HISTORICAL CONTEXT SUBDIVISION OF ROMANTICISM: GOTHIC LITERATURE, the “dark romantics”(1800-1850) -use of supernatural -motif of double (both good and evil in characters; sin and evil does exist) -depression, dark forests -Poe, Hawthorne, Melville -emphasis on symbolism (which we will discuss later)

Allowed Hawthorne to deviate from reality in favor of imagination. Thus The Scarlet Letter is not an historical novel about Puritan Boston, but a romance set 200 years before Hawthorne’s time in which he tells a tale that may have occurred, given some historical facts and many insights into human nature.

HISTORICAL CONTEXT 1800-1850: American Renaissance Transcendentalism was a part of this… His wife was a Transcendentalist and had some effect on his literature, and he also became friends with Transcendentalists in Concord, Emerson and Thoreau. He also ANTI-TRANSCENDENTALIST/ GOTHIC, as exhibited in the novel.

Topics (later we will turn them into thematic statements). ALIENATION APPEARANCE VERSUS REALITY BREAKING SOCIETY’S RULES GUILT AND REVENGE

Puritan New England-1700s-time and place

City of Boston vs The Forest

Hawthorne cloaks The Scarlet Letter in a mood of somberness and foreboding.

Symbols

Although the “A” is the most prominent symbol in The Scarlet Letter Hawthorne uses many other symbols throughout: the novel. the color black the color red (scarlet) the forest the brook the roses Hester’s clothing, particularly her formal cap Pearl’s clothing Pearl’s name golden embroidery on the “A”

Like all good pieces of literature, The Scarlet Letter contains irony Like all good pieces of literature, The Scarlet Letter contains irony. Be on the lookout for it.