Rethinking Nathaniel Hawthorne and Nature

Steven Petersheim is associate professor of American literature at Indiana University East and coeditor of Writing the Environment in Nineteenth-Century American Literature: The Ecological Awareness of Early Scribes of Nature.

• AcknowledgmentsIntroductionThe Nature of Hawthorne’s Pastoral Romances Chapter OneInvestigating Hawthorne’s Nonfiction Nature Writing Chapter TwoObserving “the Laboratory of Nature” in Hawthorne’s Short Fiction Chapter ThreeReading Nature and the Human Body in The Scarlet LetterChapter FourMapping Blood and Biology in The House of the Seven GablesChapter FiveEt in Arcadia Ego: Adaptation and Natural Limits in The Blithedale RomanceChapter SixExploring the Ruins of the Human Animal in The Marble FaunChapter SevenPostscript: Hawthorne’s Unfinished Romances BibliographyAbout the Author

A much-needed and outstanding study of Hawthorne’s preoccupation with Nature, a neglected theme in Hawthorne studies. Steven Petersheim offers a comprehensive view of Hawthorne’s relationship to nature in his journals, correspondence, short fiction, travel sketches, and novels. With great verve, Petersheim describes Hawthorne’s ongoing fascination with nature from his college days onwards through his travels to Europe and shows unwitting similarities but ofttimes ruptures with his Transcendentalist neighbors in Concord in their assessment of nature. An indispensable resource for scholars and students of nineteenth-century American literature and environmental studies.