THE OFFICE OF THE SCARLET LETTER

Book ID/图书代码： 13149013B63355

English Summary/英文概要： "The Scarlet Letter has proved our most enduring classic," writes Sacvan Bercovitch, "because it is the liberal example par excellence of art as ideological mimesis. To understand the office of the A is to see how culture empowers symbolic form, including forms of dissent, and how symbols participate in the dynamics of culture, including the dynamics of constraint." With an approach that both reflects and contests developments in literary studies, Bercovitch explores these connections from two perspectives: first, he examines a historical reading of the novel’s unities; and then, a rhetorical analysis of key mid-nineteenth-century issues, at home and abroad. In order to highlight the relation between rhetoric and history, he focuses on the point at which the scarlet letter does its office at last, the moment when Hester decides to come home to America. In The Office of "The Scarlet Letter," Bercovitch argues that the process by which the United States usurped "America" for itself, symbolically, is also the process by which liberalism established political and economic dominance. In the course of his study, he offers sustained discussions of Hawthorne’s irony and ambiguity, of aesthetic and social strategies of cohesion, and of the conundrums of liberal dissent. Winner of the Modern Language Association’s James Russell Lowe prize, The Office of "The Scarlet Letter" provides a theoretical redefinition of the function of symbolism in culture and an exemplary literary-ideological reading of a major text.

Chinese Summary/中文概要： 很多学者都认为《红字》这本小说是我们这个时代最经久不衰的文学经典。本书作者Sacvan Bercovitch 认为：“因为它体现了文学作品的自由主义精神”。为了理解红字“A”的寓意，我们有必要了解文化是如何赋予象征主义形式力量的，包括人们对此象征主义形式所持有的不同观点，以及象征是如何突破文化的束缚，将文化的活力注入其中的。“这种象征主义手法不仅体现了文学研究的发展，而且推动了它的发展，Bercovitch从两种不同的角度分析了这些联系：首先，他开展了小说统一性的历史性阅读；接着，他整理了19世纪中期发生在国内外的重大事件并进行了修辞学分析。为了突出修辞学和历史的关系，他强调了一点：《红字》的象征主义手法在小说的结尾得到了完美的诠释以及Hester决定重返美国的那一时刻。在《红字的象征主义》一书中，Bercovitch认为美国在世界上获得地位的过程，在象征意义上，也是自由主义确立政治和经济优势的过程。《红字的象征主义》一书荣获“现代语言协会”的杰姆斯罗素奖，这本书在理论上重新确立了文化中象征主义的文学地位以及为文学意识形态阅读树立了典范。(Susie)

Awards/获奖情况：Goes a long way to proving that any literary masterpiece, read with sympathy and intelligence, works to re-establish the connections between the work of art and the life and thought of its time. (James R. Mellow Times Literary Supplement )

Magisterially developing the second word of the title and searching out the ambiguities of the romance in the various ideological, social, and cultural contexts, The Office of The Scarlet Letter reads the romance in its seventeenth-century context; in the context of Hawthorne’s individual understanding, and his contemporaries’ understanding, of that earlier context; and in the context of our understanding of both earlier contexts. The resulting study successfully implicates late-twentieth-century American culture with its earliest origins. The book’s office is to aid us through ideological, sociocultural, and aesthetic interpretation, in understanding our fate and hope in our time. (MLA, James Russell Lowell Prize Citation ) --This text refers to an alternate Paperback edition.

About the Author/作者介绍： Sacvan Bercovitch is Powell M. Cabot Research Professor of American Literature at Harvard University as well as fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences and past president of American Studies Association. His books include The Puritan Origins of the American Self, The American Jeremiad, and Rites of Assent: The Symbolic Construction of America.

Format:TRADE PAPERBACK

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