Psychoanalytic Readings of Hawthorne's Romances: Narratives of Unconscious Crisis and Transformation

Offering innovative, psychoanalytic readings of Nathaniel Hawthorne’s four romances, this volume systematically applies Freudian theory to present significant new insights into the psychology of Hawthorne’s characters and their fates.

By critically examining scenes in which the protagonists confront past traumas, Diamond underscores the transformative potential which Hawthorne attributes to encounters with the unconscious. Psychoanalytic narrative technique is employed to interpret the psych...