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The purpose of this study is to evaluate various religious elements in Nathainel Hawthorne's life in relation to his career as a literary artist. The moral seriousness of this author at once strikes us as being something closely akin to religious sentiment, but he refused to endorse any specific dogma or to subscribe to any one organized faith. We know from his work that he had a religion, but his silence leaves ample room for conjecture if we wish to "label" him, or decide which of those religions that he contemplated was most congenial to his nature.

Hawthorne's metafiction, fabulation, and hermeneutical semiotics are investigated in the tales and in all the novels in chronological order, including his unfinished works.

Hawthorne is one among the few American writers who have dwelt on the subject of the creative process throughout his works. Through introspection and then skillfully enumerating the necessary elements of artistry, Hawthorne educated his audience in the progression of creating a piece of work. Many changes have taken place in literature since Hawthorne's time, but the basic principles set forth in his theories still hold true. Hawthorne's theories of art and his analysis of the creative process are surely among his most important contributions to literature. In the absence of a long national literary history, he mingled the Actual with the Imaginary and adapted his work to a form of the novel called Romance. With materials he could find concerning the short history of his country, he showed how past events influence the present. He examined the creative process that took place in his own work and shared with posterity the conditions under which he created.

This thesis encompasses a twofold purpose. On the one hand, it seeks to explore and to formulate a definition of the concept of "place" and what is meant by the words "sense of place" in fiction. Within this purview, the thesis also distinguishes between the concept of place and the fictional technique of setting. On the other hand, the study provides an analysis of Hawthorne's work based upon the implications ensuing from a consideration of place. While most of Hawthorn's familiar short stories and novels are discussed briefly and referred to where appropriate, the bulk of the study provides in-depth analyses of several short stories and sketches which have received little critical attention. The short pieces discussed in greatest detail are as follows: "My Visit to Niagara," "Foot-prints on the Sea-shore," "The Old Manse," "The Lily's Quest," and "Main-Street." These pieces were selcted because they focus on "places" directly, because they require critical attention, and because they shed light on several of Hawthorn 's major works. The overall concern with the concept of place is deemed important by the author because the concept figures so prominently in Hawthorn 's work and thus serves as a way of enhancing the reader's understanding of Hawthorne's mind and art.

This study is not concerned with the evaluation of Hawthorne's artistic criticism but with the uses he made art objects in his writing. Such a study should give suggestions for interpretation of his works, as well as information concerning literary devices and technique in style. It should consider the contribution of the art objects to the literary artistry of the works in which they appear. Such a study has not previously been made.

Gothicism is the primary feature of Nathaniel Hawthorne's fiction, and it is his skill in elevating Gothicism to the level of high art which makes him a great artist. Gothic elements are divided into six categories: Objects, Beings, Mental States, Practices and Actions, Architecture and Places, and Nature. Some devices from these six categories are documented in three of Hawthorne's stories ("Young Goodman Brown," "The Minister's Black Veil," and "Ethan Brown") and three of his romances (The Scarlet Letter, The House of the Seven Gables, and The Marble Faun). The identification of 142 instances of Hawthorne's use of Gothic elements in the above works demonstrates that Hawthorne is fundamentally a Gothic writer.

Nathaniel Hawthorne's sketches, as distinguished from his tales, fall into three main types: the essay-sketch, the sketch-proper, and the vignette-sketch. A definition of these works includes a brief discussion of their inception, source, and development, and a study of the individual pieces as representative of types within each of the three main divisions. A consideration of the sketches from their inception through their final form reveals a great deal of the formative process of some of Hawthorne's ideas of literature and of the development of specific techniques to cope with his themes. A study of the sketches as a group and individually provides a clearer basis for a study of Hawthorne's other works.