Nathaniel Hawthorne, Romance and the Beauty of Literary Expression
Nathaniel Hawthorne, Romance and the Beauty of Literary Expression

Summary/Abstract: Nathaniel Hawthorne, one of the most distinguished American Romantic writers, was a psychological romancer, an allegorist, a great connoisseur of mythology and tradition who was deeply preoccupied with the themes of sin and guilt, loneliness, alienation and isolation, moral downfall, the past that threatens to destroy the present. In the dichotomized world of his romances the battle between good and evil, light and darkness functions as an essential constant. In his well-known romances The Scarlet Letter, The House of the Seven Gables, The Blithedale Romance and The Marble Faun Hawthorne experimented with various narrative techniques and exploited numerous literary devices such as symbols, similes, metaphors, archaisms, repetitions of words and phrases, “undulatory” rhythm of the sentence. This paper will try to shine additional light on the complex problem of Hawthorne’s literary expression with a special emphasis on the use of symbols, primarily the most challenging and complex symbol, the scarlet letter A, the use of simile, subordinate, interpolated clauses and word repetitions as well as their contribution to the beauty and effectiveness of the language applied in the aforementioned romances.

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