1 / 14

Hawthorne, Romanticism, The Scarlet Letter , and Figurative Language

Hawthorne, Romanticism, The Scarlet Letter , and Figurative Language. Nathaniel Hawthorne. Born in Salem, MA in 1804 Descendant of early Puritan settlers, including Judge Hathorne of Witch Trial infamy Ashamed of family name, so changed spelling to Hawthorne. Nathaniel Hawthorne.

vega
Download Presentation

Hawthorne, Romanticism, The Scarlet Letter , and Figurative Language

An Image/Link below is provided (as is) to download presentation Download Policy: Content on the Website is provided to you AS IS for your information and personal use and may not be sold / licensed / shared on other websites without getting consent from its author. Content is provided to you AS IS for your information and personal use only. Download presentation by click this link. While downloading, if for some reason you are not able to download a presentation, the publisher may have deleted the file from their server. During download, if you can't get a presentation, the file might be deleted by the publisher.

E N D

Presentation Transcript

  1. Hawthorne, Romanticism, The Scarlet Letter, and Figurative Language

  2. Nathaniel Hawthorne • Born in Salem, MA in 1804 • Descendant of early Puritan settlers, including Judge Hathorne of Witch Trial infamy • Ashamed of family name, so changed spelling to Hawthorne

  3. Nathaniel Hawthorne • Puritan heritage informed and haunted all of his writing • Known for short stories and novels • First novel: Fanshawe • Other novels: The House of the Seven Gables,The Bilthedale Romance,and The Marble Faun

  4. Nathaniel Hawthorne • Worked in the Boston Custom House to support writing • Good friends with other American Romantics and Transcendentalists: Ralph Waldo Emerson, Herman Melville, and Henry Wadsworth Longfellow • Married Sophia Peabody in 1846 • Died in 1864

  5. The American Romantics • Stems from a break from the lack of fantastical and creative artistry of the Puritans • Reflects the still innocent, pre-Civil War United States • Prominent Romantics: Hawthorne, Edgar Allan Poe, Herman Melville, Washington Irving, Ralph Waldo Emerson, Henry David Thoreau

  6. The American Romantics • Characteristics of Romantic work: • Focus on a love of nature • Focus on the individual • Focus on truth as a universal concept • Imaginative, fantastical settings

  7. The American Romantics • Highly symbolic • Features elements of the supernatural • Favors emotion over intellect • Development of national pride

  8. The Scarlet Letter • First published in 1850 • Considered Hawthorne’s strongest longer work • Combines his experience in the Custom House with his Puritan heritage

  9. The Scarlet Letter • Major Themes: • Appearance vs. Reality • Individual vs. Society • Quest of Individual Expression • Good vs. Evil; dark vs. light • Nature vs. Civilization • Need for human connection

  10. Figurative Language • Hawthorne’s main device for communicating his message in The Scarlet Letter is figurative language • Figurative language connects any object or character to a symbolic meaning through simile, metaphor, allusion, or personification.

  11. Figurative Language • Symbol • An image, thought, object, person, or action that represents something else • Simile • A comparison of two objects using like or as: • My love is likea red, red rose • Her smile was as big as a clown’s

  12. Figurative Language • Metaphor • A comparison of two objects stating one object is the other: • The raindrops arepearls on a string.

  13. Figurative Language • Allusion • A reference to another literary work, historical event or culture meant to bring symbolic meaning to the text • In The Scarlet Letter, many of the allusions are Biblical or references to events during the height of the Puritans’ influence in New England

  14. Figurative Language • Personification • Giving an inanimate object characteristics of the living; giving an inhuman object human characteristics • The grain waved in the wind, as though it were the throng of a crowd, cheering for their football team

More Related