To begin my search for articles on the MLA bibliography, I thought about a possible topic I may be exploring with my midterm and ultimately my final presentation. The Scarlet Letter is the book that we’ve talked about that has stood out to me the most, so that’s where I started. Then I wanted to narrow down these results based on my strong personal interests: societal issues citizens have.
The first article I found was a piece from the Law & Literature journal called, “Love, Story, Law – From the Scarlet Letter to Freedom and Privacy.” This article by Nili Cohen talks about love, a story, and the law in terms of a triangle. What this concept is basically bringing up is the fact that there are many sides pushing against the publication of a book like The Scarlet Letter. Cohen is asking if all authors should be able to have a right to express their art and thoughts freely in their novels. However, the other side of the argument asks if, “the publication of the book would harshly violate the woman’s privacy,” would it still be worth publishing the novel? In other words, should authors have complete artistic freedom or should some literature be censored away from the public? I’m very interested in this article because it highlights a dichotomy and presents both sides before choosing one. This article could be a good basis for introducing how literature is used to talk about difficult issues removed from the current situation in order to critique them.
The second article is called, “From social rebellion to ambiguous conformism: a study of reform and history in The Scarlet Letter.” My eye was drawn to this piece because of its possible focus on how historical moments when citizens rose up against societal issues. The point the author is arguing here is ultimate that history and experience with social reform caused him to write this novel as he struggles himself with his relationship to society. I like this idea in relation to my loose topic so far how we could learn from our past mistakes in order to improve our society. Maybe literature can be used to bring back and illuminate the past in order to start that learning process.
Finally, I found a third article from the Studies in American Fiction journal called, “Misreading The Scarlet Letter: Race, Sentimental Pedagogy, and Antebellum Indian Literacy.” The point of this piece is to show how the novel has been misread so many times throughout time since its publication. One misreading the author points to is how the color red’s prevalence in the novel has been tied to Hawthorne’s mixed feelings about Native Americans and specifically their literacy patterns. This is interesting because it could relate to my topic in a few different ways. All I need to do if I plan on including this article is to see which direction I’d like to take it.
Hi Vic,
I like the direction you are going for towards your mid-term essay. I agree, narrowing in on people in society would make for an intriguing discussion. I think that the first article you found would support your essay well in comparisons between freedom and the law when it comes to literature. It would be interesting to discuss if Hawthorne held his writing back because of the lack of freedom writers had. In addition, the third article also caught my eye. I think that taking Hawthorne’s symbol of the red “A” and comparing it to Native Americans would be a route you could definitely go down. Taking the letter “A” and making sense of it through this last project you found is definitely another direction you could go with your mid-term essay.
It appears like you and I took a similar approaches to the assignment. My questions of women and gender relate to your questions of “societal issues citizens have.” The first and third essays you identified interest me. I like how Cohen frames her analysis of law, love, and story in a triangle, as “triangles” between characters are often a category of analysis in literature. Do you think “all authors should be able to have a right to express their art and thoughts freely in their novels?” I am unclear how “the publication of the book would harshly violate the woman’s privacy.” I assume the woman is Hester? But she’s fictional, so does publication violate women’s privacy in society? It’s significant Cohen examines both sides before choosing one because it allows the reader to form their own opinions. Which side does Cohen choose? In regards to “Misreading The Scarlet Letter,” Native Americans are certainly present in Hawthorne’s works. Fears of “going native” were central in Puritan society, and as a result, a canon of captivity narratives were generated.