Literary Text and Historical Context in the Romance of Nathaniel Hawthorne

在过去的十年中，所谓的新历史方法在研究19世纪美国作家纳撒尼尔·霍桑的领域取得了显著的进步。我自己对这位作家的研究方向，虽然有点类似地以历史为导向，但其突出之处在于，它非常强调对美国各种“文化表征”的研究，这些表征有助于表征霍桑富有想象力的神话“浪漫”创作，尤其是他的杰作《红字》。在17世纪殖民时期的新英格兰发现的那些“文化表征”在习俗、信仰、符号、艺术和仪式以及在伊丽莎白时代的英国和哈布斯堡王朝的欧洲盛行的人类思想和想象的其他产物中找到了相应的或先例。“挂毯”、“珍珠”、“肖像”、“纹章”、“宫廷假面”、“盛况”、“墓碑”等文化表征；更多地融入了霍桑的“爱情小说”，尤其是《红字》。以《挂毯》为例，它结合了艺术和文化的多个方面，这些方面特征了其主题的发展，并强调了其主题思想“众中之一”。整个浪漫主义在艺术上体现了“联盟”的理想主义主题，这一主题得到了近代早期欧洲各国君主的一致认可和支持。霍桑在《红字》中表达了这种“结合”的概念，不可否认的例子是海丝特的女儿取名为“珍珠”，因为英语中的“珍珠”与西班牙语中的“玛格丽塔”相对应，玛格丽塔是哈布斯堡公主的名字，值得注意的是，这两个词都象征性地代表了“结合”的概念。故事的结尾给人一种强烈的印象，即美国是古代联合理想的化身，或者是神圣罗马帝国继承的罗马和平理念的化身（实际上在1804年灭绝了，这一年正好是纳撒尼尔·霍桑本人出生的那一年）。我的研究经费资助期的最后一年是2004年，这一年是霍桑诞辰200周年，为了纪念这一周年，我的书《霍桑，红字》于2004年出版。少

During the past ten years there came a remarkable advancement of so-called neo-bistorical approaches in the area of the study of the 19th century American author Nathaniel Hawthorne. The direction of my own research into the same author, though somewhat similarly history-oriented, has distinguished itself by its strong emphasis on the investigation of the varieties of American "cultural representations" that served to characterize Hawthorne's imaginative creation of mythical "romances," above all, of his masterpiece The Scarlet Letter.Those "cultural representations "of the type found in 17^<th>-century colonial New England find their equivalents or precedents in the customs, beliefs, symbols, arts and ceremonies and in other products of human thought and imagination that prevailed in Elizabethan England and Hapsburg Europe. Such cultural representations as "tapestry," "pearl," "portraiture," "coat-of-arms," "court-masque," "pageantry and spectacle," "tomb-stone;' are found imaginative … More ly incorporated into Hawthorne's "romances," especially into The Scarlet Letter. Tapestry for instance, is seen to combine multiple aspects of art and culture that characterize the development of its theme and giving emphasized expression to its thematic idea of "one out of many" The romance as a whole artistically manifest the idealistic theme of "union" which was unanimously approved and supported by monarchs of early modern European countries.Hawthorne gave expression to this idea of "union" in The Scarlet Letter and the undeniable example is found in the naming of Hester's daughter as "Pearl," since the English word "pearl" corresponds with the Spanish term of "Margarita," a name given to a Hapsburg princess, and the remarkable thing about that is that both of these words symbolically represent the idea of "union." The story ends by affording a strong impression that the United States is an incarnation of the ancient ideal of union, or of the idea of Pax Romana which had been inherited by the Holy Roman Empire (practically becoming extinct in 1804, which coincides with the year of the birth of Nathaniel Hawthorne himself). The final year of the period of my study supported by the research grant falls on 2004, the year celebrating the bicentennial anniversary of Hawthorne's birth, and in commemoration of this anniversary my book entitled Hawthorne, <The Scarlet Letter>, Tapestry was published in 2004. Less