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Cargando... Nathaniel Hawthorne's Tales [Norton Critical Edition]por Nathaniel Hawthorne, James McIntosh (Editor)
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Inscríbete en LibraryThing para averiguar si este libro te gustará. Actualmente no hay Conversaciones sobre este libro. Specter and Science: The tales in this collection include the best written by Hawthorne. Among them it is hard to rate one over another, however Rappaccini's Daughter is near the top. A tale of the natural versus the supernatural with overtones of professional jealousy, first love, and the desire for perfection. Perfection as desiderata, but unwillingness to pay the price. There are two scientists in Baglioni and Rappaccini himself. The latter seems to have created a new Eden with his garden that is lovingly overseen by his daughter, Beatrice, who is even more lovely than the flowers that surround her. Enter the young student, Giovanni, who is in Padua to study but is distracted by the view from his window: first, by the beautiful purple blossoms of a shrub in the center of the garden that illuminated it with a light that rivaled the sun; and second, by the entrance of Beatrice who made such an impression on the young student that it was as if "here were another flower . . . more beautiful than the richest of them,". The story develops into a question of whether the poison in the flowers (yes, they are poisonous plants) has overtaken Beatrice as well making her dangerous to other plants, animals, and even Giovanni. The question of whether she is a supernatural being or mere mortal is answered by the end of the story, but Giovanni's life is forever changed - how we may only speculate. This story only hints at some of the myriad emotions and strange occurrences in these stories of men and women in settings as disparate as Salem Massachusetts and Padua Italy. sin reseñas | añadir una reseña
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"Nathaniel Hawthorne's best-loved tales are now available in a revised Norton Critical Edition. This revised Norton Critical Edition brings together twenty-three of Hawthorne's tales in all their psychological and moral complexity. The Second Edition adds the early biographical sketch "Mrs. Hutchinson" as well as two tales, "The Wives of the Dead" and "Dr. Heidegger's Experiment." Each tale is accompanied by explanatory annotations. "The Author on His Work" contains the prefaces Hawthorne wrote for the three collections of tales published during his lifetime--The Old Manse, Twice-Told Tales, and The Snow Image. Also included are pertinent selections from his American Notebooks and relevant letters to, among others, Sophia Peabody, Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, and Margaret Fuller. "Criticism" offers important contemporary assessments of Hawthorne's tales by Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, Edgar Allan Poe, Margaret Fuller (new to the Second Edition), James Russell Lowell, Herman Melville, and Henry James. Modern criticism is well represented by twelve essays--four of them new to the Second Edition--on the tales' central issues. Contributors include Jorge Louis Borges, J. Hillis Miller, Judith Fetterley, Nina Baym, Leo Marx, and Martin Bidney, among others."--Publisher's website. No se han encontrado descripciones de biblioteca. |
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Google Books — Cargando... GénerosSistema Decimal Melvil (DDC)813.3Literature English (North America) American fiction Middle 19th Century 1830-1861Clasificación de la Biblioteca del CongresoValoraciónPromedio:
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Why kindred spirits, though? Reading his stories, I discovered a lot of sentiments that echo my own. Primarily, I was caught by Hawthorne's stance towards his faith. He disdained extremism and faith-led hatred and judgment. Yet he seemed to endorse a purer kind of belief that accepted God, and also the beauty of redemption and forgiveness and this world and its people. Likewise, he was repulsed by some of the Puritan's harsh practices, but proud of their hardiness and strength. Other themes that he explored also eerily matched my own thoughts on the subjects. For example, his musings on mortality, his fluctuating representations of the artistic personality, and his many ideas connected to books and reading.
This collection includes stories from a variety of sources, primarily from Twice Told Tales and Mosses from an Old Manse. His most anthologized short stories are included, such as "Young Goodman Brown" and "Rappaccini's Daughter", and other stories that are lesser known, for example "The Wives of the Dead". Since this is a Norton edition, the stories are followed by supplementary material. In this case, the book has copies of some of Hawthorne's letters and diary entries, several contemporary reviews of his work, and many modern critical pieces from a wide range of years. A lot of the tales have their themes explored in one of the critical essays in the latter half of the book, so even if some of the stories didn't grab my attention when I first read them, I found them much more compelling after I explored the thought-provoking analyses that other minds built around them.
In my experience, people consider Hawthorne a musty, old-fashioned writer. I disagree. True, his writing does reflect the style of older times and can be a bit wordy, but his ideas are as fresh today as they were when he wrote them, and he had a distinct voice and intelligent mind. I think his reputation suffers from being introduced to young high school students as required reading (I reread Scarlet Letter in college and found it far more impressive than when I read it in high school). This book is a great way to experience his shorter fiction, with the quality supplementary material to support it. ( )