Hawthorne's histories, Hawthorne's world : from Salem to somewhere else / Michael J. Colacurcio.

Format:

Book

Author/Creator:

Colacurcio, Michael J., author.

Series:

Anthem Nineteenth-Century Series

Language:

English

Subjects (All):

Hawthorne, Nathaniel, 1804-1864--Homes and haunts--Massachusetts--Salem.

Hawthorne, Nathaniel.

Hawthorne, Nathaniel, 1804-1864--Homes and haunts.

Hawthorne, Nathaniel, 1804-1864--Knowledge and learning.

Historical fiction, American--History and criticism.

Historical fiction, American.

Puritan movements in literature.

Physical Description:

1 online resource (295 pages) : digital, PDF file(s).

Place of Publication:

London ; New York, NY : Anthem Press, 2022.

Summary:

A collection of essays rather than a single, continuously argued monograph, this book collects together the essays Professor Colacurcio has written on Hawthorne since the publication of his ground-breaking <i>Province of Piety</i>, elaborating and refining his analyses of how Hawthorne's most memorable early tales 'do history,' but proceeding then to explore the later productions of that author's distinguished career. The result, in Colacurcio's patient analysis, is something like Hawthorne's history of his own times. <br><br>To be sure, <i>The Scarlet Letter</i> returns to the rich theme we know as 'the matter of the Puritans,' but rides up from a moment, and clearly implies the vibrant but troubled women's movement; and, imagining the world Hester Prynne as good as predicted, <i>The Blithedale Romance</i> deepens the sensitive but cautious inquiry. Contemporaneous too is the subject of <i>The House of the Seven Gables</i> which, stopping just short of discovering that property is theft, dares to inquire into the murky sources of aristocratic wealth and privilege in his present New England. From the moment between the early tales and the three American romances, the tales and sketches written at the Old Manse in Concord reveal Hawthorne's fascinated and troubled response to that swirl of contemporary reform movements which historians know as 'Freedom's Ferment'; several encounter Emerson explicitly, and even more question the life-implications of 'idealism as it appears in 1842,' as Emerson had defined his Transcendentalism.

Contents:

Introduction: Here and Elsewhere

Summons of the Past: Hawthorne and the Theme(s) of Puritanism

Cosmopolitan and Provincial: Hawthorne and the Reference of American Studies

Moments' Monuments: Hawthorne's Scenic History

"Certain Circumstances": Hawthorne and the Interest of History

The Teller and the Tale: A Note on Hawthorne's Narrators

"Life within the Life"

Sin and Self in Hawthorne's New England

A Better Mode of Evidence: The Transcendental Problem of Faith and Spirit

"Artificial Fire": Reading Melville (Re-)reading Hawthorne

"Red Man's Grave": Art and Destiny in Hawthorne's "Main-street"

"Such Ancestors": The Spirit of History in The Scarlet Letter

Inheritance, Repetition, Complicity, Redemption: Theo-politics in The House of Seven Gables

"Inextricable Knot of Polygamy": Transcendental Husbandry in Hawthorne's Blithedale

Innocence Abroad: Here and There in Hawthorne's "Last Phase."

Notes:

Title from publisher's bibliographic system (viewed on 07 Oct 2022).

Includes bibliographical references and index.

ISBN:

9781839983245

1839983248

9781839983238

183998323X

OCLC:

1319208646