American Literature
Book I
Table of Contents
 Introduction
 Brief Outline of American Literature
 Chapter I Colonial Period
 Chapter II Revolutionary Period
Benjamin Franklin
Philip Freneau
 Chapter III American Romanticism
Washington Irving
James Fenimore Cooper
William Cullen Bryant
Edgar Allan Poe
Nathaniel Hawthorne
Introduction
1.
What is literature?
Writings that are valued as works of art, esp. fiction,
drama and poetry.
2.
Forms (genres) of literature?
Poetry, novel (fiction), drama, prose, essay, epic, elegy,
short story, journalism, sermon, (auto) biography, travel
accounts, novelette, etc.
Puritanism in America
1. They follow the ideas of the Swiss reformer John
Calvin.
2. Doctrines:
- Predestination
- Original sin and total depravity (human beings are basically
evil.)
- Limited atonement (or the Salvation of a selected few)
3. Puritan values (creeds):
Hard work, thrift, piety, sobriety, simple tastes.
Puritans are more practical, tougher, and to be ever ready for
any misfortune and tragic failure.
They are optimistic.
Puritanism in America
4. Why did Puritans come to America?
- to reform the Church of England
- to have an entirely new church
- to escape religious persecution
* God’s chosen people
* To seek a new Garden of Eden
* To build “City of God on earth”
Puritanism in America
5. Influence
- American Puritanism was one of the most enduring shaping
influences in American thought and American literature.
- American literature is based on a myth, i.e. the Biblical myth
of the Garden of Eden.
- Puritanism can be compared with Chinese Confucianism.
Brief Outline of American literature
1. Colonial period (1607-1775)
Anne Bradstreet
Edward Taylor
5.
Mark Twain
Henry James
2. Revolutionary period
Naturalism:
(1775-1783)
Benjamin Franklin
Philip Freneau
3. Democratic Period (17831802)
4. Romanticism (1820-1861)
Washington Irving
Edgar Allan Poe
Nathaniel Howthorne
William Whitman
* Transcendentalism
* (New England Renaissance)
Ralph Waldo Emerson
Fillip Thoreau
Realism (1861-1914)
Stephen Crane
Theodore Dreiser
6.
The 1920s
T.S. Eliot
William Faulkner
Ernest Hemingway
(Lost Generation)
Imagism:
Ezra Pound
Brief Outline of American literature
7. The 1930s
Steinbeck
Harlem Renaissance
(Black American literature)
Hughes
Wright
Ellison
8. American Drama
Eugene O’Neill
9.
The Post-war Scene
Saul Bellow
Salinger
Poetry:
Confessional Poetry
Black Mountain Poets
San Francisco Renaissance
The Beat Generation
The New York Poets
Chapter One
Colonial Period (1607-1775)
Three major poets in colonial period:
1. Anne Bradstreet
2. Michael Wigglesworth
3. Edward Taylor
1. Anne Bradstreet (1612-1672)
1. Anne
the first collection
the first noted poetess in colonial period published by
English colonists
Bradstreet’s Works
living in America
“Some verses on the Burning of Our House”
“The Spirit and the Flesh”
The Tenth Muse Lately Sprung Up in America
2. Anne Bradstreet’s Life
* She was born and educated in England.
* At the age of 18, she came to America in 1630 with her father and husband.
* She had 8 children.
* She became known as the “Tenth Muse” who appeared in America.
2. Michael Wigglesworth (1631-1705)
the most popular poet in American Colonial Period
Work: “The Day of Doom” (1662)
3. Edward Taylor (1642?-1729)
the finest poet in colonial period
Work: Preparatory Meditation
Features of Colonial Poets
1. They were servants of God.
2. They faithfully imitated and
transplanted English literary
traditions.
Puritan
poets
In English
style
Chapter Two
Revolutionary Period (1775-1783)
“The Age of Reason”
“American Enlightenment”
• In the 18th century, people believed in man’s
own nature and the power of human reason.
With Franklin as its spokesman, the 18th century
America experienced an age of reason.
• Words had never been so useful and so
important in human history. People wrote a lot of
political writings. Numerous pamphlets and
printings were published. These works agitated
revolutionary people not only in America but also
around the world.
• The 18th-century American Enlightenment was a
movement marked by an emphasis on rationality
rather than tradition, scientific inquiry instead of
unquestioning religious dogma, and
representative government in place of monarchy.
• Enlightenment thinkers and writers were devoted
to the ideals of justice, liberty, and equality as the
natural rights of man.
• The colonists who would form a new nation were
firm believers in the power of reason; they were
ambitious, inquisitive, optimistic, practical,
politically astute, and self-reliant.
Leading writers and their works
• Thomas Jefferson(1743-1826):
The Declaration of Independence (1776)
• Thomas Paine(1737-1809):
Common Sense (1776)
• Benjamin Franklin:
Autobiography
• Philip Freneau:
“The Wild Honey Suckle”
1. Benjamin Franklin (1706-1790)
1. Works
• The Autobiography
• Poor Richard’s Almanack
《自传》
《格言历书》
2. Life
Benjamin Franklin came from a Calvinist background.
He was born into a poor candle-maker’s family. He had very little
education. He learned in school only for two years, but he was a
voracious reader.
At 12, he was apprenticed to his elder half-brother, a printer.
At 16, he began to publish essays under the pseudonym “Silence
Do good” .
At 17, he ran away to Philadelphia to make his own fortune.
He set himself up as an independent printer and publisher. In
1727 he founded the Junto club.
Franklin’s Contributions to Society
He helped found the Pennsylvania Hospital.
He founded an academy which led to the University of
Pennsylvania.
And he helped found the American Philosophical Society.
Franklin’s Contributions to Science
He was also remembered for volunteer fire departments, effective street
lighting, the Franklin stove, bifocal glasses and efficient heating devices.
And for his lightning-rod, he was called “the new Prometheus who had
stolen fire from heaven.”
Franklin’s Contributions to the U.S.
He was the only American to sign the four documents that created the
United States:
The Declaration of Independence,
The Treaty of Alliance with France,
The Treaty of Peace with England,
The Constitution
3. Evaluation
 The Autobiography is a record of self-examination and
self-improvement.
 Benjamin Franklin was a spokesman for the new order of
the 18th century enlightenment
 The Autobiography is a how-to-do-it book, a book on the
art of self-improvement. (for example, Franklin’s 13
virtues)
 Through telling a success story of self-reliance, the book
celebrates, in fact, the fulfillment of the American dream.
 The Autobiography is in the pattern of Puritan simplicity,
directness, and concision.
2. Philip Freneau (1752-1832)
 “Poet of the American
Revolution”
 “Father of American Poetry”
 “Pioneer of the New
Romanticism”
 “A gifted and versatile lyric
poet”
《美洲光辉的兴起》
1. Works
• “The Rising Glory of America”
(1772)
《夜之屋》
• “The House of Night” (1779, 1786)
• “The British Prison Ship” (1781)
• “To the Memory of the Brave Americans” (1781)
《英国囚船》
• “The Wild Honey Suckle” (1786)
• “The Indian Burying Ground” (1788)
• “The Dying Indian: Tomo Chequi”
《纪念美国勇士》
《野金银花》
《奄奄一息的印第安人：
托姆·察吉》
《印第安人墓地》
2. Life
• He was born in New York.
• At 16, he entered the College of New Jersey
(now Princeton University).
• While still an undergraduate, he wrote in
collaboration with one of his friends (H. H.
Brackenridge) a poem entitled “The Rising
Glory of America”.
The wild honeysuckle
( It pronounced the virtues of a new nation progressing towards its freedom;
America would be a land blessed with “sweet liberty!/Without whose aid the nobles
genius fails,/And science irretrievable must die”)
• In 1771 he decided do a postgraduate study in theology. But two years later he gave it
up.
• Later he attended the War of Independence, and he was captured by British army in
1780.
• After being released, he published “The British Prison Ship” in 1781.
• In the same year, he published “To the Memory of the Brave Americans”.
• After war, he supported Jefferson, and contributed greatly to American government.
• But after 50 years old, he lived in poverty. And at last he died in a blizzard.
3. Evaluation
• He was the most significant poet of 18th century America.
• Some of his themes and images anticipated the works of such 19th century
American Romantic writers as Cooper, Emerson, Poe and Melville.
4. Aspects of Freneau
• Poet of American Independence: Freneau provides incentive and inspiration to the
revolution by writing such poems as "The Rising Glory of America" and "Pictures of
Columbus."
• Journalist: Freneau was editor and contributor of The Freeman's Journal (Philadelphia)
from 1781-1784. In his writings, he advocated the essence of what is known as
Jeffersonian democracy - decentralization of government, equality for the masses, etc.
• Freneau's Religion: Freneau is described as a deist - a believer in nature and humanity but
not a pantheist. In deism, religion becomes an attitude of intellectual belief, not a matter of
emotional of spiritual ecstasy. Freneau shows interest and sympathy for the humble and the
oppressed.
• Freneau as Father of American Poetry: His major themes are death, nature, transition, and
the human in nature. All of these themes become important in 19th century writing. His
famous poems are "The Wild Honey-Suckle" (1786), "The Indian Burying Ground" (1787),
"The Dying Indian: Tomo Chequi" (1784), "The Millennium" (1797), "On a Honey Bee"
(1809), "To a Caty-Did" (1815), "On the Universality and Other Attributes of the God of
Nature," "On the Uniformity and Perfection of Nature," and "On the Religion of Nature"
(the last three written in 1815).
Poem Appreciation
•
The Wild Honeysuckle
• The following poem was published in his Poems
(1786) and was virtually unread in the time when he
was living.
• In the poem the poet expresses his keen awareness
of the liveliness and transience of nature celebrating
the beauty of the frail forest flower, thus showing his
deep love for nature.
• The poem was written in six-line iambic tetrameter
stanzas rhymed on ababcc pattern.
• The poem is said to anticipate the nineteenth-century
romantic use of simple nature imagery.
• It is considered one of the author’s finest nature
poems.
Fair flower, that dost so comely grow,
Hid in this silent, dull retreat,
Untouch’d thy honey’d blossoms blow,
Unseen thy little branches greet:
No roving foot shall crush thee here,
No busy hand provoke a tear.
By Nature’s self in white array’d,
She bade thee shun the vulgar eye,
And planted here the guardian shade,
And sent soft waters murmuring by;
Thus quietly thy summer goes,
Thy days declining to repose.
Smit with those charms, that must decay,
I grieve to see your future doom,
They died----nor were those flowers more gay,
The flowers that did in Eden bloom;
Unpitying frosts, and Autumn’s power
Shall leave no vestige of this flower.
From morning suns and evening dews
At first thy little being came:
If nothing once, you nothing lose,
For when you die you are the same;
The space between, is but an hour,
The frail duration of a flower.
The Indian Burying Ground
• The poem was published in the poet’s Miscellaneous
Works in 1788.
• Like “The Wild Honey Suckle”, it anticipated romantic
primitivism and the celebration of the “noble savage”.
• The poem portrays sympathetically the spirit of the
nomadic Indian hunters, who were traditionally buried in a
sitting position and with images of the objects they knew
in life.
• It is believed to be the earliest to romanticize the Indian
as a child of nature.
• The poem was written in ten iambic tetrameter quatrains
with the rhyme scheme of “abab”.
In spite of all the learned have said;
I still my old opinion keep,
The posture, that we give the dead,
Points out the soul’s eternal sleep.
Not so the ancients of these lands—
The Indian, when from life released,
Again is seated with his friends,
And shares again the joyous feast.
His imaged birds, and painted bowl,
And venison, for a journey dressed.
Bespeak the nature of the soul,
Activity, that knows no rest.
His bow, for action ready bent,
And arrows, with a head of stone,
Can only mean that life is spent,
And not the old ideas gone.
Thou, stranger, that shalt come this way.
No fraud upon the dead commit—
Observe the swelling turf, and say
They do not lie, but here they sit.
Here still a lofty rock remains,
On which the curious eye may trace,
(Now wasted, half, by wearing rains)
The fancies of a ruder race.
Here still an aged elm aspires,
Beneath whose far—projecting shade
(And which the shepherd still admires)
The children of the forest played!
There oft a restless Indian queen
(Pale Shebah, with her braided hair)
And many a barbarous form is seen
To chide the man that lingers there.
By midnight moons, o’er moistening dews,
In habit for the chase arrayed,
The hunter still the deer pursues,
The hunter and the deer, a shade!
And long shall timorous fancy see
The painted chief, and pointed spear,
And Reason’s self shall bow the knee
To shadows and delusions here.
Chapter Three
American Romanticism
(1820-1860)
General Introduction
“
Romanticism
The term ,Romanticism, is
associated with imagination and
boundlessness, as contrasted
with classicism, which is
commonly associated with reason
and restriction. The most
profound and comprehensive
idea of romanticism is the vision
of a greater personal freedom for
the individual.
Its origins may be traced to :
 the
economic rise of the middle
class, struggling to free itself from
feudal and monarchical restrictions;
 the individualism of the Renaissance;
 the Reformation, which was based
on the belief in an immediate
relationship between man and God;
 the scientific deism, which
emphasized the deity’s benevolence;
 the
psychology of Locke, Hartley,
and others, who contended that
minds are formed by
environmental conditions, thus
seeming to be indicate that all
men are created equal and may be
improved by environmental
changes;
 the optimistic humanitarianism of
Shaftsbury;
 the writings of Rousseau who
contended that man is natural
good, institutions also having
made him wicked.
Romantic Attitudes
 1.
Appeals to imagination; use
of the "willing suspension of
disbelief."
 2. Stress on emotion rather
than reason; optimism,
geniality.
 3. Subjectivity: in form and
meaning.
1. Time Range

From the end of the 18th
century through the outbreak
of the Civil War.
2. Ideals:

Ideals: Democracy and
political equality became
the ideals of the new
nation.
3. Social Background

Economic boom:
Industrialism
Immigration
Westward expansion
optimism and
hope among
people
4. Features

American Romanticism was both
imitative and independent.
Imitative
Independent
English and European
Romanticists
Emerson and Whitman
5. Themes:

Imitative

Independent
major
home,
family,
nature, children
and idealized love,
etc.
problems of
American life, like the
westward expansion and
democracy and equality, etc.
1. Washington Irving
(1783--1859)
of American Imaginative
literature”
 “Father of the American short
story”
 “Father
1) Works
a)
A History of New York from the
Beginning of the World to the
End of the Dutch Dynasty by
Diedrich Knickerbocker
《纽约外史》
b) The Sketch Book of
Geoffrey Crayon, Gent
Van Winkle”
 “The Legend of Sleepy Hollow”
 “Rip
《瑞
普·凡·温克
尔》
《睡谷的
传说》
《见
闻札
记》
《布雷斯
布里奇庄
园》
c) Bracebridge Hall 1822
d) Oliver Goldsmith 1840
e) Life of George Washington
1855-1859
《哥尔德
斯密斯》
《华盛顿传》
2）Life
 Irving
was born into a wealthy
New York merchant family. From
a very early age, he began to
read widely and write juvenile
poems, essays and plays.
Later, he studied law.
 His
first book A History of New
York, written under the name of
Diedrich Knickerbocker, was a
great success and won him wide
popularity.
 In 1815, he went to England to
take care of his family business
there, and when it failed, had to
write to support himself.
 With
the publication of The Sketch
Book, he won a measure of international
recognition.
Knickerbocker
Rip Van Winkle
In
1826, as an American
diplomatic attaché, he was
sent to Spain, where he
gathered material for his
writing.
From 1829 to 1832, he was
secretary of the U.S
Legation in London.
 Then
when he was fifty, he returned
to America and bought “Sunnyside”,
his famous home. There he spent
the rest of his life, living a life of
leisure and comfort, except for a
period of four years (1842--1846),
when he was Minister to Spain.
View of Sunnyside
3）Evaluation
 Washington
Irving was the first
American writer of imaginative
literature to gain international
fame.
 The short story as a genre in
American literature began with
Irving’s The Sketch Book.
 The Sketch Book also marked the
beginning of American Romanticism.
2. James Fenimore Cooper
(1789-1851)
 novelist
1) Works.
Leatherstocking Tales


The Pioneers 1823 …………………… 4

The Last of the Mohicans 1826 …….2

The Prairie 1827 ………………………5

The Pathfinder 1840 …………………3

The Deerslayer 1841 ……………........1



Precaution 1820
The Spy 1821
The Pilot 1823
2) Life
 Born into a rich land-holding family of
New Jersey, Cooper was one of the new
American authors who did not have to
worry about money.
 He was sent to Yale at 14, but was
expelled in his junior year because of
improper behavior.
 He went and spent five years at sea;
then, while still in his early twenties,
he inherited his father’s vast fortune
and settled down to a life of comfort
and even luxury.
 His second book, The Spy, a novel
about the American Revolution,
proved to be an immense success.
 He was a prolific
writer, wrote
more than thirty
novels.
 Fiction
 Precaution,1820;
 The Spy,1821;
 The Pioneers, 1823;
 The Pilot, 1824;
 Lionel Lincoln,1824;
 The Last of the Mohicans, 1826;
 The Red Rover,1827;
 The Prairie, 1827;
 The Red Rover,1827;
 The Red Rover, 1828;
 The Wept of Wish-Ton-Wish,1829;
 The Water Witch,1830












The Bravo,1831;
The Heidenmauer,1832;
The Headsman,1833;
The Monikins,1835;
Homeward Bound,1838;
Home as Found,1838;
Mercedes of Castile,1840;
The Pathfinder, 1840;
The Deerslayer, 1841;
The Two Admirals,1842;
The Wing-and-Wing,1842;
Le Mouchoir; an Autobiographical
Romance,1843;












Ned Myers, 1843;
Wyandotte, 1843;
Afloat and Ashore,1844;
Miles Wallingford: A Sequel to Afloat
and Ashore,1844;
Satanstoe,1845;
The Chain Bearer,1845;
The Redskins,1846;
The Crater,1847;
Jack Tier,1848;
Oak Openings, 1849;
The Sea Lions,1849;
The Ways of the Hour,1850.
Non-Fiction :
 Notions of the Americans:
Picked Up by a Travelling
Bachelor, 1828;
 Sketches of Switzerland,1836;
 Gleanings in Europe,1837;
 The American Democrat,1838;
 The History of the Navy of the
United States of America,1839.

Title

The Pioneers
Publication Date
Natty Bumppo's Age
1823
70
Set in Year
1793
Natty Bumppo first appears as a seasoned scout in advancing years, with the dying
Chingachgook, the old Indian chief and his faithful comrade, as the eastern forest
frontier begins to disappear and Chingachgook dies.


The Last of
the Mohicans


1826
40
1757
An adventure of the French and Indian Wars in the Lake George county.
The Prairie

1827
90
1804
Set in the new frontier where the Leatherstocking dies.

The Pathfinder 1840
40
1757
Continuing the same border warfare in the St. Lawrence and Lake Ontario
country.

The Deerslayer 1841

23
1740-45
Early adventures with the hostile Hurons on Lake Otsego, NY.
Contributions of Cooper
 The creation of the famous Leatherstocking
saga has cemented his position as our first
great national novelist and his influence
pervades American literature. In his thirtytwo years (1820-1851) of authorship,
Cooper produced twenty-nine other long
works of fiction and fifteen books - enough
to fill forty-eight volumes in the new
definitive edition of his Works. Among his
achievements:
Cooper Creates many “first” in the field of
American novels
 1. The first successful American historical romance in






the vein of Sir Walter Scott (The Spy, 1821).
2. The first sea novel (The Pilot, 1824).
3. The first attempt at a fully researched historical
novel (Lionel Lincoln, 1825).
4. The first full-scale History of the Navy of the United
States of America (1839).
5. The first American international novel of manners
(Homeward Bound and Home as Found, 1838).
6. The first trilogy in American fiction (Satanstoe, 1845;
The Chainbearer, 1845; and The Redskins, 1846).
7. The first and only five-volume epic romance to carry
its mythic hero - Natty Bumppo - from youth to old age.
3）Evaluation
 Leatherstocking Tales is a
series of five novels about the
frontier of American settlers.
 The Pioneers was probably
the first true romance of the
frontier in American literature.
 Natty Bumppo represents the
ideal American, living a
virtuous and free life in God’s
world. To him and to Cooper,
the wildness is good, pure,
perfect, where there is
freedom not tainted and
fettered by any forms of
human institutions.
 Natty Bumppo is a
veritable embodiment of
human virtues like
innocence, simplicity,
honesty and generosity,
a man born with an
immaculate sense of
good and evil and right
and wrong.
 Cooper is a mythic writer. His preface to
the Leatherstocking series indicates that
he wrote with increasing consciousness
to create a mythic figure. Cooper is good
at inventing plots. His plots are
sometimes quite incredible.
 Cooper has been known as a powerful yet
clumsy writer. His style is dreadful, his
characterization wooden and lacking in
probability, and his language, his use of
dialect, is not authentic.
 Anyhow, Cooper did help to
introduce the “western
tradition” into American
literature.
3. William Cullen Bryant
(1794-1878)
 the first
American lyric
poet of
distinction
1) Works
a) Poems
1821
b) The Fountain
《泉》
《诗选》
1842
《白蹄鹿》
c) The White-Footed Deer 1844
d) A Forest Hymn 1860
《似水流年》
e) The Flood of Years 1878
《森林赋
》
《致水鸟》
f) “To a Waterfowl” 1815
g) “Thanatopsis”
1817
h) “The Yellow Violet” 1814
《黄色堇香花》
《死亡随想》
2）Life
 Bryant was a poet,
and editor.
 He was born into a
doctor’s family in
Massachusetts.
 He started to write
poems when he was
14 years old.
 Bryant quitted his study in
university and then became a
lawyer.
 In 1825, he turned to
journalism. In 1827, he became
an editor for Evening Post and
wrote a lot of political
criticism. But it is his poetry
which made him popular among
people.
v
 He was influenced by Graveyard School
in England and wrote “Thanatopsis”.
 His best works are his lyric poems
about nature and so his style is quite
similar to that of Wordsworth.
4. Edgar Allan Poe
(1809-1849)
father of
modern short story

father of
detective story

father of
psychoanalytic
criticism

1) Works
《奇异怪
诞故事集
》
a) Tales of the Grotesque and the
Arabesque
《瓶子里发
b) “MS. Found in a Bottle”
现的手稿》
C) “The Murders in the Rue Morgue”
《毛格街杀人案
》
《厄舍古屋的
倒塌》
d) “The Fall of the House of Usher”
e) “The Masque of the Red Death”
f) “The Cask of Amontillado”
《一桶酒的
故事》
《红色死亡的
化妆舞会》
《乌鸦》
g)
h)
i)
j)
The Raven
Israfel
Annabel Lee
To Helen
《伊斯拉菲尔》
《致海伦
》
《安娜贝尔•
李》
《诗歌原理》
k) The Poetic Principle
l) The Philosophy of Composition
《创作
哲学》
2) Life
• Famous American Poet, short-story
writer and critic.
3) Evaluation
• Poe remained the most controversial and
most misunderstood literary figure in the
history of American literature.
• Emerson dismissed him in three words “the
jingle man” ，Mark Twain declared his
prose to be unreadable. And Whitman was
the only famous literary figure present at
the Poe Memorial Ceremony in 1875.
• Ironically, it was in Europe that Poe enjoyed
respect and welcome.
• Bernard Shaw said: “Poe was ‘the greatest
journalistic critic of his time; his poetry is
exquisitely refined; and his tales are
“complete works of art”.
• Poe’s reputation was first made in France.
Charles Baudelaire said that “Edgar Poe, who
isn’t much in America, must become a great
man in France.”
• Today, Poe’s particular power
has ensured his position among
the greatest writers of the
world. The majority of critics
today, in America as well as in
the world, have recognized the
real, unique importance of Poe
as a great writer of fiction, a
poet of the first rank, and a
critic of acumen and insight.
His works are read the world
over. His influence in worldwide in modern literature.
Nathaniel Hawthorne
(1804-1864)
Collections
of short
stories
a)
b)
c)
Works
《故事
重述》
Twice-Told Tales
1837
Mosses from an Old Manse 1843
The Scarlet Letter 1850 《古宅青苔》
《红字
》
d)
The House of the Seven Gables
1851
《七个尖角阁的房子》
e)
The Blithedale Romance
d)
The Marble Faun 1860
《大理石雕像》
1852
《福谷传奇》
g)
“Young Goodman Brown”
h)
“The Minister’s Black Veil”
g)
“Dr. Rappacini’s Daughter”
《教长的
黑面纱》
《好小伙
儿布朗》
《拉普齐
尼博士的
女儿》
Life
Hawthorne was born in Salem
Massachusetts.
 Some of his ancestors were men of
prominence in the Puritan theocracy of
seventeenth-century New England. One of
them was a colonial magistrate, notorious
for his part in the persecution of the
Quakers, and another was a judge at the
Salem Witchcraft Trial in 1692.



When Nathaniel was four, his father died on a
voyage in Surinam, Dutch Guinea, but maternal
relatives recognized his literary talent and financed
his education at Bowdoin College.
Among his classmates were many of the important
literary and political figures of the day: writer
Horatio Bridge, future Senator Jonathan Ciley,
Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, and future President
Franklin Pierce. These prominent friends supplied
Hawthorne with government employment in the
lean times, allowing him time to bloom as an author.


Like James Fenimore Cooper, Hawthorne was
extremely concerned with conventionality; his
first pseudonymously published short stories
imitated Sir Walter Scott, as did his 1828 selfpublished Fanshawe.
Hawthorne later formally withdrew most of this
early work, discounting it as the work of
inexperienced youth. From 1836 to 1844 the
Boston-centered Transcendentalist movement,
led by Ralph Waldo Emerson, was an important
force in New England intellectual circles.


The Transcendentalists believed that human
existence transcended the sensory realm, and
rejected formalism in favor of individual
responsibility. Hawthorne's fiancée Sophia
Peabody drew him into "the newness," and in
1841 Hawthorne invested $1500 in the Brook
Farm Utopian Community, leaving disillusioned
within a year.
His later works show some Transcendentalist
influence, including a belief in individual choice
and consequence, and an emphasis on symbolism.
As America's first true psychological novel, The
Scarlet Letter would convey these ideals;
contrasting puritan morality with passion and
individualism.

The Scarlet Letter represents the height of
Hawthorne's literary genius; dense with
terse descriptions. It remains relevant for
its philosophical and psychological depth,
and continues to be read as a classic tale on
a universal theme.
Reasons for Hawthorne's Current Popularity


One of the most modern of writers, Hawthorne is
relevant in theme and attitude. According to H. H.
Waggoner, Hawthorne's attitudes use irony,
ambiguity, and paradox.
Hawthorne rounds off the puritan cycle in
American writing - belief in the existence of an
active evil (the devil) and in a sense of
determinism (the concept of predestination).

Hawthorne's use of psychological analysis
(pre-Freudian) is of interest today.

In themes and style, Hawthorne's writings
look ahead to Henry James, William
Faulkner, and Robert Penn Warren
Influences on Hawthorne
Salem - early childhood, later work at the
Custom House.
 Puritan family background - one of his
forefathers was Judge Hathorne, who
presided over the Salem witchcraft trials,
1692.
 Belief in the existence of the devil.
 Belief in determinism.

Major Themes in Hawthorne's Fiction
Alienation - a character is in a state of
isolation because of self-cause, or societal
cause, or a combination of both.
 Initiation - involves the attempts of an
alienated character to get rid of his isolated
condition.
 Problem of Guilt -a character's sense of
guilt forced by the puritanical heritage or
by society; also guilt vs. innocence.

Pride - Hawthorne treats pride as evil. He
illustrates the following aspects of pride in
various characters: physical pride (Robin),
spiritual pride (Goodman Brown, Ethan
Brand), and intellectual pride (Rappaccini).
 Puritan New England - used as a
background and setting in many tales.
 Italian background - especially in The
Marble Faun.
 Allegory - Hawthorne's writing is
allegorical, didactic and moralistic.


Other themes include individual vs. society,
self-fulfillment vs. accommodation or
frustration, hypocrisy vs. integrity, love vs.
hate, exploitation vs. hurting, and fate vs.
free will.
Hawthorne as a Literary Artist
First professional writer - college educated,
familiar with the great European writers,
and influenced by puritan writers like
Cotton Mather.
 Hawthorne displayed a love for allegory
and symbol. He dealt with tensions
involving: light versus dark; warmth versus
cold; faith versus doubt; heart versus mind;
internal versus external worlds.


His writing is representative of 19th century,
and, thus, in the mainstream due to his use
of nature, its primitiveness, and as a source
of inspiration; also in his use of the exotic,
the gothic, and the antiquarian.
Features of his works





setting
themes
Idea
Feature
technique
Puritan New England
Evil & sin
“black vision” toward human beings
Ambiguity
symbolism
The Scarlet Letter




Hester
Chillingworth
Dimmesdale
Pearl
Sin
evil
Adultery
Ability
Angel