Criticism > Nineteenth-Century Literary Criticism > Young Goodman Brown, Nathaniel Hawthorne - Michael J. Colacurcio (essay date 1974)


Young Goodman Brown, Nathaniel Hawthorne - Michael J. Colacurcio (essay date 1974)

Michael J. Colacurcio (essay date 1974)

SOURCE: “Visible Sanctity and Specter Evidence: The Moral World of Hawthorne's ‘Young Goodman Brown,’” in Essex Institute Historical Collections, Vol. 110, October, 1974, pp. 259-99.

[In the following essay, Colacurcio examines “Young Goodman Brown” in the context of Puritan theology, faith, and “spectral evidence” of witchcraft and the devil. Colacurcio suggests that Hawthorne uses his story to demonstrate “that witchcraft ‘ended’ the Puritan world”.]

Any seriously “complete” interpretation of Hawthorne's “Young Goodman Brown” must somehow take account of David Levin's rather exact description of Brown's experience in the actual language of 1692. It may be possible to disagree with his final assertion that the “literal” dimension of “Young Goodman Brown” is “social,” condemning “that graceless perversion of true Calvinism which, in universal suspicion,...

[The entire page is 19223 words long]

Join eNotes

The above is a free excerpt. Get total access to this content with the:

eNotes Pass