The A-Politics of Ambiguity in the Scarlet Letter

The A-Politics of Ambiguity in the Scarlet Letter PDF Author: Sacvan Bercovitch
Publisher:
ISBN:
Category :
Languages : en
Pages : 28

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The A-Politics of Ambiguity in the Scarlet Letter

The A-Politics of Ambiguity in the Scarlet Letter PDF Author: Sacvan Bercovitch
Publisher:
ISBN:
Category :
Languages : en
Pages : 28

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The Scarlet Letter

The Scarlet Letter PDF Author: Hawthorne
Publisher: Pearson Education India
ISBN: 9788131704394
Category :
Languages : en
Pages : 378

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The Cambridge Companion to Nathaniel Hawthorne

The Cambridge Companion to Nathaniel Hawthorne PDF Author: Richard H. Millington
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
ISBN: 9780521002042
Category : Literary Criticism
Languages : en
Pages : 314

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The Cambridge Companion to Nathaniel Hawthorne offers students and teachers an introduction to Hawthorne s fiction and the lively debates that shape Hawthorne studies today. In newly commissioned essays, twelve eminent scholars of American literature introduce readers to key issues in Hawthorne scholarship and deepen our understanding of Hawthorne s writing. Each of the major novels is treated in a separate chapter, while other essays explore Hawthorne s art in relation to a stimulating array of issues and approaches. The essays reveal how Hawthorne s work explores understandings of gender relations and sexuality, of childhood and selfhood, of politics and ethics, of history and modernity. An Introduction and a selected bibliography will help students and teachers understand how Hawthorne has been a crucial figure for each generation of readers of American literature.

The Ambiguity of the Letter 'A' in Nathaniel Hawthorne's "Scarlet Letter"

The Ambiguity of the Letter 'A' in Nathaniel Hawthorne's Author: Kathrin Gerbe
Publisher: GRIN Verlag
ISBN: 3638791130
Category : Biography & Autobiography
Languages : en
Pages : 40

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Seminar paper from the year 2005 in the subject American Studies - Literature, grade: 1,3, University of Siegen, course: More Than a Renaissance: Romantic Writers in America, 10 entries in the bibliography, language: English, abstract: The Scarlet Letter is Nathaniel Hawthorne's first novel and was published in 1850. Its subtitle A Romance consciously places the novel apart from everyday life. Set in 17th century Boston it tells a story about sin, guilt and love. As the moral values back then still were in force among Hawthorne's contemporaries, he uses the imaginative and symbolic form of the romance to alleviate the impression of the unusual themes in his novel. This essay discusses the ambiguity of the letter A that the protagonist Hester Prynne has to wear as a punishment for adultery. The letter assumes a different and ever-changing meaning for the characters of the novel, from accusation and sin to a new beginning and freedom.

Historically motivated gender ambiguity in Nathaniel Hawthorne's "The Scarlet Letter"

Historically motivated gender ambiguity in Nathaniel Hawthorne's Author: Bettina Siebert
Publisher: GRIN Verlag
ISBN: 3668906661
Category : Literary Collections
Languages : en
Pages : 20

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Seminar paper from the year 2017 in the subject American Studies - Literature, grade: 1,0, University of Rostock (Anglistik/ Amerikanistik), course: Early American Literature, US History and Its Aftermath, language: English, abstract: Breaking with the tradition of examining "The Scarlet Letter" by Nathaniel Hawthorne for traces of (proto-)feminism, the paper approaches the idea of gender in analyzing the interplay of the time periods underlying the literary work - the 19th century as the time of writing and Puritan times as the setting of the plot. In the 200 years between the two moments, ideas of gender have changed with commencing ideas of female empowerment in Hawthorne's time. Looking at the shifting understanding of gender, the construction of femininity and masculinity is analyzed with a focus on the two protagonists - Hester Prynne and Arthur Dimmesdale. Overall, the gender relations between the two main characters change into opposite directions. Thus, Hawthorne's writing destabilizes conventional Puritan ideas of pre-ascribed spheres and gender roles. It has become an academic tradition over the past decades to scrutinize historical literary pieces for traces of feminism. Nathaniel Hawthorne's "The Scarlet Letter" has been a prime object of interest for several scholars in this pursuit. The story of Hester Prynne who is outlawed by Puritan society after having committed adultery represents an early work to have a protagonist who breaks with the law of her time. This might be the reason why in an earlier tradition the novel has been read with Arthur Dimmesdale, the young reverend and Hester's lover, as the central figure. Approaches involving feminism and gender studies challenged this reading. Their focus however primarilyseems to be the tracing of feminist attitudes in Hawthorne's writing. In this approach the historical perspective of the literary work is often read from a contemporary angle creating a hybrid reading that involves three time frames, namely the Puritan time of theplot, the 19th century setting of the novel's writing and the contemporary moment of thenovel's reading.

The Scarlet Letter

The Scarlet Letter PDF Author: Nathaniel Hawthorne
Publisher:
ISBN:
Category :
Languages : en
Pages : 328

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The Ambiguity of Hester Prynne in Nathaniel Hawthorne's "The Scarlet Letter"

The Ambiguity of Hester Prynne in Nathaniel Hawthorne's Author: Ronald Gerard Fuchs (Jr.)
Publisher:
ISBN:
Category : English literature
Languages : en
Pages : 20

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The Office of Scarlet Letter

The Office of Scarlet Letter PDF Author: Sacvan Bercovitch
Publisher: Routledge
ISBN: 1351478176
Category : Literary Criticism
Languages : en
Pages : 214

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"The Scarlet Letter has proved our most enduring classic," writes Sacvan Bercovitch, "because it is the liberal example par excellence of art as ideological mimesis. To understand the office of the A is to see how culture empowers symbolic form, including forms of dissent, and how symbols participate in the dynamics of culture, including the dynamics of constraint."With an approach that both reflects and contests developments in literary studies, Bercovitch explores these connections from two perspectives: first, he examines a historical reading of the novel's unities; and then, a rhetorical analysis of key mid-nineteenth-century issues, at home and abroad. In order to highlight the relation between rhetoric and history, he focuses on the point at which the scarlet letter does its office at last, the moment when Hester decides to come home to America.In The Office of "The Scarlet Letter," Bercovitch argues that the process by which the United States usurped "America" for itself, symbolically, is also the process by which liberalism established political and economic dominance. In the course of his study, he offers sustained discussions of Hawthorne's irony and ambiguity, of aesthetic and social strategies of cohesion, and of the conundrums of liberal dissent. Winner of the Modern Language Association's James Russell Lowe prize, The Office of "The Scarlet Letter" provides a theoretical redefinition of the function of symbolism in culture and an exemplary literary-ideological reading of a major text.

The Office of Scarlet Letter

The Office of Scarlet Letter PDF Author: Sacvan Bercovitch
Publisher: Routledge
ISBN: 1351478184
Category : Literary Criticism
Languages : en
Pages : 213

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Book Description
"The Scarlet Letter has proved our most enduring classic," writes Sacvan Bercovitch, "because it is the liberal example par excellence of art as ideological mimesis. To understand the office of the A is to see how culture empowers symbolic form, including forms of dissent, and how symbols participate in the dynamics of culture, including the dynamics of constraint."With an approach that both reflects and contests developments in literary studies, Bercovitch explores these connections from two perspectives: first, he examines a historical reading of the novel's unities; and then, a rhetorical analysis of key mid-nineteenth-century issues, at home and abroad. In order to highlight the relation between rhetoric and history, he focuses on the point at which the scarlet letter does its office at last, the moment when Hester decides to come home to America.In The Office of "The Scarlet Letter," Bercovitch argues that the process by which the United States usurped "America" for itself, symbolically, is also the process by which liberalism established political and economic dominance. In the course of his study, he offers sustained discussions of Hawthorne's irony and ambiguity, of aesthetic and social strategies of cohesion, and of the conundrums of liberal dissent. Winner of the Modern Language Association's James Russell Lowe prize, The Office of "The Scarlet Letter" provides a theoretical redefinition of the function of symbolism in culture and an exemplary literary-ideological reading of a major text.

Nathaniel Hawthorne

Nathaniel Hawthorne PDF Author: Charles Swann
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
ISBN: 9780521365529
Category : Literary Criticism
Languages : en
Pages : 298

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This is the first analysis of the fiction of Nathaniel Hawthorne and his perception of history. In his study, Charles Swann examines the whole of Hawthorne's literary career and gives proper weight to the unfinished work. Hawthorne saw history as a struggle between the authoritative claims of tradition on the one hand and the conflicting but equally valid claims of the desires for revolutionary transformation on the other. To evaluate Hawthorne's view of history, Swann provides close readings of such key shorter works as Alice Doane's Appeal and Main Street, as well as the most detailed analysis to date of the unfinished works The American Claimant Mss and The Elixir of Life Mss (two works which exemplify the temptations of tradition and the exhilaration of the revolutionary moment). This study asks us to explore how Hawthorne presents and interprets history through his fiction: for example, the history of crucial sins of the past (and the contemporary placing of such sins) in Alice Doane's Appeal, the problematic nature of the American Revolution in The Elixir of Life Mss, and the role of society in The Scarlet Letter. Swann's innovative study will be of interest to students and scholars of American literature, history, cultural studies, and literary criticism.