纳撒尼尔霍桑(英文)剑桥文学名家研习系列(美国卷)之一

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**部以清晰晓畅、浅显易懂的语言把霍桑的生平与创作的全貌完整呈现给广大读者的著作。作者佩尔森把霍桑的创作和他的居家生活、社会语境特别是宗教语境以及妻子对他的影响紧密联系起来，条分缕析，从寻常材料中发现新意，从普通话题中挖掘深味。这部著作深入浅出，生动鲜活，对于那些想对自己钟爱的作品及其作家增进了解的读者更具吸引力，而且简洁明了，没有半点学究固态，可以说是师生们的理想用书，对于在高校研读文学课的研究生及高年级的本科生来说十分实用。

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Despite Hawthorne's reputation as a romancer who preferred to create a "neu- tral territory, somewhere between the real world and fairy-land" (1: 36) and seemed intent upon liberating his tales and novels from the everyday world, he paid careful attention to historical settings for most of his literary works. He conducted his research, often reading extensively in historical sources, but he routinely changed facts to suit his imaginative purpose. He often sought historical distance as a way of dealing with volatile contemporary issues, such as slavery or women's rights. Regardless of a work's situation in history, how- ever, readers must deal with a tension between historical moments. The Scarlet Letter offers the best case in point. Set in Puritan Boston between 1642 and 1649 (the years of the English Civil War), the novel owes a great deal to seventeenth- century sources, but the most interesting recent research has emphasized the book's treatment of nineteenth-century issues. A key challenge for readers often means figuring out how Hawthorne's use of early history helps him deal with more contemporary matters. Puritanism and the history of early Massachusetts settlements- Massachusetts Bay, Plymouth, and Salem - form one important context in which to under- stand Hawthorne's writing. Hawthorne read widely in seventeenth-century history, both English and American. Scholars such as Charles Ryskamp and Michael Colacurcio have meticulously connected characters and events in The Scarlet Letter and other works to the New England historical record.1 The]ournal of John Winthrop and Winthrop's The History of New England from 1630 to 1649 (1825-26), Caleb H. Snow's A tlistory of Boston (1825), and Joseph Felt's The Annals of Salem from Its First Settlement (1827) represent especially important sources from which Hawthorne took background information. He also drew upon aspects of his personal history. In both "Young Goodman Brown" and The Scarlet Letter, he refers to hi