Sunday, October 13, 2019
The Ambiguity in Hawthornes Young Goodman Brown Essays -- Young Goodm
The Ambiguity in ââ¬Å"Young Goodman Brownâ⬠à à à à à The literary critics agree that there is considerable ambiguity in Nathaniel Hawthorneââ¬â¢s ââ¬Å"Young Goodman Brown.â⬠This essay intends to illustrate the previous statement and to analyze the cause of this ambiguity. à Henry James in Hawthorne, when discussing ââ¬Å"Young Goodman Brownâ⬠comments on how imaginative it is, then mentions how allegorical Hawthorne is, and how allegory should be expressed clearly: à I frankly confess that I have, as a general thing, but little enjoyment of it, and that it has never seemed to me to be, as it were, a first-rate literary form. . . . But it is apt to spoil two good things ââ¬â a story and a moral, a meaning and a form; and the taste for it is responsible for a large part of the forcible-feeding writing that has been inflicted upon the world. The only cses in which it is endurable is when it is extremely spontaneous, when the analogy presents itself with eager promptitude. When it shows signs of having been groped and fumbled for, the needful illusion is of course absent, and the failure complete. Then the machinery alone is visible and the end to which it operates becomes a matter of indifference (50). à When one has to grope for, and fumble for, the meaning of a tale, then there is ââ¬Å"failureâ⬠in the work, as Henry James says. This unfortunately is the case of ââ¬Å"Young Goodman Brown.â⬠It is so ambiguous in so many occasions in the tale that a blur rather than a distinct image forms in the mind of the reader. à The Norton Anthology: American Literature states in ââ¬Å"Nathaniel Hawthorneâ⬠: à Above all, his theme was curiosity about the receses of other menââ¬â¢s and womenââ¬â¢s beings. About this theme he was always ambivalent ... ..., Nathaniel. The Complete Short Stories of Nathaniel Hawthorne. New York: Doubleday and Co., Inc.,1959. à James, Henry. Hawthorne. Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 1997. à Lang, H.J.. ââ¬Å"How Ambiguous Is Hawthorne.â⬠In Hawthorne ââ¬â A Collection of Critical Essays, edited by A.N. Kaul. Englewood Cliffs, NJ: Prentice-Hall, Inc., 1966. à Martin, Terence. Nathaniel Hawthorne. New York: Twayne Publishers Inc., 1965. à Melville, Hermann. ââ¬Å"Hawthorne and His Mosses.â⬠In The Norton Anthology: American Literature, edited by Baym et al. à New York: W.W. Norton and Co., 1995. à à ââ¬Å"Nathaniel Hawthorne.â⬠The Norton Anthology: American Literature, edited by Baym et al. à New York: W.W. Norton and Co., 1995. à Wagenknecht, Edward. Nathaniel Hawthorne ââ¬â The Man, His Tales and Romances. New York: Continuum Publishing Co., 1989. à Ã
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
No comments:
Post a Comment