away from close reading and toward the management of information. An obverse irony is evident in reference books designed to manage textual excess, including the antiquarian journal Notes and Queries and John Bartlett's Familiar Quotations, both of which privilege organization over aesthetics but cannot help but admit the pleasures of texts.Less
This chapter analyzes how literary meaning can be recovered under conditions of information overload. It discusses revitalizing debates over New Historical evidentiary practices that have become exponentially more powerful with the rise of digital databases. The chapter also discusses how the nineteenth century's expansion of archives and concomitant attention to bibliographic processes impelled some literary thinkers to assert a special authority in matters of archival searching. As if to vindicate the value of literary judgment, Nathaniel Hawthorne and Charles Dickens imagine the aesthetic retrieval of exceptionally meaningful texts, though in doing so they turn away from close reading and toward the management of information. An obverse irony is evident in reference books designed to manage textual excess, including the antiquarian journal Notes and Queries and John Bartlett's Familiar Quotations, both of which privilege organization over aesthetics but cannot help but admit the pleasures of texts.
Robert Milder
- Published in print:
- 2013
- Published Online:
- March 2015
- ISBN:
- 9780199917259
- eISBN:
- 9780190252908
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Oxford University Press
- DOI:
- 10.1093/acprof:osobl/9780199917259.003.0003
- Subject:
- Literature, American, 19th Century Literature
This chapter focuses on Nathaniel Hawthorne's fiction, including his notebooks, letters, and short stories, during his time at the Old Manse in Concord, Massachusetts. It considers the influence of ...
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This chapter focuses on Nathaniel Hawthorne's fiction, including his notebooks, letters, and short stories, during his time at the Old Manse in Concord, Massachusetts. It considers the influence of climate on Hawthorne's writings and his views about nature, human nature, and “natural life.” It also compares the Manse period with Hawthorne's years in Salem.Less
This chapter focuses on Nathaniel Hawthorne's fiction, including his notebooks, letters, and short stories, during his time at the Old Manse in Concord, Massachusetts. It considers the influence of climate on Hawthorne's writings and his views about nature, human nature, and “natural life.” It also compares the Manse period with Hawthorne's years in Salem.
Sarah Meer
- Published in print:
- 2020
- Published Online:
- July 2020
- ISBN:
- 9780198812517
- eISBN:
- 9780191894695
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Oxford University Press
- DOI:
- 10.1093/oso/9780198812517.003.0006
- Subject:
- Literature, American, 19th Century Literature
This chapter traces the origins of Nathaniel Hawthorne’s The Marble Faun to his abandoned claimant novel (‘The Ancestral Footstep’), and argues that the novel transfers the inheritance theme to its ...
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This chapter traces the origins of Nathaniel Hawthorne’s The Marble Faun to his abandoned claimant novel (‘The Ancestral Footstep’), and argues that the novel transfers the inheritance theme to its depiction of American artists in Rome. It suggests an undercurrent of competition in Hawthorne’s depiction of the sculptors, and conflicted feelings about Hiram Powers and William Wetmore Story, particularly their self-chosen exile: conflict expressed in terms of the Yankee type. In Rome, the transatlantic difference that is so often signalled in clothes settles on nudity in statuary, a particular anxiety for Hawthorne. Transatlantic relationships also become triangular, British and American writers bonding in Rome; William Wetmore Story aspires to address American slavery by portraying African figures in classical terms.Less
This chapter traces the origins of Nathaniel Hawthorne’s The Marble Faun to his abandoned claimant novel (‘The Ancestral Footstep’), and argues that the novel transfers the inheritance theme to its depiction of American artists in Rome. It suggests an undercurrent of competition in Hawthorne’s depiction of the sculptors, and conflicted feelings about Hiram Powers and William Wetmore Story, particularly their self-chosen exile: conflict expressed in terms of the Yankee type. In Rome, the transatlantic difference that is so often signalled in clothes settles on nudity in statuary, a particular anxiety for Hawthorne. Transatlantic relationships also become triangular, British and American writers bonding in Rome; William Wetmore Story aspires to address American slavery by portraying African figures in classical terms.
Emory Elliott
- Published in print:
- 2005
- Published Online:
- October 2011
- ISBN:
- 9780195142822
- eISBN:
- 9780199850297
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Oxford University Press
- DOI:
- 10.1093/acprof:oso/9780195142822.003.0007
- Subject:
- Literature, American, 19th Century Literature
As Lawrence Thomson presents in his work entitled Melville's Quarrel with God, philosophical and religious ideas played no small part in Melville's writings as he expressed questions about God, good ...
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As Lawrence Thomson presents in his work entitled Melville's Quarrel with God, philosophical and religious ideas played no small part in Melville's writings as he expressed questions about God, good and evil, death, the afterlife, and other related topics in his literary works. Although Melville's works gave much emphasis to such issues, ideas regarding his personal faith, his belief in the existence of “God,” and other questions about his religious faith were unclear. Nathaniel Hawthorne, Melville's friend and fellow writer, attested that although Melville never stopped seeking answers to his questions, he had always believed that everything could reasonably be explained. Although Melville's interest in metaphysical issues persisted, this never undermined the fact that religion is still essential in determining certain principles, moral teachings, and fundamental value systems across several cultures.Less
As Lawrence Thomson presents in his work entitled Melville's Quarrel with God, philosophical and religious ideas played no small part in Melville's writings as he expressed questions about God, good and evil, death, the afterlife, and other related topics in his literary works. Although Melville's works gave much emphasis to such issues, ideas regarding his personal faith, his belief in the existence of “God,” and other questions about his religious faith were unclear. Nathaniel Hawthorne, Melville's friend and fellow writer, attested that although Melville never stopped seeking answers to his questions, he had always believed that everything could reasonably be explained. Although Melville's interest in metaphysical issues persisted, this never undermined the fact that religion is still essential in determining certain principles, moral teachings, and fundamental value systems across several cultures.
Mighall Robert
- Published in print:
- 2003
- Published Online:
- September 2011
- ISBN:
- 9780199262182
- eISBN:
- 9780191698835
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Oxford University Press
- DOI:
- 10.1093/acprof:oso/9780199262182.003.0003
- Subject:
- Literature, 19th-century and Victorian Literature
This chapter examines changes and diversification in Gothic fiction in England during the mid-Victorian period. It describes how a number of works enabled the Gothic legacy to be brought up to date ...
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This chapter examines changes and diversification in Gothic fiction in England during the mid-Victorian period. It describes how a number of works enabled the Gothic legacy to be brought up to date and explains how the so-called Sensation vogue provided principal repository for Gothic themes in the middle decades of the 19th century. Some of the most notable works during this period include Nathaniel Hawthorne's The House of the Seven Gables, Margaret Jane Hooper's The House of Raby, and Charles Dickens's Little Dorrit.Less
This chapter examines changes and diversification in Gothic fiction in England during the mid-Victorian period. It describes how a number of works enabled the Gothic legacy to be brought up to date and explains how the so-called Sensation vogue provided principal repository for Gothic themes in the middle decades of the 19th century. Some of the most notable works during this period include Nathaniel Hawthorne's The House of the Seven Gables, Margaret Jane Hooper's The House of Raby, and Charles Dickens's Little Dorrit.
Don Herzog
- Published in print:
- 2017
- Published Online:
- September 2017
- ISBN:
- 9780300221541
- eISBN:
- 9780300227710
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Yale University Press
- DOI:
- 10.12987/yale/9780300221541.003.0003
- Subject:
- Law, Philosophy of Law
The chapter opens with a recent obituary that went viral, in which a daughter bitterly indicted her deceased mother for cruelty and child abuse. It goes on to explore the history of the view that we ...
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The chapter opens with a recent obituary that went viral, in which a daughter bitterly indicted her deceased mother for cruelty and child abuse. It goes on to explore the history of the view that we should speak no ill of the dead, and zeroes in on Julian Hawthorne’s decision to publish pages from his deceased father Nathaniel’s journal cruelly mocking deceased Margaret Fuller. And it notes that that view seems not to depend on whether the claims against the dead are true or false, a distinction central in the law of defamation.Less
The chapter opens with a recent obituary that went viral, in which a daughter bitterly indicted her deceased mother for cruelty and child abuse. It goes on to explore the history of the view that we should speak no ill of the dead, and zeroes in on Julian Hawthorne’s decision to publish pages from his deceased father Nathaniel’s journal cruelly mocking deceased Margaret Fuller. And it notes that that view seems not to depend on whether the claims against the dead are true or false, a distinction central in the law of defamation.
Catherine Jones
- Published in print:
- 2014
- Published Online:
- September 2015
- ISBN:
- 9780748684618
- eISBN:
- 9781474406369
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Edinburgh University Press
- DOI:
- 10.3366/edinburgh/9780748684618.003.0003
- Subject:
- Literature, 19th-century Literature and Romanticism
This chapter examines the significance of the music of Ludwig van Beethoven, and of European constructions of his life and works, to New England Transcendentalism. In so doing, it shows the ...
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This chapter examines the significance of the music of Ludwig van Beethoven, and of European constructions of his life and works, to New England Transcendentalism. In so doing, it shows the development and transformation of rhetorical theories of music, with the emergence in the nineteenth century of the idea of a musical work as an organic identity. The chapter focuses on the reception of Beethoven's symphonies in New England; on the impact of transatlantic ideas of the hero and the heroic on the musical discourse of Margaret Fuller (with particular reference to her letters, journals and contributions to The Dial [1840-44]); and on Fuller's dispatches from Europe for the New-York Tribune (1846-50), especially her engagement with theories of the utopian instrumentality of music, such as those of Madame de StaËl and Giuseppe Mazzini. The chapter also analyses Nathaniel Hawthorne's sceptical relation to the musical discourse of de StaËl and the New England Transcendentalists in his novel The Marble Faun (1860).Less
This chapter examines the significance of the music of Ludwig van Beethoven, and of European constructions of his life and works, to New England Transcendentalism. In so doing, it shows the development and transformation of rhetorical theories of music, with the emergence in the nineteenth century of the idea of a musical work as an organic identity. The chapter focuses on the reception of Beethoven's symphonies in New England; on the impact of transatlantic ideas of the hero and the heroic on the musical discourse of Margaret Fuller (with particular reference to her letters, journals and contributions to The Dial [1840-44]); and on Fuller's dispatches from Europe for the New-York Tribune (1846-50), especially her engagement with theories of the utopian instrumentality of music, such as those of Madame de StaËl and Giuseppe Mazzini. The chapter also analyses Nathaniel Hawthorne's sceptical relation to the musical discourse of de StaËl and the New England Transcendentalists in his novel The Marble Faun (1860).
