On The Humanized Puritanism Of Nathaniel Hawthorne In The Scarlet Letter

Nathaniel Hawthorne was one of the most important romantic writers in American literary history. His literary fame did not rely only on his artistry and writing techniques, but also on his penetrating insights into humankinds. He chose New England history and Puritanism as his main topics and made both a vivid description and a deep analysis about human nature under the pressure of New England Puritanism. Because of his topics, there always hovers a veil of blackness and ambivalence in his works, so he is also taken as one of the most controversial writers in America.Numbers of his works, such as The Scarlet Letter, The House of the Seven Gables, Blithedale Romance, Marble Faun enjoy great prestige both at home and abroad. Among his works, The Scarlet Letter is taken as the best and has drawn much attention of the world critical fields ever since its publication. Critics mainly focused on its historical studies such as its New England background, its relationship with slavery and the emerging Feminism of America. Some other ones concentrated on Hawthorne's own experiences, including his Puritan ancestors, determining to find some similarities between this novel and Hawthorne's personal life.In this dissertation, the author employs the archetype criticism to render a chance to reconstruct the cultural personalities of Hawthorne with the text of The Scarlet Letter from which his pursuit of a humanized religion can be explicitly presented. The paper will probe into Hawthorne's humanized mind and his critical lash of Puritanism by dividing into six chapters. Chapter one is the introduction of the thesis. Chapter two is the literature review in which three important mythic archetypal theories are presented, so as the hypothesis and methodology. In chapter three, a generalization of Hawthorne is introduced, including his literature writing, his literary view and his contribution to American literature. Chapter four is intended to probe into the four aspects of the novel which correspond to Frye's four mythoi of seasons: Spring with comedy, summer with romance, autumn with tragedy and winter with satire. Apart from these four aspects, another "spring" is also added to the final analysis of the story representing the theme of "rebirth", the similar cyclical process as the cycle of four seasons. In chapter five, the cultural personalities of Hawthorne are reconstructed from the following aspects: his humanist view of church, his romanticist literary characters, his critical cultural spirit and his optimistic view of life, along with the main causes of his cultural personalities respectively from social, religious and biographic perspectives. In chapter six, a conclusion will be given that Hawthorne cultivated his own humanized Puritanism even though his had been influenced most by the traditional cruel one. He advocated that the achieving of salvation depend on the free wills of human beings rather than God's help. Hawthorne's intention was not to lash Puritanism bitterly as a whole, but to add some humanistic elements to it to achieve a balance between religion and human conscience.