Nathaniel Hawthorne 's Influence On American Literature And The Genre Of Romanticism Essay

From Ignorant Innocence to Enlightened Corruption Nathaniel Hawthorne was born in 1804, in the city of Salem in Massachusetts. His familial ancestors were amongst the earliest settlers of the Massachusetts Bay Colony. One of Nathaniel’s grandfathers served as a judge in the 1692 Salem witch trials and had condemned twenty-five women to death. Nathaniel Hawthorn incorporates both his fascination and his horror at his family’s involvement in the witch trials and focuses much of his literature on the social history of New England and the Puritans. In Nathaniel Hawthorne’s short story “Young Goodman Brown,” Hawthorne expresses his true feelings about the negative beliefs of the puritan religion through a coming of age story, showing the loss of innocence that every Puritan goes through to reach maturity.

The Romantic Period served as a breeding ground for some of America's most extraordinary authors.  Herman Melville, Walt Whitman, Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, and Ralph Waldo Emerson are just some of the names that graced this Golden Era of American literature.  Great as they were, these men still lacked a significant amount of originality.  Relating their themes and structures results in little to no variation.  One author, though born into the era of Romanticism dared to expand the possibilities nineteenth - century literature had to offer.  Through works such as "Young Goodman Brown," "The Minister's Black Veil," and "The Birthmark," Nathaniel Hawthorne incorporated Romanticism into his own style.  Including ordinary men,

Nathaniel Hawthorne’s ancestors had lived in Salem since the 1600’s (“Nathaniel Hawthorne”) ,He had a mother and a father, but his father died when he was just four years old, uncles, a grandfather named Richard, and a wife and son later in his life (Ramsey). He was also a descendant of a judge in the Salem witch trials (Liukkonen, Petri). Nathaniel Hawthorne was Born on July 4, 1804, in Salem, Massachusetts. “When Nathaniel’s father -a ship’s captain- died during one of his voyages, he left his young widow without means to care for her two girls and young Nathaniel, aged four.” (“Nathaniel Hawthorne”). After his father’s death, he moved in with his well-off uncle who supported Nathaniel. He spent most of his childhood in Maine playing in the woods, learning many different things from the Indians in his area. “Hawthorne

Most of the stories Hawthorne wrote were set in the Puritan Era, and this is because of his fascination due to his family history. Timothy Montbriand, author of “An Overview of The Minister’s Black Veil,” declared, “Hawthorne had become fascinated with Puritanism when he discovered that two of his earliest ancestors in America had been important figures in two very controversial and deplorable historical incidents—the expulsion of the Quakers from Massachusetts, and the Salem witchcraft trials” (Montbriand). It was reported that Hawthorne was harsher than some of the older Puritans (Doren). Two of Hawthorne’s most distinguished works of literature are The Scarlet Letter and “The Minister’s Black Veil.” Both stories focus around the same main idea of God, sin, and the act of masking sin.

Introduction: The Scarlet Letter by Nathaniel Hawthorne is the most famous of the American romanticist’s works, which often centered on the topic of America’s Puritan history. Led by John Winthrop, the Puritans formed a theology in Massachusetts in the 1630s. They were English Protestants who migrated to the New World and demanded greater religious discipline than their English counterparts. Romanticism was divided into two philosophies: transcendentalism and antitranscendentalism. The former was more idealistic and emphasized a relationship between humanity and the natural world. The latter viewed the human soul through a darker perspective, recognizing good and evil. Hawthorne, with his dark romanticism, was an antitranscendentalist.

Nathaniel Hawthorne is an author who often uses religion, guilt, and symbolism. He usually uses a lot of descriptions and gives enough information to provide the reader with a visual picture. His mind often turned to matters associated with human judgments on mortality, with guilt and its consequences (Turner). In the novel Hawthorne’s short stories he has a series of stories that have to do with things like suffering, honor, and religion. One good novel that deals with all of these things as well is The Scarlet Letter including loneliness, revenge, shame, and betrayal. Hawthorne is also known to strongly show Puritan beliefs. Hawthorne would search out moral implications, and whether he impaled his story with its moral or allowed the

Some two hundred years following the course of events in the infamous and rigid Puritan Massachusetts Colony in the 1600s, Nathaniel Hawthorne, descendant of a Puritan magistrate, in the 19th century, published The Scarlet Letter. Wherein such work, Hawthorne offered a social critique against 17th Massachusetts through the use of complex and dynamic characters and literary Romanticism to shed light on said society’s inherent contradiction to natural order and natural law.

The literary works of Nathaniel Hawthorne are essentials in a comprehensive study of American literature. Nathaniel Hawthorne, a sixth generation American was born in Salem, Mass., on July 4, 1804. Hawthorne had an ancestor who was one of the three judges at the 17th-century Salem witchcraft trials. His Massachusetts family declined into relative obscurity over the generations, both facts impacted his life, imagination and writings. (“Nathaniel Hawthorne.” Columbia Encyclopedia) Two of Hawthorne’s short stories “The Birthmark” and “Rappaccini’s Daughter” demonstrate a common themes of obsession, corruption, the inferior place of women and the limits of science run throughout these Hawthorne works.

Nathaniel Hawthorne was born July 4th, 1804 in Salem, Massachusetts. He was born into a Puritan society with an extensive lineage of puritanism. At the age of 8 his father died and Mr. Hawthorne was raised by his mother. In his 40s he moved to Concord, Massachusetts with his wife and lived in the Old Manse. It was here in the Old Manse where Emerson, Throwe, and Alcott met to discuss ideas and have riveting debates. They formed a movement called “Transcendentalism”. This movement believes that God, men, and nature are all connected. Mr. Hawthorne however, was not fond of this movement, he also felt that this movement overlooked the gloomy side of life and sought out to express this area of life in his writing. His writing style falls under the category of Dark Romanticism. Dark Romanticism emphasizes that humanity will inevitably succumb to sin. Mr. Hawthorne had a deep interest in the effects of Puritan values. Specifically, he was interested in the ideas of sin, good versus bad, and the outcome of the individual through puritan beliefs. All of this is reflected in his most-known piece “The Scarlett Letter”.

Nathaniel Hawthorne was an American writer known for his part in the transcendentalist literary movement. Born July 4, 1804, in Salem, Massachusetts, to Nathaniel Hathorne Sr and Elizabeth Manning, he later chose to alter his last name in an attempt to distinguish himself from the history his family held in the Salem witch trials. His father died at a very young age, so Nathaniel was raised solely by his mother. In a quote kept from his adolescent years, Hawthorne states, “I do not want to be a doctor and live by men 's diseases, nor a minister to live by their sins, nor a lawyer and live by their quarrels. So, I don 't see that there is anything left for me but to be an author." However, in 1825, Hawthorne graduated from Bowdoin College, earning a degree in a non-literature field of study. In 1838, he became acquainted with a Miss Sophia Peabody. They were both solitary characters and fell madly in love into a mildly reclusive life. In 1841, Hawthorne resigned from his position at Boston Custom House to participate in the transcendentalist movement’s experimental Brook Farm. He joined in hopes to make enough money to marry Sophia. After a year, Hawthorne dropped it and went on to be wed in the home of Sophia’s parents. Soon after, the two moved to Concord, Massachusetts to begin their lives together. As a member of the American transcendentalists, Hawthorne became close friends with authors such as Ralph Waldo Emerson and Herman Melville. Although both Nathaniel and Sophia

Nathaniel Hawthorne’s fiction is important to American literature in part because of the way he infused his stories with characters who struggle with experiences to which all readers can relate. Hawthorne is so well-known for his powerful and complex characters that some of them, like The Scarlet Letter’s martyred Hester Prynne, manipulative Roger Chillingworth, and troubled Arthur Dimmesdale, for example, have become archetypal characters for generations of storytellers’ use after Hawthorne. Partially due to all his richly wrought characters, Hawthorne created stories that continue to inspire thought and debate about these tales’ questions, ideas, and themes. One such recurring theme connects to part of Hawthorne’s own heritage, namely his ancestor the infamous Puritan judge John Hathorne of the Salem witch trials. In many of Nathaniel Hawthorne’s short stories, especially “The Gentle

The famous American novelist, Nathaniel Hawthorne lets us into his relationship with romanticism and his past through his writing of, The Minister’s Black Veil. He revolves his short story throughout a symbol, that he never fully revealed to his readers. Hawthorne’s forebears were part of the Salem witch trials of 1692, and gave him a peculiar view of life and society. He saw corruption in between human nature and rejected the romantic view of human nature.

Nathaniel Hawthorne was a prominent author of the era of American Romanticism. His original surname was “Hathorne”; however, due to his ancestry’s involvement in the Salem Witch Trials and his wish to distance himself from their heinous actions, he changed it to “Hawthorne” when he began writing as an occupation. The Salem Witch Trials became a recurring theme in his works, including in The House of Seven Gables.

Nathaniel Hawthorne was born on July 4, 1804 in Salem, Massachusetts. His ancestors were some of the first settlers in Massachusetts and included a judge in the Salem witchcraft trials of 1692. Hawthorne’s sea-captain father in 1808 in Surinam of yellow fever. After his death, Hawthorne’s mother, Elizabeth Manning Hawthorne, moved with her three children into the Manning’s commodity house in Salem. With him there lived his mother, sisters, grandparents, two aunts, and five uncles. It was in that household that he discovered his love for reading. At a young age, he was already showing remarkable interest in John Bunyan’s Puritan allegory The Pilgrim’s Progress. By the time he was an adolescent, he was reading novels by Henry Fielding, Tobias Smollet, William Godwin,

Nathaniel Hawthorne, born “Nathaniel Hathorne” until he added a “w” to his birth name years later, was a prominent American Novelist that lived during the 19th century. Hawthorne was considered a dark romantic, and often “undertook the mission of exploring the darker side of humanity” in his short stories and novels. (Wright 3) Hawthorne descended from an ancestry tracing back many generations full of devout Puritans. Puritans maintained a unique perception of the natural world; “His forefathers’ concept of wilderness was an important part of their religious life, and in many of Hawthorne’s tales, nature can be perceived as an active agent for both