scholarly journals Puritan Projections In Nathaniel Hawthorne’s "The Scarlet Letter" And Stephen King’s "Carrie"

2021 ◽  
Vol 7 (1) ◽  
pp. 69-86
Author(s):  
Maria Anastasova
Keyword(s):  
New England ◽  
American Culture ◽  
17Th Century ◽  
Female Identity ◽  
Gothic Literature ◽  
Scarlet Letter ◽  
The Scarlet Letter ◽  
American Novels ◽  
The Witch

It is considered that the Puritans that populated New England in the 17th century left a distinctive mark on the American culture. The article explores some projections of Puritan legacy in two American novels of different periods – Nathaniel Hawthorne’s The Scarlet Letter (1850) and Stephen King’s Carrie (1974). After establishing a connection between the Puritan writings and gothic literature, the two novels are analyzed in terms of some Puritan projections, among which are the problem of guilt and the acceptance of an individual in the society. Some references regarding the idea of the witch and the interpretations it bears, especially in terms of the female identity, are also identified. Despite the different approach of the authors in terms of building their characters, those references are mostly used in a negative way, as an instrument of criticism and exposing inconvenient truths.

Hawthorne's Literary Theory

PMLA ◽  
1942 ◽  
Vol 57 (1) ◽  
pp. 241-254 ◽  
Author(s):  
Charles Howell Foster
Keyword(s):  
New England ◽  
Literary Theory ◽  
Nathaniel Hawthorne ◽  
Scarlet Letter ◽  
The Scarlet Letter ◽  
American Novels ◽  
Insight Into

Like every original artist, Hawthorne may be approached in a variety of ways, and each of these ways will add something to the ultimate picture of his mind and art. Most of the work that scholars have done on Hawthorne, however, has been historical and biographical, and the result has been that Hawthorne the artist and thinker has been relegated to the background. This is particularly regrettable when one remembers that he was the most complete artist of the New England renaissance, and in The Scarlet Letter the author of a book which as art transcends all other American novels. It is to fill out the contemporary conception of Hawthorne that his theory of art is here considered as it may be pieced together from allegory, preface, and chance remark. Focusing attention on his ideals in art makes certain the meaning of the prefaces, and an investigation of his doctrine of the artist gives an insight into his method of achieving his ideal. In brief, to study Hawthorne's literary theory is to discover the intellectual basis of his art, and to see his work from the inside is to arrive at a fresh sense of his intention. It was Goethe's conviction that the critic should first of all ask what the author had intended. If the following investigation makes for clarity, it should furnish an opportunity for a new appraisal of Nathaniel Hawthorne.

Hawthorne's Bulky Puritans

PMLA ◽  
1960 ◽  
Vol 75 (4-Part1) ◽  
pp. 420-423
Author(s):  
James F. Ragan
Keyword(s):  
Human Body ◽  
New Haven ◽  
American Democracy ◽  
Scarlet Letter ◽  
The Scarlet Letter ◽  
American Novels ◽  
American Society ◽  
Blithedale Romance

In 1944 Lawrence Sargent Hall (Hawthorne: Critic of Society, New Haven) showed that an important theme in Hawthorne's work was the progressivism of American democracy. No one has yet pointed out, though, how Hawthorne demonstrates this progress of American society by emblematizing the human body in his fiction. Yet emblematic bodies appear in all three of the major American novels: The Scarlet Letter, The House of the Seven Gables, and The Blithedale Romance.

The New England Sources of The Scarlet Letter

1959 ◽  
Vol 31 (3) ◽  
pp. 257 ◽  
Author(s):  
Charles Ryskamp
Keyword(s):  
New England ◽  
Scarlet Letter ◽  
The Scarlet Letter

scholarly journals THE SOUND OF EVIL: A PERSPECTIVE OF COMPARATIVE LITERATURE

Paramasastra ◽  
2014 ◽  
Vol 1 (2) ◽  
Author(s):  
Lusia Kristiasih Dwi Purnomosasi
Keyword(s):  
Comparative Literature ◽  
Social Stratification ◽  
Main Character ◽  
Railway Station ◽  
Scarlet Letter ◽  
The Scarlet Letter ◽  
Anna Karenina ◽  
Lady Chatterley's Lover ◽  
The Witch ◽  
Different Cultures

The representation of evil in The Scarlet Letter, Madam Bovary, Anna Karenina, and Lady Chatterley’s  Lover  is  a  choice  to  be  compared  by  the  theory  of  comparative literature of Claudio Guillen.It  is  called  thematology.  It  is  based on  the assumption that a theme will be different as  it is accepted by different cultures. Internationality is applied among others. The evil functions as a representation of a sinner in The Scarlet Letter in line with external marital affairs by the main character. It is due to the belief of  witch  that  leads  to  the  special  woman.  The  witch  as  the  representation  of  evil changes  to  the  beggar  in  Madam  Bovary  and  a  railway  station  officer  in  Anna Karenina. Both  reflect  the different  social  stratification as  the effect of materialism. Lady Chatterley’s Lover  has  transformed  to an  invisible  representation of evil.  It  is the mentality of capitalism. The  transformation of  those evil  in  the novels  is created from the stereotype towards the cursed by society. It deals with the belief and status.

scholarly journals Creative Agency in The Scarlet Letter

2020 ◽  
Author(s):  
Tia Byer
Keyword(s):  
New England ◽  
Critical Analysis ◽  
American Renaissance ◽  
Relationship With God ◽  
Early Nineteenth Century ◽  
Scarlet Letter ◽  
The Scarlet Letter ◽  
Institutional Authority ◽  
Creative Agency ◽  
Creative Resistance

This article provides a critical analysis of Nathaniel Hawthorne’s employment of artistic defiance in The Scarlet Letter. In reading Hester Prynne’s artistic ability and theological dissent as tools of creative resistance, the article claims that Hawthorne uses self-expression to critique Puritan values. When Hester redesigns the symbol of the scarlet letter A that she is forced to wear as a punishment for the sin of committing adultery, the act of sewing becomes a transgressive form of resistance. By examining the way in which she transforms her symbol of shame into an expression of autonomy, I trace the spiritual significance of Hester’s resistance and Hawthorne’s statement of individualism as reflecting the Transcendentalist rhetoric of early nineteenth-century New England. Hester’s ability to transcend institutional authority to create an independent identity, in turn, cultivates an independent relationship with God. Finally, I read Hawthorne’s own parallel creative struggle as author as a metaphor for national independent identity that can be contextualised within the American Renaissance.

Hawthorne's The Scarlet Letter: The Theory of the Romance and the Use of the New England Situation

PMLA ◽  
1968 ◽  
Vol 83 (5) ◽  
pp. 1439-1447 ◽  
Author(s):  
John C. Stubbs
Keyword(s):  
New England ◽  
Human Experience ◽  
The Novel ◽  
Moral Argument ◽  
Scarlet Letter ◽  
The Scarlet Letter ◽  
Prose Romance ◽  
Complex Characterization

AbstractTo write The Scarlet Letter, Hawthorne drew on mid-nineteenthcentury theories of the prose romance and the central situation of New England romances. The romance was distinguished from the novel by the idea of artistic distance; romancers wanted to set human experience at a distance from their readers' world so that the meaning of the experience would be more clear. To get the distance exactly right, they balanced three sets of opposites: verisimilitude and ideality; the natural and the marvelous; and history and fiction. Hawthorne discussed each of the balances and used them as part of his conception of the form of The Scarlet Letter. The central situation of most contemporary romances about Puritanism provided him with the conflict of the “fair Puritan” and the “black Puritan.” Hester is his “fair Puritan” whose capacity for feeling is opposed to the reasoned but harsh justice of his “black Puritan,” Chillingworth. These two characters in their roles as types define the extreme sides of the moral argument Hawthorne synthesizes in the complex characterization of Dimmesdale.

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