1. Nathaniel Hawthorne (1804-1864) by Liu Qinli

2. Romanticism: some main concepts
Sensibility
Primitivism
Sympathetic interests in the past
Mysticism
Individualism
Sentimental melancholy
Nature

5. Contents: I. Biography II. Influences on Hawthorne III. Works
IV. Themes
V. Scarlet Letter

6. I. Biography He was born in 1804 in Salem, Massachusetts.
Ancestors: men of prominence in the Puritan theocracy of 17th-century New England.
a colonial magistrate, the persecution of the Quakers,
a judge, at the Salem Witchcraft Trial in 1692.
“that blackness in Hawthorne.”

7. I. Biography worked at a Custom House in 1839.
joined Brook Farm, a transcendentalist community  in 1842.
Married Sophie Peabody in 1842 and moved to The Old Manse in Concord, Massachusetts.
published The Scarlet Letter in 1850 and befriended with Herman Melville.
In 1853, the position of United States Consul in Liverpool.
Buried on "Authors' Ridge" in Sleepy Hollow Cemetery, Concord in 1864.

8. The Old Manse

9. The Wayside/Hillside House

10. The Wayside/Hillside House

11. In the Sleepy Hollow Cemetery

12. Hawthrone’s Tombstone

13. II. Influences on Hawthorne
1. Salem - early childhood, later work at the Custom House.
2. Puritan family background
3. Belief in the existence of the devil.
4. Belief in determinism.

14. III. Works Collection of short stories Twice-Told Tales (1837)
Mosses from an Old Manse (1846)
Four remarkable novels:
The Scarlet Letter (1850)
The House of the Seven Gables (1851)
The Blithedale Romance (1852)
The Marble Faun (1860).

15. IV. Themes: Ancestral sin Problem of guilt Alienation
Complexity of human heart
Puritan New England – as a background and setting
love vs. hate
hypocrisy vs. integrity

16. V. The Scarlet Letter(1850)

17. The Scarlet Letter(1850)

18. The Scarlet Letter(1850)

19. The Scarlet Letter(1850)

20. V. The Scarlet Letter (1850) 1. Plot
1. Beginning( Conflict)
Adultery, exposure and the resolution of revenge.
2. Development 1
stable and peaceful life, friendship with evil purpose
3. Development 2: private torments of guilt and shame
3. Development 3: the plan of escape
4. Suspense: plan discovered by C.
5. Climax : D’s confession and death
6. Denouement: the fate of other three characters

21. 2. Characters Arthur Dimmesdale:
an eminent minister in Boston and also the father of Pearl.
His health is quite bad, and it is thanks to Roger Chillingworth’s potions that he is able to stay alive.
Dimmesdale admits to being Pearl’s father at the very end of the novel, and reveals that he has a scarlet letter branded into his flesh .
He dies upon the scaffold while holding Hester’s hand.

22. 2. Characters: Hester Prynne:
the main character of The Scarlet Letter.
the wife of Roger Chillingworth
the mother of Pearl
the secret lover of Arthur Dimmesdale , Pearl’s father.
the woman who must wear the scarlet letter

23. 2. Characters Pearl: Hester’s daughter.
a living version of the scarlet letter.
extremely beautiful, but lacking certain Christian qualities.
After Arthur Dimmesdale dies, Pearl becomes a normal child and eventually marries.

24. 2. Characters
Roger Chillingworth: Hester’s husband from the Netherlands.
He vows revenge on the father of Pearl, and soon thereafter moves in with Arthur Dimmesdale.
His revenge is stifled at the end when Dimmesdale reveals that he is Pearl’s father before dying.
Chillingworth, having lost the object of his hatred, dies soon thereafter.

25. 4.Others Elements Setting:
Mid-17th century new England, specifically Boston (Massachusetts Bay Colony)
Narrator:
third person omniscient narrator

26. 6. Questions:
1. Describe the appearance of Hester Prynne and the attitude of the people towards her?
2. Why does she make the embroidery of the letter A so elaborate? How about this tell us about her character?

27. Herman Melville ( )

30. I. Biography
on August 1, 1819 Herman Melville was born in New York City.
At the age of 40, Allan Melville, the father died insane, bankrupted.
Herman Melville drifted into various occupations: a store clerk, a country school teacher, sailor.

31. I. Biography
His experience and adventures on the sea furnished him with abundant material for fiction.
On August 4, 1847 Melville married Elizabeth Shaw, daughter of Lemuel Shaw.
In September 1850, the Melvilles purchased a farm house in Pittsfield, Massachusetts where he befriended with Nathaniel Hawthorne.

32. I. Biography
It was the beginning of a prolific period of writing for Melville. He published Moby Dick in 1851.
In 1863 the Melvilles moved to New York City and then worked as a Custom Inspector from 1866 to 1885.
Almost ten years since his last published novel, Melville was writing poetry.
He died at his home on 28 September

33. II. Works Typee(1846); Omoo (1847); Mardi (1849); Redburn (1849);
White Jacket (1850);
Moby Dick (1851);
Pierre (1852)
The Confidence Man (1857)
Billy Budd (written around 1889, left in manuscript and published in 1924)

34. III. Influences on Melville
Going out to sea as a whaler
His marriage
His friendship with Hawthorne.

35. IV. Obscurity as a Writer in His Lifetime
Unwilling to sacrifice his insights and artistic standards to cater to popular feeling and demand.
His criticism of New England Transcendentalism.
“He will never rest until he gets hold of a definite belief. It is strange how he persists. … He can neither believe, nor be comfortable in his disbelief; and he is too honest and courageous not to try to do one or the other … he has a very high and noble nature.” (English Notebooks)

36. V. Moby Dick

37. Moby Dick

38. Moby Dick

39. Moby Dick

40. Moby Dick

41. V.1 Moby Dick An American epic in the 19th century
an encyclopedia of everything, history, philosophy, religion, whaling industry, etc.
a Shakespearean tragedy of man fighting against overwhelming odds in an indifferent and even hostile universe.

42. V.2 Historical Background
whaling narratives in the nineteenth century(industrialization):
Meat: food,
Oil : for lighting and lubricating purposes, machinery
The bones : corsets, jewelry, tools, etc.
The Golden Age of American whaling extended into the 1850s.( the oil well, petroleum)

43. V.3 Plot “Call me Ishmael.”
The story tells the strange story of the possessed and implacable Captain Ahab risking his life, those of his crew and his ship on the rough sea in search of a monstrous white whale. Ahab’s mad presumption in this quest ends in catastrophe. Ahab and everyone died, except Ishmael who survived in the coffin left behind by the strange “savage” Queequeg. Thus, Ishmael lived to tell the story.

44. V.4 Symbols the Pequod : 1. a Ship of the World,
the microcosmic representation of the multicultural, cosmopolitan society of the US.
The whaler: human society
2. Named after an extinct Native American tribe in Massachusetts, a symbol of doom and death.

45. V.4 Symbols
Moby Dick: the white whale, the symbol of nature, ubiquitous, creative and destructive, all too powerful and inextinguishable, a God-head (it has various symbolic meanings among different people.)