Offering innovative, psychoanalytic readings of Nathaniel Hawthorne’s four romances, this volume systematically applies Freudian theory to present significant new insights into the psychology of Hawthorne’s characters and their fates. By critically examining scenes in which the protagonists confront past traumas, Diamond underscores the transformative potential which Hawthorne attributes to encounters with the unconscious. Psychoanalytic narrative technique is employed to interpret the psychogical crises, all hidden by Hawthorne in narrative gaps, in The Scarlet Letter, The House of the Seven Gables, The Blithedale Romance, and The Marble Faun. The protagonists' transformations that are illuminated are crucial to an understanding of the trajectory and resolution of the romances. The text will benefit both academic and non-academic readers who seek a deeper understanding of the psychology of Hawthorne's romances. It will be of particular interest to educators and researchers of applied psychoanalysis and psychoanalytic technique. Since its conclusions challenge many currently held critical views, this volume is especially relevant to scholars of Hawthorne studies, interdisciplinary literary studies, and 19th century American literature.

The English literary influence on classic American novelists’ depictions of gender, sexuality, and race With All the Devils Are Here, the literary scholar David Greven makes a signal contribution to the growing list of studies dedicated to tracing threads of literary influence. Herman Melville’s, Nathaniel Hawthorne’s, and James Fenimore Cooper’s uses of Shakespeare and Milton, he finds, reflect not just an intertextual relationship between American Romanticism and the English tradition but also an ongoing engagement with gender and sexual politics. Greven limns the effect of Shakespeare’s Much Ado about Nothing on Hawthorne’s exploration of patriarchy, and he shows how misogyny in King Lear informed Melville’s evocation of “the step-mother world” of orphaned men in Moby-Dick. Throughout, Greven focuses particularly on male authors’ treatment of femininity, arguing that the figure of woman functions for them as a multivalent signifier for artistic expression. Ultimately, Greven demonstrates the ambitions of these writers to comment on the history of the Western tradition and the future of art from their unique positions as Americans.

Offering innovative, psychoanalytic readings of Nathaniel Hawthorne’s mature novels, this volume expertly applies Freudian theory to present new insights into the psychology of Hawthorne’s characters and their fates. By critically examining scenes in which protagonists confront past traumas, Diamond underscores the transformative potential which Hawthorne attributes to confrontations with the unconscious. Psychoanalytic narrative technique is used to illuminate psychological crises of the protagonists in The Scarlet Letter, The House of the Seven Gables, The Blithedale Romance, and The Marble Faun, showing the transformations they undergo to be central to our understanding of the trajectory and resolution of Hawthorne’s romances. The text will benefit researchers, academics, and educators with an interest in applied psychoanalysis, psychoanalytic technique, and Freud in particular. Since its conclusions challenge many currently held critical views, this volume is especially relevant to those interested in interdisciplinary literary studies, Hawthorne studies, 19th century literature and romanticism.

First Published in 2000. Throughout the nineteenth century, the study of geometry remained at the core of educational curricula in the United States, strongly affecting how educated Americans construed their world. This book examines how each of Nathaniel Hawthorne's romances presents a different geometric figure that becomes representative of the work's themes and narrative designs. These geometric figures, when approached from the perspective of Victor Turner's symbolic anthropology, server as cultural mediators, combining geometric symbology with a unique narrative perspective to offer metaphors of personal and cultural boundaries, Freidman presents the literary text as the point of intersection among such disciplines as cultural anthropology, history, mathematics and American literature.

Dans une étude récente, l'écrivain américain Paul Auster évoque "la prose originale et délicate" de Nathaniel Hawthorne, "sa capacité d'allier la complexité d'une observation psychologique pénétrante avec un souci moral et philosophique d'ordre général" : "Hawthorne, le créateur d'allégories, Hawthorne le fabuliste romantique, Hawthorne le chroniqueur de la Nouvelle-Angleterre coloniale au XVIIe siècle, et surtout, le Hawthorne réinventé par Borgès (le précurseur de Kafka)." L'œuvre de Nathaniel Hawthorne, sous toutes ses formes, se prête au jeu de lectures plurielles et sa rencontre avec les approches critiques contemporaines est des plus productives. Comme l'écrit encore Paul Auster, Hawthorne n'est pas seulement une "figure vénérable du passé littéraire", mais aussi un contemporain, un "homme dont le temps est encore le présent". Animés de semblables convictions, nous avons souhaité publier ce recueil d'essais issus des travaux d'un colloque international, organisé en novembre 2001, dans le cadre d'un cycle d'études intitulé "Ethique et Esthétique" à l'Université de Provence. Nous sommes particulièrement reconnaissants envers Millicent Bell, critique littéraire et ancienne présidente de la société Hawthorne ("Nathaniel Hawthorne Society"), de nous avoir apporté son concours, et à Professor Marc Monthéard, Doyen Académique de The American University of Paris, qui a permis la publication de cet ouvrage. Annick Duperray, Université de Provence

This volume argues that by focusing on British and American backgrounds, readers have underestimated the impact of Asia and "the East" on American novelist and short story writer Nathaniel Hawthorne's (1804-1864) writing. The central force in Hawthorne's intellectual development was New England Puritanism. It fascinated even when it sometimes repelled him. It exercised a pull on his imagination which a lifetime of varied experience did not loosen. The author recreates Hawthorne's heritage and examine his readings in material dealing with the East; he examines three of Hawthorne's "early tales" that were all written before 1830; and he looks at Hawthorne's "The Story Teller", the two-volume book of sketches and tales Hawthorne unsuccessfully tried to publish in 1834 and issued piecemeal thereafter in periodicals as annuals. The author also evaluates the role of the Eastern world in Hawthorne's view of Romance and studies some of Hawthorne's "remarkable" heroines -- Beatrice Rapaccini, Hester, Zenobia, and Miriam in particular. The author maintains that the Puritan element in Hawthorne's ancestry has been overstressed and that insufficient attention has been paid to the equally important travel-adventure-exploration aspect of Hawthorne's heritage and craft.

Reader's Guide Literature in English provides expert guidance to, and critical analysis of, the vast number of books available within the subject of English literature, from Anglo-Saxon times to the current American, British and Commonwealth scene. It is designed to help students, teachers and librarians choose the most appropriate books for research and study.