Hawthorne's Histories, Hawthorne's World - (Anthem Nineteenth-Century) by Michael J Colacurcio (Hardcover)

About the Book

Hawthorne's Histories, Hawthorne's World collects together the essays Professor Colacurcio has written on Hawthorne since the publication of his ground-breaking Province of Piety, elaborating and refining his analyses of how Hawthorne's most memorable early tales "do history," but proceeding then to explore the later productions of that author's distinguished career.

Book Synopsis

Hawthorne's Histories, Hawthorne's World collects together the essays Professor Colacurcio has written on Hawthorne since the publication of his ground-breaking Province of Piety, elaborating and refining his analyses of how Hawthorne's most memorable early tales "do history," but proceeding then to explore the later productions of that author's distinguished career.

Review Quotes

"In Hawthorne's Histories, Hawthorne's World, the leading scholar of Hawthorne and his place in early American literature and thought extends the scope of his magisterial book The Province of Piety in a number of new directions. Taken together, the two books give us the most complete and incisive critical assessment of Hawthorne we are ever likely to have." -Eric J. Sundquist, Andrew W. Mellon Professor in the Humanities, Emeritus, Johns Hopkins University, USA

"The combination of magisterial command of both primary and secondary sources, stylistic flair and incendiary originality is more than rare, even singular. Professor Colacurcio advances a distinguished career with his reflections on one of the five big men featured by F. O. Matthiessen, he whom the MLA's last polling of college and university Americanists ranked the most important of nineteenth-century US authors. Colacurcio's Hawthorne's Histories will be the one all future commentators will have to consult before attempting to add to the considerable archive of Hawthorne criticism." -R. C. De Prospo, Ernest A. Howard Chair of English Literature, Chair, American Studies, Washington College, USA

In this new volume, he discusses Hawthorne's career more comprehensively and adds a compelling reading of the two "Allegories of the Heart" in Mosses from an Old Manse (1846)-Choice

Michael Colacurcio brings to this book his wicked wit, keen intelligence and more knowledge of Hawthorne's writing, sources and historical imagination than anyone else alive. The result is a masterful overview of Hawthorne's multi-phased literary corpus-from Salem's ghosts of the past all the way to Rome and The Marble Faun." -John Gatta, William R. Kenan Jr. Professor of English Emeritus, The University of the South - Sewanee, USA

Thirteen rich chapters on Hawthorne's process of writing, his cultural sources, and his narratology. - Nathaniel Hawthorne Review

About the Author

Distinguished Professor of English at UCLA and member of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, Michael J. Colacurcio is the author of, inter alia, The Province of Piety (1984), Doctrine and Difference (1997), Godly Letters (2007), Emerson and Other Minds (2020) and, most recently, the sequels Doctrine and Difference II: Readings in Classic American Literature (2021) Doctrine and Difference III: The Thematic Scale of Classic American Literature (2023), and Doctrine and Difference IV (in progress), and Puritanism in American Literature (in progress).