Critical Companion To Nathaniel Hawthorne

Offers critical entries on Hawthorne's novels, short stories, travel writing, criticism, and other works, as well as portraits of characters, including Hester Prynne and Roger Chillingworth. This reference also provides entries on Hawthorne's family, friends - ranging from Herman Melville to President Franklin Pierce - publishers, and critics.

The Cambridge Companion to Nathaniel Hawthorne offers students and teachers an introduction to Hawthorne s fiction and the lively debates that shape Hawthorne studies today. In newly 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.

Critical Companion to Herman Melville examines the life and work of a writer who spent much of his career in obscurity.

Features a biographical chapter that relates Hawthorne's life to his work, a chapter on his career and contributions to American literature, and chapters that analyze his most important short stories and novels in turn.

Presents a brief biography of Nathaniel Hawthorne, thematic and structural analysis of his works, critical views, and an index of themes and ideas.

The collected contemporary reviews of Hawthorne; assembled, edited and introduced for the serious scholar.

Includes criticism of "Roger Malvin's burial," "The artist of the beautiful," "The custom house," "The scarlet letter," "The house of the seven gables," "The Blithedale romance," and "The marble faun."