Hawthornes Young Goodman Brown †A Psychological Short Story Essay exa

Young Goodman Brown a Psychological Story Let us discuss the psychological view of Nathaniel Hawthornes writing as evidenced in his tale Young Goodman Brown. Peter Conn in Finding a Voice in an late Nation explains Hawthornes mix of psychology and theology. His chosen terrain lay between the realms of theology and psychology, and allegory provided the means of his explorations. . . . Concerned with individuals as specimens or types, he endue his characters with solemnly stylized features and then studied their anxiety, or doubt, or guilt. He placed them amid settings and objects that gave symbolic expression to their inward posits (83-84). Henry Seidel Canby in A sceptic Incompatible with His Time and His Past talks about the appreciate of Hawthornes literary psychology This irreverent generation of the 1950s has mocked at Hawthornes struggling souls who distortion themselves over peccadilloes like adultery and are morally wrecked by obsessions that (so it is assumed) a ny good psychoanalyst could remove. . . . an observer of both epochs might add that the value of his literary psychology lies not in the deeds analyzed but in the picture of a struggle between right and wrong where the state of mind of the characters in conflict is immensely significant without regard to the rightness of what they think right or the wrongness of what they think wrong (62). There is in all probability unanimity among literary critics that Hawthorne is a psychological writer. Consider some of their statements chosen at random from various critiques of Hawthorne Stanley T. Williams in Hawthornes puritan Mind says What he wrote of New England was . . . .the subconscious mind... .... Hawthorne as Poet. In Hawthorne A hookup of Critical Essays, edited by A.N. Kaul. Englewood Cliffs, NJ Prentice-Hall, Inc., 1966. Lewis, R. W. B. The Return into Time Hawthorne. In Hawthorne A Collection of Critical Essays, edited by A.N. Kaul. Englewood Cliffs, NJ Prentice-Hall, I nc., 1966. Martin, Terence. Nathaniel Hawthorne. New York Twayne Publishers Inc., 1965. Swisher, Clarice. Nathaniel Hawthorne a Biography. In Readings on Nathaniel Hawthorne, edited by Clarice Swisher. San Diego, CA Greenhaven Press, 1996. Wagenknecht, Edward. Nathaniel Hawthorne The Man, His Tales and Romances. New York Continuum Publishing Co., 1989. Williams, Stanley T. Hawthornes Puritan Mind. In Readings on Nathaniel Hawthorne, edited by Clarice Swisher. San Diego, CA Greenhaven Press, 1996.