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Hawthorne's Merry Company: The Anatomy of Laughter in the Tales and Short Stories

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  02 December 2020

Robert Dusenbery
Robert Dusenbery*
Affiliation:
Lewis and Clark College Portland, Oregon
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Extract

Hawthorne was interested in polarities, and his writings show a keen concern for chiaroscuro effects through description and characterization. Both his fiction and the notebooks reveal his liking for sharp contrasts—light and shade in scene and mood. Hawthorne's use of slants of light and of mirror effects to highlight contrasts is well-known. “Lights and shadows are continually flitting across my inward sky, and I know neither whence they come nor whither they go; nor do I inquire too closely into them.”

Type
Research Article
Information
PMLA , Volume 82 , Issue 2 , May 1967 , pp. 285 - 288
Copyright
Copyright © Modern Language Association of America, 1967

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References

1 Passages from the American Notebooks of Nathaniel Hawthorne, 2nd ed. (London: Smith, Elder & Co.), p. 147.

2 Notebooks, p. 244.

3 Nathaniel Hawthorne, The House of Seven Gables and the Snow Image and Other Twice-Told Tales (Boston, 1883), p. 482. All references to “Brand” and “My Kinsman, Major Molineux” will be to this edition.

4 Twice-Told Tales (Boston, 1883), p. 111.

5 Mosses from an Old Manse (Boston, 1883), p. 93.

6 Mosses, p. 69.