| Hawthorne is the first American native writer to take local materials,scenery,people, their life and thoughts into his conscious creation and thus gain an undying fame for it. The Scarlet Letter is set in a seventeenth century New England Puritan town and insinuated with thick religious color in which Calvinism and mysticism are portrayed through lhe novel,which adds enormous charm and moving power to this classic work and also SO many years later offers me a topic for my thesis. My thesis is devoted to exploring the everlasting influence of religion on wcsterll writers and on the literary creation of Hawthorne in particular by giving his masterpiece a detailed analysis. My thesis falls into three chapters in the body part.The first chapter is designed tO introduce the relevant literary criticism and the necessary information about Puritan theology.What'S more important is that I have borrowed from the famous Canadian literary critic Northrop Frye hjs critic theory called Myth criticism or Archetypa J criticism and from Gustav Jung his the collective unconscious to 1av the theoretical basis for the next two chapters and also set up for the whole thesis a holistic structure and organization.And as for the second chapter,it is devoted to the first important issue that concerns my thesis,that is,the embodiment of Calvinism.This issue is dealt with by virtue of the analysis of the collective sense of the original sin and the efiect of the sin on the three major characters,Hester Prynne,Arthur Dimmesdale and Roger Chillingworth.Lastly,the third chapter is to handle the second important issue that is related to my thesis,the issue of mysticism reflected in The Scarlet Letter, Mysticism is discussed not for its own sake but relevant to moral and religiouS fables and als0 can be found colored with Hawthorne'S contemporary thoughts like transcendentalism and his personal concern for the freedom and independence of a human soul .
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