Publication details
The Past and the Legacy : Hawthorne’s Fiction and the Myth of New England
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| Year of publication | 2023 |
| Type | Appeared in Conference without Proceedings |
| MU Faculty or unit | |
| Citation | |
| Description | Four waves of English-speaking immigrants settled in the New World between 1629 and 1775. The hopes and plans of the individual pilgrims within the particular group eventually merged into a normative structure of values and concepts, into a certain ideology typical for the regional community. Moreover, since these communities shared different kinds of features and their identities became defined by them, it is possible to describe them as nations. This paper shall address the nation established through the migration of English Puritans to the New England area. The main focus will be, however, on Nathaniel Hawthorne, who captures the post-Puritan world, but does it by making a direct connection with the first settlers, those individual pilgrims. Works like The Scarlet Letter, The House of the Seven Gables and selected short stories from Twice Told Tales will be the main texts for analysis. Hawthorne that shall be presented will, on the one hand, be a regional historian because of his depiction of the past, or rather his historically constructed version of reality. On the other hand, he shall be seen as a cultural anthropologist who records the Puritan intellectual legacy. By examining these two roles of Hawthorne, the paper will observe the myth of New England and argue to which extent he contributed to its development. |
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