The literary and socio-political environments of early nineteenth-century America demanded from Hawthorne a new formulation of the allegorical mode, which in turn afforded him means to critique that same historical situation. His metonymic and realistic uses of allegorical techniques invert the emphasis of traditional allegory, permitting him subversively to critique the idealist principles of contemporary historiography and the Transcendentalist movement. Hawthorne's discontent with antebellum historiography's conflation of the Puritan colonists and the Revolutionary fathers, and with Transcendentalism's disregard for the darker side of human nature, led him to critique these idealisms in his fictions. His appropriation of allegorical conventions allowed him to enact this critique subversively, without alienating the increasingly nationalistic American reading public. This subversive program exerts a global influence on Hawthorne's work. The first chapter of this thesis defines my use of the term "allegory." The second situates Hawthorne within the allegorical tradition, the third within the American ideological context. The last two chapters identify and discuss Hawthorne's appropriations of the allegorical conventions of personification and procession as they are found in each of the three forms in which he most commonly wrote: the sketch, the tale, and the historical romance.
| Identifer | oai:union.ndltd.org:LACETR/oai:collectionscanada.gc.ca:QMM.56665 |
| Date | January 1992 |
| Creators | Folkerth, Wes, 1964- |
| Publisher | McGill University |
| Source Sets | Library and Archives Canada ETDs Repository / Centre d'archives des thèses électroniques de Bibliothèque et Archives Canada |
| Language | English |
| Detected Language | English |
| Type | Electronic Thesis or Dissertation |
| Format | application/pdf |
| Coverage | Master of Arts (Department of English.) |
| Rights | All items in eScholarship@McGill are protected by copyright with all rights reserved unless otherwise indicated. |
| Relation | alephsysno: 001314819, proquestno: AAIMM80440, Theses scanned by UMI/ProQuest. |
Page generated in 0.0017 seconds