The Sins of the Fathers: Hawthorne's Psychological Themes / Edition 1

by Frederick Crews

Overview

Surveying Hawthorne's entire career, from his earliest surviving stories through the romances left unfinished at his death, Frederick Crews defines the terms of Hawthorne's self-debate as revealed in his fiction. Hawthorne emerges from this study as a writer of acute psychological awareness.

In an Afterword written for this edition, Crews interrogates his own argument with characteristic unsparingness. He candidly reassesses the theoretical commitments behind his book, reflects on the path taken by Hawthorne criticism since 1966, and answers the question that many readers have asked of this ex-Freudian: "How much, today, remains valid in The Sins of the Fathers?" This essay is itself a significant contribution to the current debate over the role of 'theory' in literary studies.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780520068179
Publisher:	University of California Press
Publication date:	10/12/1989
Edition description:	First Edition
Pages:	304
Product dimensions:	5.40(w) x 8.40(h) x 0.50(d)

About the Author

Frederick Crews is Professor of English, University of California, Berkeley, and author of Skeptical Engagements (1986) and Out of My System: Psychoanalysis, Ideology, and Critical Method (1975).

Table of Contents

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS, 
A NOTE ON EDITIONS CITED
Psychological Romance
II The Sense of the Past
III Brotherly Love
IV Submission and Revolt
V The Logic of Compulsion
VI Escapism
VII Giovanni's Garden
VIII The Ruined Wall
IX The Sin of Art
X Homely Witchcraft
XI Turning the Affair into a Ballad
XII Subterranean Reminiscences
XIII Falling in Love at Cross-Purposes
XIV Hawthorne, Freud, and Literary Value
AFTERWORD
INDEX