霍桑 与梅尔维尔.ppt

Anti-transcendalism Romantic Novelists Nathaniel Hawthorne (1804-1864) 1.Life experience: Hawthorne was born on the fourth of July, 1804 in Salem, Massachusetts. Some of his ancestors were men of prominence in the Puritan theocracy of 17th 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. Gradually the family fortune declined. His father, a sea captain, died in Dutch Guiana,leaving the widow and the child behind to shift for themselves. Young Hawthorne was intensely aware of the misdeeds of his Puritan ancestors, and this awareness led to his understanding of evil being at the core of human life, to “that blackness in Hawthorne,”as Herman Melville put it. Hawthorn’s view on life Haunted by the sense of sin and evil in life. For him human beings are evil?natured and sinful and this sin or evil is ever present to human heart and will pass on from one generation to another. Besides, Hawthorne believes that human beings continuously sin and sin will get punished one way or another. 2). Hawthorne vs. Emersonian Transcendentalism: Hawthorne’s black vision of human nature proves to be antipathetic to Emersonian Transcendentalism. For Hawthorne, as for Emerson, external reality, nature, objects, tangible forms are merely symbols of a deeper, more inward, ultimately spiritual reality, and Hawthorne’s language, like Emerson’s, is an attempt to extract the secret meaning from reality, to render the sense of life in visible terms. 2). Hawthorne vs. Emersonian But while for Emerson, the result of such a quest is nearly always positive, a joyous revelation or rather a confirmation; for Hawthorne it is far more frequently a revelation of evil, of death in life, of the mystery and ambiguity which surround us. Hawthorn’s literary theory -- Theory of Romance Hawthorne favors romance as a suitable form of writing: 3 3).Theory of Romance Haw