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Young Goodman Brown

by Nathaniel Hawthorne

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  • Abel, Darreil, "Metonymic Symbols: Black Glove and Pink Ribbon," in The Moral Picturesque: Studies in Hawthorne's Fiction, pp. 125-41. West Lafayette, Ind.: Purdue University Press, 1988. (An examination of the central structural symbols of "Young Goodman Brown.")
  • Apseloff, Stanford and Marilyn, "'Young Goodman Brown': The Goodman," American Notes and Queries 21, No. 7 (March 1983): 103-06. (Quoting sources of Scottish folklore, assert that the word Goodman was used to refer to the Devil, which gives a dual meaning to Hawthorne's tale.)
  • Bell, Michael Davitt, "Allegory, Symbolism, and Romance: Hawthorne and Melville," in The Development of American Romance: The Sacrifice of Relation, pp. 126-59. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1980. (Discusses Young Goodman Brown as an allegorist who chooses to live according to abstract notions of good and evil rather than acknowledge his own sinful impulses.)
  • Bunge, Nancy L., "Unreliable Artist-Narrators in Hawthorne's Short Stories," Studies in Short Fiction 14, No. 2 (Spring 1977): 145-50. (Examines Hawthorne's use of unreliable artist-narrators in conjunction with the theme of brotherly love.)
  • Capps, Jack L., "Hawthorne's 'Young Goodman Brown,'" Explicator 40, No. 3 (Spring 1982): 25. (Suggests that the third virtue of the Christian tryptich, charity—one not mentioned in the tale—is precisely what Brown is lacking to survive his experience with the Devil.)
  • Carpenter, Richard C., "Hawthorne's Polar Explorations: 'Young Goodman Brown' and 'My Kinsman, Major Molineux,'" Nineteenth-Century Fiction 24, No. 1 (June 1969): 45-56. (Regards these two tales as companion pieces and explores important parallels between them.)
  • Christophersen, Bill, "'Young Goodman Brown' as Historical Allegory: A Lexical Link," Studies in Short Fiction 23, No. 2 (Spring 1986): 202-04. (Discusses Hawthorne's ironic use of Exodus imagery in the tale.)
  • Clark, James W., Jr., "Hawthorne's Use of Evidence in 'Young Goodman Brown,'" Essex Institute Historical Collections 111, No. 1 (January 1975): 12-34. (Analyzes Hawthorne's artistic manipulation of historical evidence in his writing of "Young Goodman Brown.")
  • Cohen, B. Bernard, "Paradise Lost and 'Young Goodman Brown,'" Essex Institute Historical Collections 94, No. 3 (July 1958): 282-296. (Compares John Milton's Paradise Lost with "Young Goodman Brown," which he describes as "a reversal of the re-birth phase of the Adamic myth.")
  • Colacurcio, Michael J., "Visible Sanctity and Specter Evidence: The Moral World of Hawthorne's 'Young Goodman Brown,'" Essex Institute Historical Collections 110, No. 4 (October 1974): 259-99. (Provides an extensive historicist account of Hawthorne's tale.)
  • Connolly, Thomas, ed., Nathaniel Hawthorne: "Young Goodman Brown." Columbus: Charles E. Merrill Publishing Co., 1968, 143 p. (A casebook of important critical studies of the short story.)
  • Davidson, Frank, "'Young Goodman Brown'—Hawthorne's Intent," The Emerson Society Quarterly 51, No. 2 (1965): 68-71. (Notes the interest of Hawthorne's story lies in its depiction of the progress of an evil thought.)
  • Dickson, Wayne, "Hawthorne's 'Young Goodman Brown,'" Explicator 29, No. 5 (January 1971): item 44. (Finds a reference to Corinthians in the tale, with the implication that Brown is lacking in charity.)
  • Easterly, Joan Elizabeth, "Lachrymal Imagery in Hawthorne's 'Young Goodman Brown,'" Studies in Short Fiction 28, No. 3 (Summer 1991): 339-43. (Argues that Brown's inability to shed tears when faced with the knowledge of evil reveals his moral and spiritual immaturity.)
  • Ensor, Allison, "'Whispers of the Bad Angel': A Scarlet Letter Passage as a Commentary on Hawthorne's 'Young Goodman Brown,'" Studies in Short Fiction 7, No. 3 (Summer 1970): 467-69. (Refers to Chapter Five of The Scarlet Letter as a gloss on Hawthorne's attitude towards Brown in “Young Goodman Brown.”)
  • Erisman, Fred, "'Young Goodman Brown'—Warning to Idealists," American Transcendental Quarterly 14, No. 4 (Spring 1972): 156-58. (Notes that Hawthorne's story comments on the dangers of Romanticism and Transcendentalism.)
  • Ferguson, Jr., J. M., "Hawthorne's 'Young Goodman Brown,'" Explicator 28, No. 4 (December 1969): item 32. (Asserts that Brown suffers from hubris, or pride, in “Young Goodman Brown.”)
  • Franklin, Benjamin, V., "Goodman Brown and the Puritan Catechism," ESQ: A Journal of the American Renaissance 40, No. 1 (1994): 67-88. (Argues that Brown fails to assimilate the dual lessons of the Puritan catechism, that man is innately depraved but capable of attaining salvation.)
  • Gallagher, Edward J., "The Concluding Paragraph of 'Young Goodman Brown,'" Studies in Short Fiction 12, No. 1 (Winter 1975): 29-30. (Examines the last paragraph of “Young Goodman Brown,” finding that Hawthorne offers neither a happy end nor a final peace to Brown.)
  • Gollin, Rita K., "The Tales," in Nathaniel Hawthorne and the Truth of Dreams, pp. 81-139. Baton Rouge: Louisiana State University Press, 1979. (Discusses Brown's venture into the forest as a journey into the self which ends as a nightmare of self-damnation.)
  • Hardt, John S., "Doubts in the American Garden: Three Cases of Paradisal Skepticism," Studies in Short Fiction 25, No. 3 (Summer 1988): 249-59. (Explores “Young Goodman Brown” along with Washington Irving's “Rip Van Winkle,” and Edgar Allan Poe's “The Fall of the House of Usher” in terms of each author's negative use of natural settings.)
  • Hollinger, Karen, "'Young Goodman Brown': Hawthorne's 'Devil in Manuscript': A Rebuttal," Studies in Short Fiction 19, No. 4 (Fall 1982): 381-84. (Rejects the view that Hawthorne conceived of "Young Goodman Brown" as a satire and argues that the narrator recognizes humanity's capacity for both good and evil.)
  • Jayne, Edward, "Pray Tarry With Me Young Goodman Brown," Literature and Psychology XXIX, No. 3 (1979): 100-13. (A psychoanalytic study which examines Young Goodman Brown as a negative archetype and investigates Hawthorne's use of paranoia to structure his narrative.)
  • Jones, Madison, "Variations on a Hawthorne Theme," Studies in Short Fiction 15, No. 3 (Spring 1978): 277-83. (Compares Hawthorne's use of Puritan theology in several of his best-known short stories, including "Young Goodman Brown.")
  • Kurata, Marilyn, "'The Chimes': Dickens's Recasting of 'Young Goodman Brown,'" American Notes and Queries 22, No. 1 (September 1983): 10-12. (Discusses parallels between Hawthorne's tale and Charles Dickens's short story “The Chimes.”)
  • Morris, Christopher D., "Deconstructing 'Young Goodman Brown,'" ATQ: American Transcendental Quarterly n.s. 2, No. 1 (March 1988): 23-34. (Seeks to illuminate how the reader, like Brown himself, cannot fix one meaning to the events of the story because the words and gestures lead only to uncertainty.)
  • Mosher, Harold F., Jr., "The Sources of Ambiguity in Hawthorne's 'Young Goodman Brown': A Structuralist Approach," ESQ: A Journal of the American Renaissance 26, No. 1 (1980): 16-25. (Analyzes the structure of contradictions which creates the ambiguities of Hawthorne's story.)
  • Reynolds, Larry J., "Melville's Use of 'Young Goodman Brown,'" American Transcendental Quarterly 31 (Summer 1976): 12-14. (Focuses on parallels between Hawthorne's tale and Herman Melville's Moby-Dick.)
  • Rohrberger, Mary, "Hawthorne's Short Stories: Analyses of Representative Works," in Hawthorne and the Modern Short Story: A Study in Genre, pp. 24-47. The Hague: Mouton & Co., 1966. (Examines "Young Goodman Brown" from Freudian and archetypal perspectives.)
  • Shear, Walter, "Cultural Fate and Social Freedom in Three American Short Stories," Studies in Short Fiction 29, No. 4 (Fall 1992): 543-49. (Compares “Young Goodman Brown,” Washington Irving's “Rip Van Winkle,” and Henry James's “The Jolly Corner,” finding many structural similarities and asserting that all three tales treat “an asocial self within the social self.”)
  • Stanton, Robert J., "Secondary Studies on Hawthorne's 'Young Goodman Brown,' 1845-1975: A Bibliography," Bulletin of Bibliography and Magazine Notes 33, No. 1 (January 1976): 32-44, 52. (Comprehensive bibliography of criticism on the story from 1845 to 1975. Describes over 400 studies on Hawthorne's short story.)
  • Stoehr, Taylor, "'Young Goodman Brown' and Hawthorne's Theory of Mimesis," Nineteenth-Century Fiction 23, No. 4 (March 1969): 393-412. (An analysis of Hawthorne's metaphorical style in his most celebrated short stories.)
  • Tepa, Barbara J., "Breakfast in 'Young Goodman Brown,'" American Notes and Queries 16, No. 8 (April 1978): 120-21. (Suggests that the mention of breakfast in the tale contributes to its ambiguity since it leads to the conclusion that a communion has already taken place in the forest.)
  • Tritt, Michael, "'Young Goodman Brown' and the Psychology of Projection," Studies in Short Fiction 23, No. 1 (Winter 1986): 113-17. (Asserts that Brown projects his guilt onto Salem's inhabitants as a way to escape his knowledge of his own feelings of anxiety.)
  • Wagenknecht, Edward, "Tales," in Nathaniel Hawthorne: The Man, His Tales and Romances, pp. 17-72. New York: Continuum, 1989. (Examines the multiple levels of meaning faced by readers of "Young Goodman Brown" which make unanimity among critics impossible.)
  • Williamson, James L., "'Young Goodman Brown': Hawthorne's 'Devil in Manuscript'," Studies in Short Fiction 18, No. 2 (Spring 1981): 155-62. (Identifies Hawthorne's short story as a "hell-fired" satire of nineteenth-century conventions of authorship.)
  • Wright, Elizabeth, "The New Psychoanalysis and Literary Criticism: A Reading of Hawthorne and Melville," Poetics Today 3, No. 2 (Spring 1982): 89-105. (Uses Lacanian and Derridean literary theory to discuss patterns that undermine “the stable meaning” in “Young Goodman Brown” and Herman Melville's “Benito Cereno.”)
  • Zanger, Jules, "'Young Goodman Brown' and 'A White Heron': Correspondences and Illuminations," Papers on Language and Literature 26, No. 3 (Summer 1990): 346-57. (Asserts that “Young Goodman Brown” and Sarah Orne Jewett's “A White Heron” comment thematically on each other.)

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Young Goodman Brown, Nathaniel Hawthorne (Short Story Criticism)
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