Lecture 5 The American Romanticism 3.pptVIP

American Literature * The American Romanticism (III) Chapter 5 Hawthorne ? Melville Lecture Five Nathaniel Hawthorne (1804 - 1864) Life His Works: Fours novels: The Scarlet Letter (his masterpiece) The House of the Seven Gables: the wrong-doing of one generation lives into the successive ones and that evil will come out of evil though it may take many generations to happen. The Blithedale Romance: experience of transcendentalists experiment. The Marble Faun: evil educates. The achievement is possible only under the impact of and by engagement with evil. Two collections of short stories: Twice-Told Tales Mosses form an Old Manse 3. Point of view Evil is at the core of human life, “that blackness in Hawthorne” Whenever there is sin, there is punishment. Sin or evil can be passed from generation to generation (causality). He is of the opinion that evil educates. He has disgust in science. 4. Aesthetic ideas He took a great interest in history and antiquity. To him these furnish the soil on which his mind grows to fruition. He was convinced that romance was the predestined form of American narrative. To tell the truth and satirize and yet not to offend: That was what Hawthorne had in mind to achieve. 5. Style – typical romantic writer revelation of characters’ psychology use of ambiguity to keep the reader in the world of uncertainty – multiple point of view the use of supernatural mixed with the actual the use of symbols his stories are parable (parable in form) – to teach a lesson Herman Melville(1819 - 1891) Three Important Things in his life: Going out to sea. We should mention his marriage. In the history of American literature there were two authors had similar marriages. Melville and Scott Fitzgerald, both married above them and had to do hackwork（纯粹为糊口而写的东西，庸俗作品）for the money they needed to keep their wives in their extravagant style. During the summer of 1890 Melville and Hawthorne met and became good friends. They shared similar ideas and opinion