Although Nathaniel Hawthorne (1804-1864) and Robert Penn Warren (1905- ) belong to different periods of American literary history, the thematic parallels in their fiction indicate their close association in the American tradition of the romance and demonstrate ideological correspondences between writers of the New England Renaissance and the Southern Renaissance. Hawthorne and Warren are appropriate subjects for comparison not only because they represent the two greatest periods of American literary production but also because they share, across the span of a century, a common view of the human condition. This study focuses on one idea or cluster of ideas in each chapter with concentration on one major fictional work by each author. Hawthorne's "Young Goodman Brown" (1835) and Warren's "Blackberry Winter" (1946) are classic treatments of initiation. Each author utilizes archetypal patterns to dramatize the possibilities for moral, emotional, and psychological maturity. In Hawthorne's The House of the Seven Gables (1851) and Warren's Band of Angels (1955), the theme of initiation is expanded to incorporate understanding and accepting the past. Alienation becomes the dominant theme in Hawthorne's Blithedale Romance (1852) and Warren's At Heaven's Gate (1943). Through the pain of self-discovery, characters in Hawthorne's The Marble Faun (1860) and Warren's …

For the purpose of this study, metaphor is defined as a comparison which is not literally true. Such a comparison may be explicitly stated, as in a simile, or it may merely be implied, as in synecdoche, metonymy, hyperbole, or personification. In each case the primary or tenor image, a person, place, object, or idea in the novel, is compared to a secondary or vehicle image, a person, place, object, or idea not literally the same as the tenor image. The body of data on which this investigation is based consists of over fourteen thousand metaphors taken from Melville's nine novels. Each of these metaphors has been classified on the basis of its vehicle image. There are eight general categories, and tables are provided which show the number of metaphors in each category in each novel and the frequency with which the metaphors in each category occur in each novel. Overall, his metaphors suggest that Melville's vision of life was more often pessimistic than optimistic. They also reveal his growth as a writer. In the later novels, metaphors generally are more original than those in the early novels and are more skillfully related to his major themes.

In traditional romance, the hero takes a mythical journey into the underworld where he meets and overcomes evil antagonists. Hawthorne has transferred much of that hero's role to a pivotal character whose paradoxical function is to cause the central conflict in the tale or novel while remaining almost entirely passive himself. The movement of the tale or novel depends on the pivot's humanization, that is, his return to and integration within society. Works treated are "Alice Doane's Appeal," "Peter Goldthwaite's Treasure," "Roger Malvin's Burial," "Rappaccini' s Daughter," "Lady Eleanore's Mantle," "The Minister's Black Veil," "The Antique Ring," "The Gentle Boy," Fanshawe, The Scarlet Letter, The House of the Seven Gables, The Blithedale Romance, and The Marble Faun.

The ephemeral life of the Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood belies the importance of an organization that grows from and transcends its originally limited aesthetic principles and circumscribed credo. The founding of the Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood in 1848 really marks the beginning of a movement that metamorphizes into Aestheticism/Decadence. It is the purpose of this dissertation to demonstrate that, from its inception, Pre-Raphaelitism is the first English manifestation of Aestheticism/Decadence. Although the connection between Pre- Raphaelitism and the Aesthete/Decadent movement is proposed or mentioned by several writers, none has written a coherent justification for the viewing of Pre-Raphaelitism as the starting point for English Decadence This dissertation attempts to establish the primacy of Pre-Raphaelitism in the development of Aestheticism/Decadence.