The Cambridge Companion to Nathaniel Hawthorne

This 2004 Companion offers perspectives on Hawthorne's works, and on topics including Hawthorne's relationship to history, to women, politics, and early America.

Richard H. Millington (Edited by)

9780521807456, Cambridge University Press

Hardback, published 23 September 2004

308 pages
23.8 x 15.8 x 2.6 cm, 0.617 kg

"...readable and useful to a broad audience." M.S. Stephenson, University of Texas at Brownsville, CHOICE

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.

Chronology of Hawthorne's life
Introduction Richard H. Millington
1. Hawthorne's labors in Concord Larry J. Reynolds
2. Hawthorne as cultural theorist Joel Pfister
3. Hawthorne and American masculinity T. Walter Herbert
4. Hawthorne and the question of women Alison Easton
5. Hawthorne, modernity, and the literary sketch Kristie Hamilton
6. Hawthorne's American history Gillian Brown
7. Hawthorne and the writing of childhood Karen Sanchez-Eppler
8. Love and politics, sympathy and justice in The Scarlet Letter Brook Thomas
9. The marvelous queer interiors of The House of the Seven Gables Christopher Castiglia
10. Sympathy and reform in The Blithedale Romance Robert S. Levine
11. Perplexity, sympathy, and the question of the human: a reading of The Marble Faun Emily Miller Budick
12. Whose Hawthorne? Gordon Hutner.

Subject Areas: Literary studies: fiction, novelists & prose writers [DSK], Literary studies: from c 1900 - [DSBH]