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This article focuses on the book "The Elixir of Life Manuscripts," by Nathaniel Hawthorne. The most intensive work went into a fiction about a young man seeking immortality at the time of the American Revolution. Of course it is hardly news that the search for the elixir of life had something to do with alchemy nor was this anything like Hawthorne's first reference to alchemy. Hawthorne is far more open about the role of alchemy in the story than he is in the longer fiction. The interpreter of alchemistical writings did not only have to go through a series of moral exercises but also had repeatedly to struggle with deliberately difficult and obscure texts.

This article focuses on the book "The Scarlet Letter," written by Nathaniel Hawthorne. The ending of the book has tended to attract less hostile attention. It has a satisfying ending because Hester Prynne's grim and shadowy perception of life, subversive though it is, is linked to a society of demonstrable value. But whether or not one finds that ending satisfactory, it is surely, decidedly odd. There are the various witnesses's explanations of what was or was not seen on Dimmesdale's breast, of what he meant by his confession.

The article focuses on the book "Benito Cereno," by Herman Melville. The word, mute, appears frequently in the book. If the reader notices the word at all and do not merely assimilate it to muteness, he or she would probably read it as having an eastern reference. This goes to reinforce the suggestion of Cereno's tyrannical power over his slaves. It is a comment that seems to be central for a moral placing of the actions of the blacks. The black uprising in San Domingo had Jacobin support and that connection was not forgotten.

The article focuses on the fiction "The Blithedale Romance," which has given rise to a number of interpretations and evaluations. The text concern with fluidity and its questionings of authoritative explanation have not made it any easier for a critical consensus to emerge. The Blithedale Romance may usefully be approached by looking at the ways it foregrounds the question of the difficulties of description and the related problems of interpretation. The most successful sceptical examination of the authority of the author and his narrative is "The Blithedale Romance." Here the novelist as God is Deus Absconditus--or rather he bows out after Nathaniel Hawthorne's ambiguous and ambivalent preface. The Bible is the authoritative text for Western civilization--yet just because of its authority the connections and disjunctions between translation and interpretation are foregrounded.

Reviewed: Visionary Compacts: American Renaissance Writings in Cultural Context. Pease, Donald E.

Reviewed: American Romanticism. Vol. 2: From Melville to James: The Enduring Excessive. Morse, David.

Reviewed: American Romanticism. Vol. 1: From Cooper to Hawthorne: Excessive America. Morse, David.

Reviewed: The Centenary Edition of the Works of Nathaniel Hawthorne. Vol. 15: The Letters, 1813-1843. Hawthorne, Nathaniel.