Hawthorne saw history as a struggle between the authoritative claims of tradition on the one hand and the conflicting but equally valid claims of the desires for revolutionary transformation on the other. To evaluate Hawthorne's view of history, Swann provides close readings of such key shorter works as Alice Doane's Appeal and Main Street, as well as the most detailed analysis to date of the unfinished works The American Claimant Mss and The Elixir of Life Mss two works which exemplify the temptations of tradition and the exhilaration of the revolutionary moment.
This study asks us to explore how Hawthorne presents and interprets history through his fiction: for example, the history of crucial sins of the past and the contemporary placing of such sins in Alice Doane's Appeal, the problematic nature of the American Revolution in The Elixir of Life Mss, and the role of society in The Scarlet Letter. Swann's innovative study will be of interest to students and scholars of American literature, history, cultural studies, and literary criticism.
Landmark volume of D. Lawrence's writings on American literature including major essays on Poe, Hawthorne, Melville and Whitman. Outlines a program for eliminating unethical behavior at the workplace, demonstrating how to master corporate politics ethically through an understanding of political styles and an application of strategies in such areas as image building, networking, and idea promotion.
Young adult historical fiction brings the past alive through stories of adventure, suspense, and mystery. The genre is both complex and controversial, encompassing novels that range from romance and fantasy to stark historical realism.
The book examines the various approaches to young adult historical fiction and explores the issues that it has engendered. Part One focuses on the broader issues spawned by the genre itself, including its various subgenres and literary concerns such as the relationship between accuracy and readability. Part Two explores issues of contemporary interest, such as race, class, gender, the immigrant experience, religion, war, and nationalism.
Finally, the question of whether novels in this genre are bound by anything other than their respective period setting is posed. The genesis for much classroom debate, suggestions for class discussions and writing assignments as well as sample written responses of these debates from the authors' classes are included.
Teachers, librarians, instructors of young adult literature courses, and teen readers will find this an insightful analysis of YA historical fiction. Auguste is an internationally known speaker and author. Arthur Dimmesdale, the minister and the secret father of her child, Pearl, struggles with the agony of conscience and his own weakness. Roger Chillingworth, Hester's husband, revenges himself on Dimmesdale by calculating assaults on the frail mental state of the conscience-stricken cleric.
The result is an American tragedy of stark power and emotional depth that has mesmerized critics and readers for nearly a century and a half. This edition has been published thanks to the generous support of our Patrons, Master Members, and Donors. Ebooks on the web are not organized for easy reading, littered with text errors and often have missing contents. You will not find another beautifully formatted classic literature ebook that is well-designed with amazing artworks and illustrations and a link to download audiobook like this one.
Our ebooks are hand-coded by professional formatters and programmers. But he cannot catch little Pearl! So she drew her mother away, skipping, dancing, and frisking fantastically, among the hillocks of the dead people, like a creature that had nothing in common with a bygone and buried generation, nor owned herself akin to it. It was as if she had been made afresh, out of new elements, and must perforce be permitted to live her own life, and be a law unto herself, without her eccentricities being reckoned to her for a crime.
Is Hester Prynne the less miserable, think you, for that scarlet letter on her breast? There was another pause; and the physician began anew to examine and arrange the plants which he had gathered.
Dimmesdale, "the disorder is a strange one; not so much in itself, nor as outwardly manifested- in so far, at least, as the symptoms have been laid open to my observation. Looking dally at you, my good sir, and watching the tokens of your aspect, now for months gone by, I should deem you a man sore sick, it may be, yet not so sick but that an instructed and watchful physician might well hope to cure you.
But- I know not what to say- the disease is what I seem to know, yet know it not. But, again! He to whom only the outward and physical evil is laid open, knoweth, oftentimes, but half the evil which be is called upon to cure.
A bodily disease, which we look upon as whole and entire within itself, may, after all, be but a symptom of some ailment in the spiritual part. Your pardon, once again, good sir, if my speech give the shadow of offence. You, sir, of all men whom I have known, are he whose body is the closest conjoined, and imbued, and identified, so to speak, with the spirit whereof it is the instrument.
Would you, therefore, that your physician heal the bodily evil? How may this be, unless you first lay open to him the wound or trouble in your soul? But, if it be the soul's disease, then do I commit myself to the one Physician of the soul!
He, if it stand with His good pleasure, can cure; or He can kill! Let Him do with me as, in His justice and wisdom, He shall see good.
But who art thou, that meddlest in this matter? She bore on her breast, in the curiously embroidered letter, a specimen of her delicate and imaginative skill, of which the dames of a court might gladly have availed themselves, to add the richer and more spiritual adornment of human ingenuity to their fabrics of silk and gold.
Here, indeed, in the sable simplicity that generally characterised the Puritanic modes of dress, there might be an infrequent call for the finer productions of her handiwork. Yet the taste of the age, demanding whatever was elaborate in compositions of this kind, did not fail to extend its influence over our stern progenitors, who had cast behind them so many fashions which it might seem harder to dispense with.
Public ceremonies, such as ordinations, the installation of magistrates, and all that could give majesty to the forms in which a new government manifested itself to the people, were, as a matter of policy, marked by a stately and well-conducted ceremonial, and a sombre, but yet a studied magnificence. Deep ruffs, painfully wrought bands, and gorgeously embroidered gloves were all deemed necessary to the official state of men assuming the reins of power; and were readily allowed to individuals dignified by rank or wealth, even while sumptuary laws forbade these and similar extravagances to the plebeian order.
In the array of funerals, too-whether for the apparel of the dead body, or to typify, by manifold emblematic-devices of sable cloth and snowy lawn, the sorrow of the survivors- there was a frequent and characteristic demand for such labour as Hester Prynne could supply.
Baby-linen- for babies then wore robes of state- afforded still another possibility of toil and emolument. By degrees, nor very slowly, her handiwork became what would now be termed the fashion. Whether from commiseration for a woman of so miserable a destiny; or from the morbid curiosity that gives a fictitious value even to common or worthless things; or by whatever other intangible circumstance was then, as now, sufficient to bestow, on some persons, what others might seek in vain; or because Hester really filled a gap which must otherwise have remained vacant; it is certain that she had ready and fairly requited employment for as many hours as she saw fit to occupy with her needle.
Vanity, it may be, chose to mortify itself, by putting on, for ceremonials of pomp and state, the garments that had been wrought by her sinful hands. Her needle-work was seen on the ruff of the Governor; military men wore it on their scarfs, and the minister on his hand; it decked the baby's little cap; it was shut up, to be mildewed and moulder away, in the coffins of the dead.
But it is not recorded that, in a single instance, her skill was called in aid to embroider the white veil which was to cover the pure blushes of a bride. The exception indicated the ever relentless vigour with which society frowned upon her sin. Hester sought not to acquire anything beyond a subsistence, of the plainest and most ascetic description, for herself, and a simple abundance for her child. Her own dress was of the coarsest materials and the most sombre hue; with only that one ornament- the scarlet letter- which it was her doom to wear.
The child's attire, on the other hand, was distinguished by a fanciful, or, we might rather say, a fantastic ingenuity, which served, indeed, to heighten the airy charm that early began to develop itself in the little girl, but which appeared to have also a deeper meaning.
We may speak further of it hereafter. Except for that small expenditure in the decoration of her infant, Hester bestowed all her superfluous means in charity, on wretches less miserable than herself, and who not infrequently insulted the hand that fed them.
Much of the time, which she might readily have applied to the better efforts of her art, she employed in making coarse garments for the poor. It is probable that there was an idea of penance in this mode of occupation, and that she offered up a real sacrifice of enjoyment, in devoting so many hours to such rude handiwork.
She had in her nature a rich, voluptuous, Oriental characteristic- a taste for the gorgeously beautiful, which, save in the exquisite productions of her needle, found nothing else, in all the possibilities of her life, to exercise itself upon.
Women derive a pleasure, incomprehensible to the other sex, from the delicate toil of the needle.
0コメント