Select three long passages (at least a Paragraph no more than a half page) from My Kinsman Molineaux that show Robin's change over the story. What is Hawthorne's purpose and how does he develop contradictory tones using diction, symbol and detail to develop an allegory about Robin’s journey?
Use three details per paragraph with clear commentary and have a clear thesis.
Remember to keep it simple and elegant. An introduction that addresses the two tones and the rhetorical devices used (diction, detail, symbol). Remember a brief summary of the story (one-two sentences) and the allegorical purpose helps in your introduction. If you run out of time symbol is the one you skip.
Hawthorne was a Romantic and a great grandson of the Hawthorn of the Salem with trials. One of the main tenets of Romantic thought was the idea of rebellion and determining your ideals in a personal matter rather than accepting those values determined by society. At the end Robin is faced with such a choice.
The Romantic Temperament
The aspect most stressed in France is reflected in Victor Hugo's phrase "liberalism in literature," meaning especially the freeing of the artist and writer from the restraints and rules of the classicists and suggesting that phase of individualism marked by the encouragement of revolutionary political ideas.
Questions to consider
What is the historical context of the story
What is the tone at the beginning of the story and how does Robin's appearance contrast with that tone?
How do the settings of the story, the streets, the bar, the church and the final scene with the tar and feathering develop the allegory?
How is the two faced man important?
How does the tone shift at the end? What might explain Robin's laughter?
How do Hawthorne's Romantic beliefs influence his work?
Romantic thought:
An
interesting schematic explanation calls romanticism the predominance of
imagination over reason and formal rules (classicism) and over the sense of fact
or the actual (realism), a formula which recalls Hazlitt's statement (1816) that
the CLASSIC beauty of a Greek temple resided chiefly in its actual form and its
obvious connotations, while the "romantic" beauty of a GOTHIC building
or ruin arose from associated ideas which the imagination was stimulated to
conjure up. The term is used in many senses, a favorite recent one being that
which sees in the romantic mood a psychological desire to escape from unpleasant
realities.
·
Among the
aspects of the "romantic" movement in England and America may be listed:
·
Intuition
over rationalism
·
Celebration
of individual
Man's ability to find a personal God or spiritual meaning
Questioning of authority -emphasis placed on developing personal values
Imagination and creativity praised
·
·
sensibility;
primitivism; love of nature; sympathetic interest in the past, especially the
medieval; mysticism; individualism; and a reaction against whatever
characterized neoclassicism.
·
Among the
specific characteristics embraced by these general attitudes are:
·
the
abandonment of the heroic couplet in favor of blank verse,
·
the sonnet,
·
the Spenserian stanza, and many experimental verse forms;
·
the dropping of the conventional diction in favor of fresher language
and bolder figures; the idealization of rural life (Goldsmith); enthusiasm for
·
the wild, irregular, or
grotesque in nature and art; unrestrained imagination; enthusiasm for the
uncivilized or "natural"; interest in human rights (Burns, Byron);
·
sympathy with animal life (Cowper);
sentimental melancholy (Gray);
·
emotional psychology in
fiction (Richardson);
·
collection and imitation of popular BALLADS (Percy, Scott); interest in
ancient Celtic and Scandinavian mythology and literature; renewed interest in
Spenser, Shakespeare, and Milton
·
Typical
literary forms of the romantic writers include the lyric, especially the love
lyric, the reflective lyric, the nature lyric, and the lyric of morbid
melancholy.
It’s complete triumph was reserved for the early years of the nineteenth century (Wordsworth, Coleridge, Scott, Southey, Byron, Shelley, Keats). A little later in the nineteenth century came the great romantic period in American literature (Bryant, Emerson, Lowell, Thoreau, Whittier, Hawthorne, Melville).
. Frontier: vast expanse, freedom, no geographic limitations.
2. Optimism: greater than in Europe because of the presence of frontier.
3. Experimentation: in science, in institutions.
4. Mingling of races: immigrants in large numbers arrive to the US.
5. Growth of industrialization: polarization of north and south; north becomes industrialized, south remains agricultural.
Romantic Subject Matter
1. The quest for beauty: non-didactic, "pure beauty."
2. The use of the far-away and non-normal - antique and fanciful:
a. In historical perspective: antiquarianism; antiquing or artificially aging; interest in the past.
b. Characterization and mood: grotesque, gothicism, sense of terror, fear; use of the odd and queer.
3. Escapism - from American problems.
4. Interest in external nature - for itself, for beauty:
a. Nature as source for the knowledge of the primitive.
b. Nature as refuge.
c. Nature as revelation of God to the individual.
| Top | Romantic Attitudes
1. Appeals to imagination; use of the "willing suspension of disbelief."
2. Stress on emotion rather than reason; optimism, geniality.
3. Subjectivity: in form and meaning.
Romantic Techniques
1. Remoteness of settings in time and space.
2. Improbable plots.
3. Inadequate or unlikely characterization.
4. Authorial subjectivity.
5. Socially "harmful morality;" a world of "lies."
(Compare the above with Realistic Techniques in Chapter 5 of PAL.)
6. Organic principle in writing: form rises out of content, non-formal.
7. Experimentation in new forms: picking up and using obsolete patterns.
8. Cultivation of the individualized, subjective form of writing.
| Top | Philosophical Patterns
1. Nineteenth century marked by the influence of French revolution of 1789 and its concepts of liberty, fraternity, equality:
a. Jacksonian democracy of the frontier.
b. Intellectual and spiritual revolution - rise of Unitarianism.
c. Middle colonies - utopian experiments like New Harmony, Nashoba, and the Icarian community.
2. America basically middle-class and English - practicing laissez-faire (live and let live), modified because of geographical expansion and the need for subsidies for setting up industries, building of railroads, and others.
3. Institution of slavery in the South - myth of the master and slave - William Gilmore Simms' modified references to Greek democracy (Pericles' Athens which was based on a slave proletariat, but provided order, welfare and security for all) as a way of maintaing slavery.