『대리석 목양신』: 호손의 낭만적 주제와 이탈리아

Abstract

The Marble Faun is Hawthorne's last romance after his eight years' stay in England and Europe, during which he completed no literary works. When the romance was published in 1860, it was quite popular and sold well. Most people attribute its early popularity to the fact that it could be read both as a serious romance of allegory and as a practical book of travel guide. But this romance has been criticized by both critics and readers because of its loose structure, excessive use of allegories and lack of reality that considerably impairs its literary values. Recently, this work appeals to modern audience once again with its treatment of an international theme of the cultural conflict between America and Europe. Modern readers feel more interested in this work because it shows the author's inner conflict and anxiety at the time of his return to America after his long absence. When he was writing this romance, America was divided into the two camps of the North and the South because of slavery. He did not approve the institution, but he basically opposed to any artificial intervention in man's wickedness with his romantic belief that human wrongs should be amended not by any radical or violent methods but by peaceful and gradual changes, and this belief is allegorically represented in this romance. Like his other romances, this work also starts with a traditional romantic theme of a human sin, in this case a murder, and its influences on the involved main characters. It studies how Donatello, a man of innocence and natural instinct, commits a murder, how it works as “the Fortunate Fall” to both him and Miriam, and how the other two, Hilda and Kenyon, are influenced and afflicted by recognizing it. But Hawthorne this time sets the story in quite a different background of Italy rather than New England that he frequented. He had often complained the lack of legend or fairyland in America for his romances. But his contact with Europe, especially with Italy studded with gothic myths, old legends, historical sites and antiques, provided him with an endless list of romantic materials. But this abundance also caused the romance to be filled with too much ideological and ambiguous allegories. Despite its defects, the work is valuable in that it shows Hawthorne's ingenuity of pioneering a new international theme which was later to be fully developed by Henry James and other successors. While this work bears the marks of a romantic fiction in its treatment of main theme, character descriptions and use of allegorical devices, it is important in American literary history in that it anticipates a new wave of international novels which concentrate on innocent Americans who undergo inner conflict and grow up as they come into contact with European cultures.