Book I

1
American Literature

• Book I

2
Table of Contents

• Introduction
• Brief Outline of American Literature
• Chapter I Colonial Period
• Chapter II Revolutionary PeriodBenjamin
  FranklinPhilip Freneau
• Chapter III American RomanticismWashington
  IrvingJames Fenimore CooperWilliam Cullen
  BryantEdgar Allan PoeNathaniel Hawthorne

3
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.

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Puritanism in America

• They follow the ideas of the Swiss reformer John
  Calvin.
• Doctrines- Predestination- Original sin and
  total depravity (human beings are basically
  evil.)- Limited atonement (or the Salvation of a
  selected few)
• 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.

5
Puritanism in America

• Why did Puritans come to America?- to reform the
  Church of England- to have an entirely new
  church- to escape religious persecution Gods
  chosen people To seek a new Garden of Eden To
  build City of God on earth

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Puritanism in America

• 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.

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Brief Outline of American literature

1. Colonial period (1607-1775)Anne
   BradstreetEdward Taylor
2. Revolutionary period (1775-1783)Benjamin
   FranklinPhilip Freneau
3. Democratic Period (1783-1802)
4. Romanticism (1820-1861)Washington IrvingEdgar
   Allan PoeNathaniel Howthorne William Whitman
   Transcendentalism (New England
   Renaissance)Ralph Waldo EmersonFillip Thoreau

1. Realism (1861-1914)Mark TwainHenry
   JamesNaturalism Stephen CraneTheodore
   Dreiser
2. The 1920sT.S. EliotWilliam FaulknerErnest
   Hemingway (Lost Generation)Imagism Ezra Pound

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Brief Outline of American literature

• The 1930sSteinbeckHarlem Renaissance(Black
  American literature)HughesWrightEllison
• American DramaEugene ONeill

• The Post-war SceneSaul BellowSalingerPoetryC
  onfessional PoetryBlack Mountain PoetsSan
  Francisco RenaissanceThe Beat GenerationThe New
  York Poets

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Chapter One

• Colonial Period (1607-1775)

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Three major poets in colonial period

1. Anne Bradstreet
2. Michael Wigglesworth
3. Edward Taylor

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1. Anne Bradstreet (1612-1672)
the first collection published by English
colonists living in America
the first noted poetess in colonial period

1. Anne Bradstreets WorksSome verses on the
   Burning of Our HouseThe Spirit and the
   FleshThe Tenth Muse Lately Sprung Up in America
2. Anne Bradstreets 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.

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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
13
Features of Colonial Poets
Puritan poets

1. They were servants of God.
2. They faithfully imitated and transplanted English
   literary traditions.

In English style
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Chapter Two

• Revolutionary Period (1775-1783)

The Age of Reason American Enlightenment
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• In the 18th century, people believed in mans 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.

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• 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.

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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

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1. Benjamin Franklin (1706-1790)
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1. Works
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• The Autobiography
• Poor Richards Almanack

2. Life

• Benjamin Franklin came from a Calvinist
  background.
• He was born into a poor candle-makers 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.

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• Franklins 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.

• Franklins 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.

• Franklins 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

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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,
  Franklins 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.

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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

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1. Works

• The Rising Glory of America (1772)
• The House of Night (1779, 1786)
• The British Prison Ship (1781)
• To the Memory of the Brave Americans (1781)
• The Wild Honey Suckle (1786)
• The Indian Burying Ground (1788)
• The Dying Indian Tomo Chequi

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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.

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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).

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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 authors finest
  nature poems.

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• Fair flower, that dost so comely grow,
• Hid in this silent, dull retreat,
• Untouchd thy honeyd blossoms blow,
• Unseen thy little branches greet
• No roving foot shall crush thee here,
• No busy hand provoke a tear.
• By Natures self in white arrayd,
• 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.

28

• 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 Autumns 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.

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The Indian Burying Ground

• The poem was published in the poets
  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.

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• In spite of all the learned have said
• I still my old opinion keep,
• The posture, that we give the dead,
• Points out the souls 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.

31

• 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.

32

• Here still an aged elm aspires,
• Beneath whose farprojecting 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, oer moistening dews,
• In habit for the chase arrayed,
• The hunter still the deer pursues,
• The hunter and the deer, a shade!

33

• And long shall timorous fancy see
• The painted chief, and pointed spear,
• And Reasons self shall bow the knee
• To shadows and delusions here.

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Chapter Three

• American Romanticism
• (1820-1860)

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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.
  

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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
  deitys benevolence

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• 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.

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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.

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1. Time Range

• From the end of the 18th century through the
  outbreak of the Civil War.

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2. Ideals

• Ideals Democracy and political equality became
  the ideals of the new nation.

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3. Social Background

• Economic boom
• Industrialism
• Immigration
• Westward expansion

• optimism and hope among people

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4. Features

• American Romanticism was both imitative and
  independent.
• Imitative
• Independent

English and European Romanticists
Emerson and Whitman
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5. Themes

• home, family, nature, children and idealized
  love, etc.

• Imitative
• Independent

• major problems of American life, like the
  westward expansion and democracy and equality,
  etc.

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Washington Irving (1783--1859)

• Father of American Imaginative literature
• Father of the American short story

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1) Works

1. A History of New York from the Beginning of the
   World to the End of the Dutch Dynasty by Diedrich
   Knickerbocker

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The Sketch Book of Geoffrey Crayon, Gent
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• Rip Van Winkle
• The Legend of Sleepy Hollow

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• ????????

• c) Bracebridge Hall 1822
• d) Oliver Goldsmith 1840
• e) Life of George Washington 1855-1859

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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.

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• 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.

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• With the publication of The Sketch Book, he won a
  measure of international recognition.

Knickerbocker
Rip Van Winkle
51

• 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.

52

• 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
53
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 Irvings The Sketch Book.
• The Sketch Book also marked the beginning of
  American Romanticism.

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2. James Fenimore Cooper(1789-1851)

• novelist

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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

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• Precaution 1820
• The Spy 1821
• The Pilot 1823

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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.

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• He went and spent five years at sea then, while
  still in his early twenties, he inherited his
  fathers 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.

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• He was a prolific writer, wrote more than thirty
  novels.

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• 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

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• 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

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• 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.

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• 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.

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• Title Publication Date
  Natty Bumppo's Age Set in Year
• The Pioneers 1823
  70 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.

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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 thirty-two 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

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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.

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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.

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• Natty Bumppo represents the ideal American,
  living a virtuous and free life in Gods 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.

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• 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.

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• 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.

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• Anyhow, Cooper did help to introduce the western
  tradition into American literature.

72
3. William Cullen Bryant (1794-1878)

• the first American lyric poet of distinction

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1) Works

• a) Poems 1821
• b) The Fountain 1842

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• Poes reputation was first

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74
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• c) The White-Footed Deer 1844
• d) A Forest Hymn 1860
• e) The Flood of Years 1878

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• f) To a Waterfowl 1815
• g) Thanatopsis 1817
• h) The Yellow Violet 1814

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2)Life

• Bryant was a poet, and editor.
• He was born into a doctors family in
  Massachusetts.
• He started to write poems when he was 14 years
  old.

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• 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.

78
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.

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4. Edgar Allan Poe (1809-1849)

• father of modern short story
• father of detective story
• father of psychoanalytic criticism

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1) Works
???????

• Tales of the Grotesque and the Arabesque
• MS. Found in a Bottle
• C) The Murders in the Rue Morgue

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1. The Fall of the House of Usher
2. The Masque of the Red Death
3. The Cask of Amontillado

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82
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1. The Raven
2. Israfel
3. Annabel Lee
4. To Helen

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1. The Poetic Principle
2. The Philosophy of Composition

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2) Life

• Famous American Poet, short-story writer and
  critic.

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3) Evaluation

• Poe remained the most controversial and most
  misunderstood literary figure in the history of
  American literature.

86

• 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.

87

• 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.

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• Poes reputation was first made in France.
  Charles Baudelaire said that Edgar Poe, who
  isnt much in America, must become a great man in
  France.

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• Today, Poes 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 world-wide in modern literature.

90
Nathaniel Hawthorne (1804-1864)
91
Works
Collections of short stories
????

1. Twice-Told Tales 1837
2. Mosses from an Old Manse 1843
3. The Scarlet Letter 1850

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• The House of the Seven Gables 1851
• The Blithedale Romance 1852
• The Marble Faun 1860

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• Young Goodman Brown
• The Ministers Black Veil
• Dr. Rappacinis Daughter

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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.

95

• 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.

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• Like James Fenimore Cooper, Hawthorne was
  extremely concerned with conventionality his
  first pseudonymously published short stories
  imitated Sir Walter Scott, as did his 1828
  self-published 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.

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• 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.

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• 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.

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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).

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• 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

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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.

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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.

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• 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.

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• 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.

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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.

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• 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.

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Features of his works

• setting
• themes
• Idea
• Feature
• technique

• Puritan New England
• Evil sin
• black vision toward human beings
• Ambiguity
• symbolism

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The Scarlet Letter

• Hester
• Chillingworth
• Dimmesdale
• Pearl

• Sin
• evil

Adultery Ability Angel