Hawthorne's geometry: Ritual theory and spatial form.
Item
-
Title
-
Hawthorne's geometry: Ritual theory and spatial form.
-
Identifier
-
AAI9405528
-
identifier
-
9405528
-
Creator
-
Friedman, Robert Steven.
-
Contributor
-
Adviser: Neal Tolchin
-
Date
-
1993
-
Language
-
English
-
Publisher
-
City University of New York.
-
Subject
-
Literature, American | Anthropology, Cultural
-
Abstract
-
This dissertation examines how geometric forms in Hawthorne's fictions serve as cultural mediators during the liminal phase of the Turnerian social drama. Hawthorne combines geometric symbology with narrative perspective to offer metaphors of personal and cultural boundaries. Transgressions create crises, lead to conflicts that are addressed through ritual processes, and result in either reaggregation into or schism from the sociocultural systems depicted in his texts.;In Chapter One, the circle in The Scarlet Letter shapes the dialectic of individual and social group, and defines and positions the artist and artistic expression in the text. Hester Prynne subsumes individuality and artistic beauty, and in turn redefines social interaction through her embroidering of the scarlet A. The circle unites preface and romance, and reader and text through a process of metaphorical association with the archetypal geometric form of Unity. Content and form become inextricable through the enactment of ritual process and symbolic mediation.;In Chapter Two the shape of the spiral is that of social and political conflict and history. With The House of the Seven Gables, Hawthorne maintains the tensions between the oppositions of aristocracy and democracy, and past and present. This figure correlates the process of historical change with the shape of the narrative itself through the agency of artifact and myth recurring during liminal episodes in the romance.;The parallelogram frames the narrative point of view and acts as a metaphor of the threshold of physical space and imaginative desire in The Blithedale Romance, the subject of Chapter Three. Coverdale is an observer who annihilates artistic and social spatial distance by casting his reticent sense of self onto the objects of his gaze. He redresses the crisis of realizing an independent identity both within and distinct from Blithedale by annihilating the space in which that subjectivity can become manifest. The parallelogram marks the boundaries between Miles and the other characters in Blithedale, boundaries that are highlighted during liminal scenes.;In Chapter Four, the circle in "Sights from a Steeple" defines, limits and protects narrative perspective. Hawthorne suspends temporal progression by spatializing the liminoid quality of his narration. The narrator's perspective affords both self-revelation and self-protection. In "My Kinsman, Major Molineux," Robin enters a liminal space that is defined through descriptions of angularity and labyrinth. Through the course of the tale, Robin experiences both the rites of status elevation and status reversal; the story demonstrates the complications of fusing both, in that Robin's attempted status elevation takes place within a larger group crisis of status reversal. Robin's search for identity in authority results in the overturning of just that authority which had to that point defined Robin's identity.
-
Type
-
dissertation
-
Source
-
PQT Legacy CUNY.xlsx
-
degree
-
Ph.D.
