Nathaniel Hawthorne's "Young Goodman Brown" and "The Minister's Black Veil" as American Jeremiads (PDF)

Seminar paper from the year 2022 in the subject American Studies - Literature, grade: 1,0, University of Mannheim (Anglistisches Seminar), course: Hauptseminar Literary Studies, language: English, abstract: The present paper will examine the two short stories Young Goodman Brown and The Minister's Black Veil by Nathaniel Hawthorne on the basis of the Puritan ideology. Therefore, the paper argues that both short stories provide deep insights into the puritan mindset, and emphasize the ultimate consequences of Puritan thinking. The stories can be read as narratives of decline and sin - as American (Puritan) jeremiads.

The environment in which the American jeremiad emerged and thrived was New England in the first century of colonization. Chapter 2.1 will examine the political situation in this particular region which also includes religious and important historical developments since there was no clear-cut distinction between religion, politics, and society in 17th century-New England. Following, Chapter 2.2 will characterize the key points of Puritan thinking. The purpose of this chapter is to get a deeper understanding of the Puritan ideology and why it was especially prone to conspiracy theories and conspiratorial thinking. The following chapter will make an attempt to define the American jeremiad of the 17th century embedded in its historical context. The most famous and influential study on the American jeremiad was published by the Canadian literary scholar Sacvan Bercovitch in 1978. Chapter 2.4 will complete the theoretical part by contextualizing the Salem Witchcraft Crisis of 1692. In chapter 3, both short stories - Young Goodman Brown and The Minister's Black Veil - are analyzed on the basis of the Puritan ideology and the American jeremiad.