Nathaniel Hawthorne: Twice-Told Tales

About this event

When Henry James came to write his short classic book on his predecessor Nathaniel Hawthorne (who was an important influence on James), he wrote, with tongue in cheek, a description of the cultural and social wasteland that an ambitious American writer faced in Hawthorne’s day in finding material for fiction: No sovereign, no court,…no aristocracy, no church,…no army, no diplomatic service, no country gentlemen, no palaces, no castles, nor manors, nor old country-houses, nor parsonages, nor thatched cottages nor ivied ruins; no cathedrals, nor abbeys, nor little Norman churches; no great Universities nor public schools; no literature, no novels, no museums, no pictures, no political society, no sporting class…. Some such list as that might be drawn up of the absent things in American life, the effect of which,…upon an English or a French imagination, would probably as a general thing be appalling. And yet Hawthorne, as James well knew, in his most memorable works created a brilliant array of imaginative fictions drawn from the riches of New England life—its legends, tall tales, landscapes, and history. Rather than being appalled, Hawthorne, as James well knew, in his most memorable works created a brilliant array of imaginative fictions drawn from the riches of New England life—its legends, tall tales, landscapes, and history This Delve seminar will focus on Hawthorne’s short stories—among the most thrilling, strange, and memorable in the American canon. We will explore his first collection of stories, Twice-Told Tales (1837, 1851) as well as a small selection of extraordinary later stories. Hawthorne worked his American materials in a diverse range of genres—horror, the gothic, romance, the fantastic, moral tales, allegory—and narrative subjects—ambiguities of love and loss, gender and sex, guilt, conflicts between authority and non-conformists, secrets, science and magic, modernity and tradition, past and present, shadows, and a repudiation of tyranny. What…

Description from literary-arts.org