English 321 - Nathaniel Hawthorne

From the start of transcendentalism and America's intellectual renaissance in the 1830s, to the Civil War and beyond, the story of four extraordinary friends whose lives shaped a nation. Beginning in the 1830s, coincidences that seem almost miraculous in retrospect brought together in Concord as friends and neighbors four men of very different temperaments and talents who shared the same conviction that the soul had 'inherent power to grasp the truth' and that the truth would make men free of old constraints on thought and behavior. In addition to Emerson, a philosopher, there was Amos Bronson Alcott, an educator; Henry David Thoreau, a naturalist and rebel; and Nathaniel Hawthorne, a novelist. This book is the story of that unique and influential friendship in action, of the lives the friends led, and their work that resulted in an enduring change in their nation's direction. (From the Prologue)

The Cambridge Companion to Nathaniel Hawthorne, first published in 2004, offers students and teachers an introduction to Hawthorne's fiction and the lively debates that shape Hawthorne studies. In 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.

This Norton Critical Edition of The Blithedale Romance is based on the Centenary Edition of the Works of Nathaniel Hawthorne, widely considered the best available edition. It is accompanied by explanatory annotations to help readers with Hawthorne's many historical and literary references as well as with other possible sources of difficulty in the text. "Contexts" is thematically organized and includes a rich and varied selection of materials, both public and private, focusing on Hawthorne's inspirations for the novel. Included are letters, excerpts from journals, published accounts of Brook Farm and the growth of antebellum social reform, Hawthorne's letters to Sophia Peabody and Louisa Hawthorne about his first days at Brook Farm, and later letters describing his growing reservations about and decision to leave the utopian community. The Blithedale Romance raises interesting questions about the role of women, the popularity of mesmerism, and the growth of cities in mid-nineteenth-century America. Margaret Fuller, Charles Baudelaire, and Hawthorne, among others, provide invaluable insight. "Criticism" begins with major contemporary reviews by Herman Melville, William B. Pike, George S. Hillard, James T. Fields, Henry Fothergill Chorley, and others that suggest The Blithedale Romance's initial reception. "Selections from Classic Studies" reprints key excerpts from influential essays published through the 1970s, including those by Henry James, D. H. Lawrence, Irving Howe, and James McIntosh. "Recent Criticism" collects a striking range of scholarly interpretation by Nina Baym, Joel Pfister, Gillian Brown, Richard H. Brodhead, Lauren Berlant, Russ Castronovo, Robert S. Levine, and Richard H. Millington.A Chronology and a Selected Bibliography are also included.

This volume brings together some of the representative high points of Hawthorne criticism, ranging chronologically from the 1940s to the present. The essays take a variety of critical and theoretical approaches.