摘 要纳撒尼尔•霍桑是美国19世纪杰出的浪漫主义小说家。他的代表作《红字》是美国文学史上划时代的作品，是霍桑文学思想和文学艺术的成熟代表，富有浓厚的宗教色彩。在创作这部作品时，霍桑不仅从思想上深受基督教的影响，在艺术手法上也娴熟地运用了《圣经》的意象和典故，将大量《圣经》原型移植到作品中去。因此，本文从人物、情节、和结构等方面对《红字》中的圣经典故及象征意义进行研究，旨在进一步阐释了基督教对西方人及西方文学特别是霍桑及其作品的影响，进一步论证了《红字》这部小说中大量的圣经原型的必然性。7928
关键词:《红字》；霍桑；基督教；圣经原型
Abstract Nathaniel Hawthorne is an outstanding representative of romantic writers in the late nineteenth century in America. One major theme of his works is to explore the sins hidden beneath the inner hearts of human beings. Coming from a family of Puritanism background, he is deeply affected by Christianity and The Bible. As the mature embodiment of Hawthorne’s literary thoughts and art, The Scarlet Letter, conveys a strong sense of Hawthorne’s religious attributes. This paper is focusing on the analysis of the Biblical archetypes used in this novel, such as the characterization, plots and the structure. By the analysis of the text, we will have a better understanding why there are so many Biblical archetypes in this novel.
Key words: The Scarlet Letter; Hawthorne; Christianity; biblical archetype
The Biblical Allusions and Symbolic Significance in The Scarlet Letter
I Introduction
Contents
摘 要 i
Abstract ii
I. Introduction 1
Ⅱ. The Biblical Archetypal Analysis of the Characters 2
2.1 Hester Prynne 2
2.2 Arthur Dimmesdale 4
Ⅲ. The Biblical Archetypal Analysis of the Plot 6
3.1 From the Perspective of Hester Prynne 6
3.2 The Conflict Between Dimmesdale and Chillingworth 9
Ⅳ. The Biblical Archetypal Analysis of the Structure 10
4.1 The U-shaped Comedic Structure 10
4.2 The Inverted U-shaped Tragic Structure 13
V. Conclusion 14
Bibliography 16
Acknowledgements 17
The Scarlet Letter, one of Nathaniel Hawthorne’s masterpieces, in which, Hawthorne’s intriguing moral vision is embodied completely has received such a high reputation as the greatest achievement in his literary career. The story tells about an illicit adulterous affair between a young and beautiful woman, Hester Prynne, who was bound by marriage to an old mail supposedly somewhere far away or perhaps even dead, and a young clergy man, Arthur Dimmesdale in that community who was regarded by the people as saintly pure and full of Christian charity. There is no way for Hester to hide the affair for she becomes pregnant with a child, and is imprisoned for her sin. The actual narrative begins after the child Pearl is born on the day she emerges from prison to begin enduring her public punishment. The aging husband comes out of the forest into town on this very day—to see his lovely and lonely wife standing on the public scaffold with an “A” for adultery sewn on her dress and a baby in her arms. The wife refuses to reveal the name of her lover, and promises her husband that she will help him keep his identity secret from the community as well.
The Bible is the myth belonging to the western civilization while the Fall of Man, the starting point of a grand narrative structure, is the myth of The Bible that initiated human suffering and remorse and paves the way for their later struggle for redemption and Grace from God throughout The Bible. According to The Bible, God put the first man and woman Adam and Eve in the Garden of Eden and commanded them that they should not eat the fruits of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil while they were allowed to eat of every other tree in the garden at their free will. But under the temptation from the evil serpent, the image of Satan in The Bible, the first man and woman ate from the tree of knowledge and thus violated the God’s authority prescribed by the agreement God made with man. At and from this moment man committed his original sin; and simultaneously they betrayed the omnipresent God. 《红字》中的圣经典故与象征意义:http://www.751com.cn/yingyu/lunwen_6076.html