论《红字》清教外衣下的哥特灵魂

On the Gothic Spirit of The Scarlet Letter under the Puritanism Cover

与爱伦·坡同时代的霍桑也是位哥特文学大师,他继承并超越了早期的英国哥特传统,创作了独特的"哥特式罗曼司",但他受到清教主义的影响更直接、更明显。因此,其代表作《红字》除描述了传统哥特式的暗黑、恐怖和神秘场景,还塑造了清教道德观下的畸变恶人。这部披着清教主义外衣的哥特巨著揭露了清教信仰的神秘和恐怖力量对人类灵魂和精神的毁灭性打击,营造了新英格兰殖民地时期狂热的宗教信仰和畸变的道德观下的哥特氛围,揭露了美利坚民族早期历史中的集体创伤。

Hawthorne,a contemporary writer with Allan Poe,is also a master of Gothic literature who inherited and transcended the earlier British Gothic traditions and created his unique " Gothic Romance",but he was influenced by Puritanism more directly and obviously. Therefore,his masterpiece The Scarlet Letter not only describes the traditional Gothic dark,terrible and mysterious scenes,also creates the malformed villains,which exposes the destructive blows of human soul and spirit by the mysterious and terror forces of Puritan beliefs,highlights the Gothic atmosphere of the fanatical religious beliefs and distorted moral values in New England colonial period to indicate the collective trauma in the early period of American history.