| This dissertation charts the trajectory of the "transcendental turn" that occurred in Nathaniel Hawthorne's thought between the years 1833 and 1846. I focus especially on the first stage of the author's philosophical conversion, which began in 1833 with his borrowing of Coleridge's Aids to Reflection, and only came to be surpassed in 1837 as a result of his increasing familiarity with the brand of idealism native to New England. In Chapter One, "Bridging the Ontological Gap in 'The Celestial Railroad,'" I argue that this tale---which is often cited as definitive evidence for the author's antipathy towards idealist philosophy---is instead demonstrative of a decided shift in his thinking away from both metaphysical dogmatism as well as dogmatic unbelief, and towards an aesthetically charged and ontologically attuned expression of transcendental idealism. My second chapter, "Kantian Reflections on the Metaphysics of Mysticism," follows the evolution the concept of reflection underwent over the course of Kant's career. In Chapter Three, "Coleridge's Rational Vindication of Religion in Aids to Reflection," I read Coleridge's mystical defense of philosophy as part and parcel with his rational affirmation of the spiritual mysteries of religion. In Chapter Four, "Critical Encounters of the Mystical Kind in 'Young Goodman Brown,'" I bring all the threads of the preceding chapters together in a concentrated analysis of Hawthorne's first metaphysical fiction. I assemble some contextual and textual evidence to document my thesis that Coleridge's transcendentalist contribution to the debate between philosophy and religion determined the terms of this discussion for Hawthorne even before the advent of New England idealism in 1836. More specifically, I argue that "Young Goodman Brown" constitutes Hawthorne's own transcendentalist exploration of the differend between faith and knowledge, precisely with respect to the radical aporia evil represents for any speculative system or moral religion that would seek to have done with the problem of finitude once and for all.;The second half of my dissertation, "Hawthorne among the Historians," engages some of the secondary literature and takes issue with the predominant trend to distance Hawthorne from transcendental idealism if not philosophical rationalism in its entirety. In Chapter Five, "Nathaniel Hawthorne, Artist of the Real," I take Millicent Bell's portrait of the author to task, and reveal that the connection between philosophical skepticism, religious dogmatism, historical positivism, and social pragmatism is not an accident of fate in the Hawthorne scholarship, but is instead expressive of the total picture wrought by negative romanticism. In Chapter Six, "The Metaphysical Provenance of Hawthorne's Provincial Histories," I examine Michael Colacurcio's seminal contributions to the field. I argue that his depiction of the author as a neo-positivist historical scientist is ultimately misleading, but that his renewed emphasis upon the artist as "moral historian" is an important contribution to the annals of Hawthorne criticism.In my seventh chapter, "The Hawthorne Question: Dating the Composition of 'Young Goodman Brown,'" I provide further evidence to support my thesis that Hawthorne composed this tale sometime after he read Aids to Reflection in 1833. In the process, I expand beyond the dimensions of the transcendentalist framework, in order to draw a larger picture of the enlightenment context within which this story was articulated. My background argument is that although Coleridge helped Hawthorne to mediate between the respective claims of empiricism and dogmatism on the contentious subjects of witch ointments, spectral evidences, demoniac possessions, mystical revelations, and other related instances where spirit and matter collide, he did not read him alone or in a vacuum. In the concluding chapter of my dissertation, "Hawthorne's Delusive Garment of Visibility in 'Monsieur du Miroir,'" I examine the various Anglo-German and French tributaries of thought reflected in the author's physiognomy as mirrored in this sketch. In this much maligned little meditation upon body and soul and the mysterious power of reflection that sutures the breach between them, Hawthorne stages a debate between skepticism and idealism specifically on the alleged "divinity" of the power of reason. Although he brings his tale to a close on an ambiguous note, this ambiguity is one that is irreducible to the philosophy of transcendental idealism as Hawthorne understood it, and thus should not be read as condemnatory on the author's part. In the years to follow, Hawthorne would adopt a decidedly more affirmative position on the philosophy of idealism, thereby overcoming the stalemate between dogmatism and skepticism in favor of the aesthetic bridge afforded by transcendentalism, thus completing the full circuit of his metaphysical conversion in thought. (Abstract shortened by UMI.)... |
