Hawthorne Writing Style :: essays papers

Hawthorne Writing StyleNathaniel Hawthorne was a prominent early American Author whocontributed greatly to the evolution of modern American literature. ANew England native, Hawthorne was born in Salem, Massachusetts on July4, 1804 and died on May 19, 1864 in New Hampshire. An avid seaman,Hawthornes military chaplain died in 1808 when Nathaniel Hawthorne was only ayoung child. After his fathers death, Hawthorne showed a keeninterest in his fathers worldwide nautical adventures and often readthe logbooks his father had compiled from sailing abroad. Hawthornewas a descendant of a long line of New England Puritans, which sparkedhis interest in the Puritan way of life. After he graduated fromBowdoin College in 1825, Hawthorne returned to his home in Salem werehe began to write in semi-seclusion. Hawthorne published his first young, Fanshawe in 1828. In 1839, Hawthorne was appointed weigher andgauger at the Boston Custom House. He later married Sophia AmeliaPeabody in 1842. In th e following years, Hawthorne wrote his morefamous novels which shaped his own literary style, as well as thegenres of the romance novel and short story. Eventually, Hawthornedeveloped a style of romance fiction representative of his ownbeliefs. Although Nathaniel Hawthornes writing style was often viewedas outdated when compared to modern literature, Hawthorne conveyedmodern themes of psychology and human nature through his crafty use ofallegory and symbolism. To begin with, Hawthornes style wascommonplace for a writer of the nineteenth century. During the timeperiod in which Hawthorne wrote, printing technology was not yetadvanced enough to easily reproduce photographs in books. Therefore,Hawthorne frequently wrote lengthy opthalmic descriptions since hisaudience had no former(a) means to see the setting of the novel. (Magill1840). One example of such descriptions was in The Scarlet Letter whenHawthorne intricately describes the prison door and its surroundings.Another aspec t of Hawthornes writing which was exclusive to his timeperiod was the use of formal dialogue which remained fairly consistentfrom character to character (Magill2 140). Such overblown dialoguewas evident in The Scarlet Letter when the dialogue of Pearl, a youngchild, exhibited no difference from the dialogue of the othercharacters in the novel. Hawthorne adopted the use of overly formaldialogue partly from a British writer, Sir Walter Scott, whose workswere popular in the United States and Great Britain (Magill1 841).Although Hawthornes dialogue was overly formal, it was an accuratetool in describing human emotion (Gale). Absence of characterconfrontation was another component of Hawthornes literary style.