The Moral Picturesque: Studies in Hawthorne's FictionPurdue University Press, 1988 - 324 páginas The book is a collection of fourteen essays by Abel on Hawthorne's fiction. The essays were published over a span of about thirty-five years in various scholarly journals. The author has revised some of these essays considerably and has added seven chapters to give the book continuity and unity. Abel studies two characteristics, besides the classic elegance of its style, that distinguish Hawthorne's fiction. One characteristic is Hawthorne's habitual use of a psychological approach to its subjects. He assumed an absolute of archetypal human experiences enacting a providentially directed drama of which he had an uncertain knowledge through sympathy with characters assuming primordial roles. The other characteristic was Hawthorne's use of the mode that he called "the moral picturesque." This was a mode of figuration of the archetypal experiences that his psychological preoccupations discovered. His sensibility penetrated more deeply than his often banal thought, and the picturesque mode enabled him to cognize perceptions that were not reducible to explicit statement. In all his work he was preoccupied with two concerns: how the ideal appears in the real world, and the distinction and relation of the sexes. He saw in both these concerns paradoxes of opposition and affinity. He dealt with these paradoxes, not as subjects of philosophical speculation, but as matters for artistic treatment. In fact, he thought that the problems of relation posed by these paradoxes were insoluble, and his sole concerns was to present them vividly and dramatically. |
Índice
9 | |
19 | |
25 | |
31 | |
37 | |
Illusive Credence | 44 |
Materials and Techniques | 51 |
The Play of Imagination | 53 |
Vast Deal of Human Sympathy | 142 |
The Scarlet Letter A Drama of Guilt and Sorrow | 161 |
The Strong DivisionLines of Nature | 163 |
Hester In the Dark Labyrinth of Mind | 180 |
Pearl The Scarlet Letter Endowed with Life | 190 |
Chillingworth The Devil in Boston | 207 |
Dimmesdale Fugitive from Wrath | 225 |
The Other Romances | 249 |
The Stony Excrescence of Prose | 68 |
Visions That Seem Real | 76 |
The Loom of Fiction | 85 |
Giving Lustre to Gray Shadows Prosperos Potent Art | 108 |
Metonymic Symbols Black Glove and Pink Ribbon | 125 |
NINETEEN The House of the Seven Gables A Long Drama of Wrong and Retribution | 251 |
TWENTY The Blithedale Romance A Counterfeit Arcadia | 270 |
The Marble Faun A Masque of Love and Death | 298 |
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Palavras e frases frequentes
actual American Anne Hutchinson appear artist beauty Blithedale Romance Boston Brook Farm called CHAPTER character child Chillingworth conception consciousness Coverdale Coverdale's criticism dark decay Dimmesdale Dimmesdale's distinct dream effect evil existence expression fact fancy figure Goodman Brown Hawthorne wrote Hawthorne's fiction heart Henry James Hester Prynne Hilda Holgrave Hollingsworth Horatio Bridge House human idea ideal images imagination individual innocence light literary living look man's mankind Marble Faun Margaret Fuller material meaning merely mind minister minister's Nathaniel Hawthorne nature never Notebooks objects observation Old Manse passage passion Pearl perception persons Phoebe pink ribbon possible Press Priscilla Puritan Pyncheon reality remarked role scaffold Scarlet Letter scene seemed sense sensibility Seven Gables shadow sketch Snow-Image society soul spiritual story suggests symbol sympathy things thorne's thought tion traits transcendentalist truth Univ vivid whole woman womanhood women Young Goodman Young Goodman Brown Zenobia
Passagens conhecidas
Página 17 - Amid the seeming confusion of our mysterious world, individuals are so nicely adjusted to a system, and systems to one another, and to a whole, that, by stepping aside for a moment, a man exposes himself to a fearful risk of losing his place forever. Like Wakefield, he may become, as it were, the Outcast of the Universe.
Página 22 - The latter form of composition is presumed to aim at a very minute Fidelity, not merely to the possible, but to the probable and ordinary course of man's experience.