Setting Fires with Hawthorne

IF 0.2 2区文学 0 LITERATURE

NINETEENTH-CENTURY LITERATURE Pub Date : 2023-09-01 DOI:10.1525/ncl.2023.78.2.87

Daniel Diez Couch

{"title":"Setting Fires with Hawthorne","authors":"Daniel Diez Couch","doi":"10.1525/ncl.2023.78.2.87","DOIUrl":null,"url":null,"abstract":"Daniel Diez Couch, “Setting Fires with Hawthorne: ‘Earth’s Holocaust’ and Book Burning in Nineteenth-Century America” (pp. 87–113) Nathaniel Hawthorne burned pages and pages of his own writing over the course of his life and investigated the topic in two tales, “The Devil in Manuscript” (1835) and “Earth’s Holocaust” (1844). While the former borrows from his own life experiences, the latter presents a cataclysmic vision of the destruction of all literature. Yet Hawthorne does not offer a typical lament—based in liberal ideologies of the progress of knowledge and the sanctity of the written word—for the all-consuming holocaust. Rather, he argues that the pyre yields a transformative and unexpected effect on the aesthetic and temporal qualities of the texts. Drawing on contemporary accounts of book burnings, Hawthorne generates a productive vision of the act by which the fire transforms texts into a visible spectacle of beauty. “Earth’s Holocaust” thus offers an aesthetic avenue for understanding literary bonfires. Moreover, Hawthorne rejects the premise that such events end the temporal lifecycle of texts. Throughout the tale, he contends that even though book burnings will occur time and again regardless of human reformation, books can surpass the effects of the flames even if such a process only occurs imaginatively. In the dematerialization of books—in turning them from a complete, bounded whole into embers and particles of dust—Hawthorne finds a redemptive energy.","PeriodicalId":54037,"journal":{"name":"NINETEENTH-CENTURY LITERATURE","volume":"307 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.2000,"publicationDate":"2023-09-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":"0","resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":null,"PeriodicalName":"NINETEENTH-CENTURY LITERATURE","FirstCategoryId":"1085","ListUrlMain":"https://doi.org/10.1525/ncl.2023.78.2.87","RegionNum":2,"RegionCategory":"文学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":null,"EPubDate":"","PubModel":"","JCR":"0","JCRName":"LITERATURE","Score":null,"Total":0}

引用次数: 0

Abstract

Daniel Diez Couch, “Setting Fires with Hawthorne: ‘Earth’s Holocaust’ and Book Burning in Nineteenth-Century America” (pp. 87–113) Nathaniel Hawthorne burned pages and pages of his own writing over the course of his life and investigated the topic in two tales, “The Devil in Manuscript” (1835) and “Earth’s Holocaust” (1844). While the former borrows from his own life experiences, the latter presents a cataclysmic vision of the destruction of all literature. Yet Hawthorne does not offer a typical lament—based in liberal ideologies of the progress of knowledge and the sanctity of the written word—for the all-consuming holocaust. Rather, he argues that the pyre yields a transformative and unexpected effect on the aesthetic and temporal qualities of the texts. Drawing on contemporary accounts of book burnings, Hawthorne generates a productive vision of the act by which the fire transforms texts into a visible spectacle of beauty. “Earth’s Holocaust” thus offers an aesthetic avenue for understanding literary bonfires. Moreover, Hawthorne rejects the premise that such events end the temporal lifecycle of texts. Throughout the tale, he contends that even though book burnings will occur time and again regardless of human reformation, books can surpass the effects of the flames even if such a process only occurs imaginatively. In the dematerialization of books—in turning them from a complete, bounded whole into embers and particles of dust—Hawthorne finds a redemptive energy.

查看原文本刊更多论文

与霍桑一起纵火

纳撒尼尔·霍桑在他的一生中烧毁了一页又一页他自己的作品，并在两个故事中调查了这个话题，“手稿中的魔鬼”(1835)和“地球的大屠杀”(1844)。前者借鉴了自己的生活经历，后者则呈现了一种毁灭所有文学的灾难性景象。然而，霍桑并没有提供一种典型的悲叹，这种悲叹基于知识进步的自由主义意识形态和文字的神圣性——对于这场消耗一切的大屠杀。相反，他认为火葬对文本的美学和时间特性产生了一种变革性的、意想不到的影响。霍桑借鉴了当代焚书的故事，对这一行为产生了富有成效的看法，即大火将文本转化为可见的美丽景象。因此，《地球的大屠杀》提供了一个理解文学篝火的美学途径。此外，霍桑反对这样的前提，即这些事件结束了文本的时间生命周期。在整个故事中，他主张，即使人类不进行改革，焚烧书籍也会一次又一次地发生，但即使这种过程只是想象，书籍也可以超越火焰的影响。在书的非物质化过程中——把它们从一个完整的、有界限的整体变成灰烬和尘埃——霍桑找到了一种救赎的能量。

本文章由计算机程序翻译，如有差异，请以英文原文为准。

求助全文

约1分钟内获得全文求助全文

来源期刊

NINETEENTH-CENTURY LITERATURE LITERATURE-

CiteScore

0.30

自引率

0.00%

发文量

期刊介绍： From Ozymandias to Huckleberry Finn, Nineteenth-Century Literature unites a broad-based group of transatlantic authors and poets, literary characters, and discourses - all discussed with a keen understanding of nineteenth -century literary history and theory. The major journal for publication of new research in its field, Nineteenth-Century Literature features articles that span across disciplines and explore themes in gender, history, military studies, psychology, cultural studies, and urbanism. The journal also reviews annually over 70 volumes of scholarship, criticism, comparative studies, and new editions of nineteenth-century English and American literature.