Rethinking Nathaniel Hawthorne and Nature - Pastoral Experiments and Environmentality

This book examines how Hawthorne's notebooks provide a key for understanding the environmental elements of his fiction writing. Hawthorne's four major romances are the main focus of study, but his short fiction and nonfiction also show a man convinced that human and nonhuman nature are inextricably intertwined.

List of contents

Acknowledgments

Introduction
The Nature of Hawthorne's Pastoral Romances

Chapter One
Investigating Hawthorne's Nonfiction Nature Writing

Chapter Two
Observing "the Laboratory of Nature" in Hawthorne's Short Fiction

Chapter Three
Reading Nature and the Human Body in The Scarlet Letter

Chapter Four
Mapping Blood and Biology in The House of the Seven Gables

Chapter Five
Et in Arcadia Ego: Adaptation and Natural Limits in The Blithedale Romance

Chapter Six
Exploring the Ruins of the Human Animal in The Marble Faun

Chapter Seven
Postscript: Hawthorne's Unfinished Romances

Bibliography

About the Author

About the author

Steven Petersheim is associate professor of American literature at Indiana University East and coeditor of Writing the Environment in Nineteenth-Century American Literature: The Ecological Awareness of Early Scribes of Nature.

Product details

• Authors: Steven Petersheim, Petersheim Steven
• Publisher: Lexington Books
• Languages: English
• Product format: Paperback / Softback
• Released: 15.03.2022
• EAN: 9781498581196
• ISBN: 978-1-4985-8119-6
• No. of pages: 246
• Series: Ecocritical Theory and Practice
• Subjects: Fiction > Poetry, drama; USA, NATURE / General, LITERARY CRITICISM / American / General, LITERARY CRITICISM / Modern / 19th Century, natural history, Literary studies: c 1800 to c 1900, United States of America, USA, Nature and the natural world: general interest