puritanism and Romantism
Puritan moral teachings in American RomanticismAbstract: Under the influence of American Puritanism, American Romanticism favors Christian moral teachings. Puritan notions as self-restraint, sin and salvation weigh greatly and serve as Romantic authors' moral measurement. Taken as a specific example, American leading Romantic Nathaniel Hawthorn can illustrate this impact explicitly. Special emphasis will be put on his novel the Scarlet Letter. A brief biographical introduction about the author can help to know where his Puritan thinking pattern comes from. In his masterpiece the Scarlet Letter, Hawthorn shows his belief in original sin and redeem through professions and painful life, which is obviously from Puritan sources. Other works are also to be mentioned in a combined effort with former text to strengthen the central ideal. Keywords: Puritanism, Romanticism, moral teachings, self, sin, salvation, Nathaniel Hawthorn, the Scarlet Letter1.1. Source and characteristics of American Romanticism.Early in the nineteenth century, the attitudes of America's writers were shaped by their New World environment and an array of ideas inherited from the romantic traditions of Europe. A new American Romantic was plur
2Moral- teaching tendency in Hawthorn's novel the Scarlet Letter 3. Even for Pearl, her birth has been regarded as a sin. In Young Goodman Brown±, the author creates a protagonist who originally believes in his Puritan religion unchangeably while a witched dream destroyed his Christian firmness. American Puritanism moral teachings that have influenced American Romanticism. (¹ùÐa¾eL¬2002)However, it is not pushing Christian preaching on human sin that distinguish Hawthorn from Puritan writers, or made him a great humanist. As a comparison, Hawthorn, Hester and Reverend Arthur, all take adultery more conservatively as a sign of weakness, sin and stigma. To Hawthorn, the study of his own family from the establishment of the Bay Colony to the Second Great Awakening of his own time parallels the issues brought forth in Young Goodman Brown. Set in Boston around 1650 during early Puritan colonization, the novel highlights the Calvinistic obsession with morality, sexual repression, guilt and confession, and spiritual salvation. (Preston Harper, 2000 April) This shadow of distrust would have a direct influence on early American New England and on many of its historians and writers, one of which was Nathaniel Hawthorne. Born in a family with Puritan tradition in England and although he himself was not a Puritan, Hawthorne could not escape the influence of Puritan society, not only from residing with his father's devout Puritan family as a child but also due to Hawthorne's study of his own family history. Stacy Johnson pointed out, the Scarlet Letter is in essence a full display on acts of salvation. The first of his ancestors, William Hathorne, is described in Hawthorne's "The Custom House" as arriving with the Massachusetts Bay Colony in 1630 "with his Bible and his sword"(Nathaniel Hawthorn, 1979:26).
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L¨Leland Ryken,
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study own family,
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