Glenn C. Altschuler (essay date 1974)
SOURCE: “The Puritan Dilemma in ‘The Minister's Black Veil,’” in American Transcendental Quarterly, Vol. 24, No. 1, 1974, pp. 25-7.
[In the following essay, Altschuler contends that “The Minister's Black Veil” represents one of Hawthorne's most explicit condemnations of the spiritual teachings and revivalism that fueled the Great Awakening of the 1730s and 1740s.]
Much of Hawthorne's “history” involves moral “tendency.” He takes doctrines that developed out of Puritanism, like...
Source: Short Story Criticism, ©2000 Gale Cengage. All Rights Reserved. Full copyright.
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