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95-526: Frederick Crews was an American essayist and literary critic. When he published The Pooh Perplex , he was teaching English at the University of California, Berkeley . In the 1960s, he sought to write a work that criticized common styles of literary criticism at the time, namely critics allowing their own biases to shape their interpretations of a work, as well as casebooks . According to a 2002 interview Crews gave to NPR , he chose Winnie-the-Pooh (1926) to be

190-531: A print on demand publishing company founded by Denis Dutton in 2000. Nathaniel Hawthorne Nathaniel Hawthorne (born Nathaniel Hathorne ; July 4, 1804 – May 19, 1864) was an American novelist and short story writer. His works often focus on history, morality, and religion. He was born in 1804 in Salem, Massachusetts , from a family long associated with that town. Hawthorne entered Bowdoin College in 1821,

285-908: A protofeminist and avatar of the self-reliance and responsibility that led to women's suffrage and sometime-reproductive emancipation. Anthony Splendora found her literary genealogy among other archetypally fallen but redeemed women, both historic and mythic. As examples, he offers Psyche of ancient legend; Heloise of twelfth-century France's tragedy involving world-renowned philosopher Peter Abelard ; Anne Hutchinson (America's first heretic, circa 1636), and Hawthorne family friend Margaret Fuller . In Hester's first appearance, Hawthorne likens her, "infant at her bosom", to Mary, Mother of Jesus, "the image of Divine Maternity". In her study of Victorian literature, in which such "galvanic outcasts" as Hester feature prominently, Nina Auerbach went so far as to name Hester's fall and subsequent redemption, "the novel's one unequivocally religious activity". Regarding Hester as

380-412: A therapeutic approach, suggesting that it had a weak, sometimes comical tradition of criticism. In 1977, Crews read the draft of a work by the philosopher Adolf Grünbaum that later became The Foundations of Psychoanalysis , and helped Grünbaum to obtain a publication offer from the University of California Press . In 1996, Crews credited the psychiatrist Henri F. Ellenberger 's The Discovery of

475-761: A transcendentalist community, before marrying Peabody in 1842. The couple moved to The Old Manse in Concord, Massachusetts , later moving to Salem, the Berkshires , then to The Wayside in Concord. The Scarlet Letter was published in 1850, followed by a succession of other novels. A political appointment as consul took Hawthorne and family to Europe before their return to Concord in 1860. Hawthorne died on May 19, 1864. Much of Hawthorne's writing centers on New England , and many works feature moral metaphors with an anti- Puritan inspiration. His fiction works are considered part of

570-621: A June 26, 2024 appeal hearing. Crews' advocacy for justice in this case has been documented in a June 25 article on the Frank Report website titled "Berkeley Professor, Best Selling Author, Dr. Frederick Crews Had Died, His Last Message Was of Jerry Sandusky's Innocence". Crews was motivated to defend Sandusky after reading The Most Hated Man in America: Jerry Sandusky and the Rush to Judgement by Mark Pendegrass. The book titled served as

665-526: A book of satirical essays parodying various schools of literary criticism. Initially a proponent of psychoanalytic literary criticism , Crews later rejected psychoanalysis , becoming a critic of Sigmund Freud and his scientific and ethical standards. Crews was a prominent participant in the " Freud wars " of the 1980s and 1990s, a debate over the reputation, scholarship, and impact on the 20th century of Freud, who founded psychoanalysis. In 2017, he published Freud: The Making of an Illusion . Crews published

760-627: A ceremony in the Peabody parlor on West Street in Boston. The couple moved to The Old Manse in Concord, Massachusetts , where they lived for three years. His neighbor Ralph Waldo Emerson invited him into his social circle, but Hawthorne was almost pathologically shy and stayed silent at gatherings. At the Old Manse, Hawthorne wrote most of the tales collected in Mosses from an Old Manse . Like Hawthorne, Sophia

855-594: A collection of essays by his students that analyzed a variety of authors from a psychoanalytic perspective; a review by Jose Barchilon credited the book with important accomplishments, including being "an achievement in the teaching and learning of psychoanalysis in a department of literature", which the reviewer noted was a "rare occurrence". The collection included an essay, "Anaesthetic Criticism," in which Crews disparaged contemporary schools of literary criticism, especially that of Northrop Frye and his followers. In 1986, Crews published The Critics Bear It Away , which

950-542: A dark side to Hawthorne, "shrouded in blackness, ten times black". He was composing his novel Moby-Dick at the time, and dedicated the work in 1851 to Hawthorne: "In token of my admiration for his genius, this book is inscribed to Nathaniel Hawthorne." Hawthorne's time in the Berkshires was very productive. While there, he wrote The House of the Seven Gables (1851), which poet and critic James Russell Lowell said

1045-486: A decade." Four years later, Paula T. Connolly also noted the work's side-effect of stifling critical analysis of Pooh as critics feared sounding like those Crews was satirizing. It has since led many critics to simply dismiss Milne 's children's work as lacking depth. Connolly wrote in 1995, however, that the "freeze [...] seems to be thawing". Frederick Crews This is an accepted version of this page Frederick Campbell Crews (February 20, 1933 – June 21, 2024)

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1140-538: A deity figure, Meredith A. Powers found in Hester's characterization "the earliest in American fiction that the archetypal Goddess appears quite graphically," like a Goddess "not the wife of traditional marriage, permanently subject to a male overlord"; Powers noted "her syncretism, her flexibility, her inherent ability to alter and so avoid the defeat of secondary status in a goal-oriented civilization". Aside from Hester Prynne,

1235-554: A dream". With Pierce's election as President , Hawthorne was rewarded in 1853 with the position of United States consul in Liverpool shortly after the publication of Tanglewood Tales . The role was considered the most lucrative foreign service position at the time, described by Hawthorne's wife as "second in dignity to the Embassy in London". During this period he and his family lived in

1330-493: A goddess supreme in beauty and power." Hawthorne also wrote nonfiction. In 2008, the Library of America selected Hawthorne's "A show of wax-figures" for inclusion in its two-century retrospective of American True Crime. Hawthorne's writings were well received at the time. Contemporary response praised his sentimentality and moral purity while more modern evaluations focus on the dark psychological complexity. Herman Melville wrote

1425-617: A host of critics." In fact, it was Fields who convinced Hawthorne to turn The Scarlet Letter into a novel rather than a short story. Ticknor handled many of Hawthorne's personal matters, including the purchase of cigars, overseeing financial accounts, and even purchasing clothes. Ticknor died with Hawthorne at his side in Philadelphia in 1864; according to a friend, Hawthorne was left "apparently dazed". Hawthorne's works belong to romanticism or, more specifically, dark romanticism , cautionary tales that suggest that guilt, sin, and evil are

1520-439: A passionate review of Mosses from an Old Manse , titled " Hawthorne and His Mosses ", arguing that Hawthorne "is one of the new, and far better generation of your writers." Melville describes an affinity for Hawthorne that would only increase: "I feel that this Hawthorne has dropped germinous seeds into my soul. He expands and deepens down, the more I contemplate him; and further, and further, shoots his strong New-England roots into

1615-502: A petition submitted by Freud historian Peter Swales to the Library of Congress requesting that a Freud exhibition the Library had planned be rendered less one-sided; the protests evidently delayed the exhibit's opening by two years. Eli Zaretsky, who identifies Crews as one of Freud's most prominent critics, writes that Crews's challenges to Freud and psychoanalysis have gone largely unanswered. Crews's Freud: The Making of an Illusion

1710-671: A preface that refers to his three-year tenure in the Custom House and makes several allusions to local politicians—who did not appreciate their treatment. It was one of the first mass-produced books in America, selling 2,500 volumes within ten days and earning Hawthorne $ 1,500 over 14 years. The book became a best-seller in the United States and initiated his most lucrative period as a writer. Hawthorne's friend Edwin Percy Whipple objected to

1805-492: A room from George Stillman Hillard , business partner of Charles Sumner . Hawthorne wrote in the comparative obscurity of what he called his "owl's nest" in the family home. As he looked back on this period of his life, he wrote: "I have not lived, but only dreamed about living." He contributed short stories to various magazines and annuals, including " Young Goodman Brown " and " The Minister's Black Veil ", though none drew major attention to him. Horatio Bridge offered to cover

1900-618: A satirical review by Richard L. Greene , who demanded that the book not be stocked in college bookstores lest it encourage people to start making fun of myths or archetypes . Robert M. Adams in The Virginia Quarterly Review felt that the book tried to do too much with twelve essays "about nothing at all" and that, while Crews made some valid points, he had been too indiscriminate in "clubbing" literary criticism "to death". In The New York Times , Orville Prescott deemed Crews' work "the most brilliant volume of parodies since

1995-447: A scene in his novel The Blithedale Romance . The Hawthornes had three children. Their first was daughter Una, born March 3, 1844; her name was a reference to The Faerie Queene , to the displeasure of family members. Hawthorne wrote to a friend, "I find it a very sober and serious kind of happiness that springs from the birth of a child ... There is no escaping it any longer. I have business on earth now, and must look about me for

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2090-434: A scholarly work on Freud as a person or on the origin of his ideas." In 1993 and 1994, Crews wrote a series of critical essays and reviews of books relating to repressed and recovered memories, which also provoked heated debate and letters to the editors of The New York Review of Books . The essays, along with critical and supporting letters and his responses, were published as The Memory Wars (1995). Crews believes

2185-450: A single text. It was widely praised for being highly readable and helpful and was written in a clear, often elegant style, with occasional flashes of humor, something rare in college writing handbooks then or now. It was also highly successful, running to six editions. Crews also co-authored three editions of The Borzoi Handbook for Writers for McGraw-Hill . Up to his death on June 21, Crews continued to advocate for Jerry Sandusky in

2280-704: A variety of skeptical and rationalist essays, including book reviews and commentary for The New York Review of Books , on a variety of topics including Freud and recovered memory therapy , some of which were published in The Memory Wars (1995). He also published successful handbooks for college writers, such as The Random House Handbook . Crews was born in suburban Philadelphia on February 10, 1933. Both his parents were avid readers and were quite influential in his life, said Crews: "They had both been raised in considerable poverty, and books had been extremely important to them personally, in shaping them. My mother

2375-465: A woman." Camille Paglia saw Hester as mystical, "a wandering goddess still bearing the mark of her Asiatic origins ... moving serenely in the magic circle of her sexual nature". Lauren Berlant termed Hester "the citizen as woman [personifying] love as a quality of the body that contains the purest light of nature," her resulting "traitorous political theory" a "Female Symbolic" literalization of futile Puritan metaphors. Historicists view Hester as

2470-496: A year, though several physicians could find nothing wrong with him. In the summer of 1816, the family lived as boarders with farmers before moving to a home recently built specifically for them by Hawthorne's uncles Richard and Robert Manning in Raymond, Maine , near Sebago Lake . Years later, Hawthorne looked back at his time in Maine fondly: "Those were delightful days, for that part of

2565-517: Is a transcription of the work of the fictional Patch Commission, a discussion among three government commissioners attempting to save the nation from disaster caused by pediatrician Benjamin Spock 's overly permissive child-rearing guidelines. Much of Crews's career was dedicated to literary criticism . Crews's first book, The Tragedy of Manners: Moral Drama in the Later Novels of Henry James (1957),

2660-451: Is a tribute to the man." Henry James praised Hawthorne, saying, "The fine thing in Hawthorne is that he cared for the deeper psychology, and that, in his way, he tried to become familiar with it." Poet John Greenleaf Whittier wrote that he admired the "weird and subtle beauty" in Hawthorne's tales. Evert Augustus Duyckinck said of Hawthorne, "Of the American writers destined to live, he

2755-513: Is also a fine demonstration that a critic with no humor and little common sense can make any given work of literature mean absolutely anything." The academic Alison Lurie wrote in 1991 that The Pooh Perplex made writing about Winnie-the-Pooh "awkward (if not impossible)" because he had "said most of what could be said about Pooh" in his satirical works, making it hard for critics to conduct serious analysis. She notes that his work "stifle[d] almost all critical comment on Winnie-the-Pooh for almost

2850-479: Is available, feeling responsible to go out and find that evidence, including the evidence that is contrary to one's presumptions, and responsibility to be logical with one's self and others. And this is an ideal that is not so much individual as social. The rational attitude doesn't really work when simply applied to one's self. It is something that we owe to each other. In 1963, Crews published his first bestseller The Pooh Perplex : A Student Casebook that satirized

2945-402: Is no vacancy in my mind, any more than in my heart ... Thank God that I suffice for her boundless heart!" Sophia greatly admired her husband's work. She wrote in one of her journals: I am always so dazzled and bewildered with the richness, the depth, the ... jewels of beauty in his productions that I am always looking forward to a second reading where I can ponder and muse and fully take in

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3040-683: Is the most original, the one least indebted to foreign models or literary precedents of any kind." Beginning in the 1950s, critics have focused on symbolism and didacticism. The critic Harold Bloom wrote that only Henry James and William Faulkner challenge Hawthorne's position as the greatest American novelist, although he admitted that he favored James as the greatest American novelist. Bloom saw Hawthorne's greatest works to be principally The Scarlet Letter , followed by The Marble Faun and certain short stories, including "My Kinsman, Major Molineux", "Young Goodman Brown", "Wakefield", and "Feathertop". According to Hawthorne scholar Rita K. Gollin ,

3135-943: Is to be critical of their own interpretation when making statements about the meaning of a work. Regarding Crews's position on literary criticism, C. A. Runcie notes, "What Frederick Crews says about psychoanalysis is true for all criticism and its theorizing: 'A critic's sense of limits, like Freud's own, must come from … his awe at how little he can explain.'" Crews has been identified by the literary theorist Joseph Carroll as one of "the very few scholars who have consistently and effectively opposed poststructuralism." Crews began his career using psychoanalytic literary criticism but gradually rejected this approach and psychoanalysis in general. In his article "Reductionism and Its Discontents", published in Out of My System in 1975, Crews stated his belief that psychoanalysis can be usefully applied to literary criticism but expressed growing doubts about its use as

3230-697: The Salem Gazette . In 1836, Hawthorne served as the editor of the American Magazine of Useful and Entertaining Knowledge . At the time, he boarded with poet Thomas Green Fessenden on Hancock Street in Beacon Hill in Boston . He was offered an appointment as weigher and gauger at the Boston Custom House at a salary of $ 1,500 a year, which he accepted on January 17, 1839. During his time there, he rented

3325-553: The Massachusetts Bay Colony and held many political positions, including magistrate and judge, becoming infamous for his harsh sentencing. William's son, Hawthorne's great-great-grandfather John Hathorne was one of the judges who oversaw the Salem witch trials . Hawthorne probably added the "w" to his surname in his early twenties, shortly after graduating from college, in an effort to dissociate himself from his notorious forebears. Hawthorne's father Nathaniel Hathorne Sr.

3420-510: The Romantic movement and, more specifically, dark romanticism . His themes often center on the inherent evil and sin of humanity, and his works often have moral messages and deep psychological complexity. His published works include novels, short stories, and a biography of his college friend Franklin Pierce , written for his 1852 campaign for President of the United States , which Pierce won, becoming

3515-546: The Transcendentalism movement. Hawthorne was predominantly a short story writer in his early career. Upon publishing Twice-Told Tales , however, he noted, "I do not think much of them," and he expected little response from the public. His four major romances were written between 1850 and 1860: The Scarlet Letter (1850), The House of the Seven Gables (1851), The Blithedale Romance (1852) and The Marble Faun (1860). Another novel-length romance, Fanshawe ,

3610-572: The illustrator and transcendentalist Sophia Peabody . He joined the transcendentalist Utopian community at Brook Farm in 1841, not because he agreed with the experiment but because it helped him save money to marry Sophia. He paid a $ 1,000 deposit and was put in charge of shoveling the hill of manure referred to as "the Gold Mine". He left later that year, though his Brook Farm adventure became an inspiration for his novel The Blithedale Romance . Hawthorne married Sophia Peabody on July 9, 1842, at

3705-425: The "Freud Wars," a long-running debate over Freud's reputation, work and impact. "The Unknown Freud" prompted an unprecedented number of letters to The New York Review of Books for several issues. Crews went on to criticize Freud and psychoanalysis extensively, becoming a major figure in the discussions and criticisms of Freud that occurred during the 1980s and 1990s. Crews was one of almost fifty signatories of

3800-452: The "memories" of childhood seduction Freud reported were not real memories but constructs that Freud created and forced upon his patients. According to Crews, the seduction theory that Freud abandoned in the late 1890s acted as a precedent and contributing factor to the wave of false allegations of childhood sexual abuse in the 1980s and 1990s. Crews was a member of the now-disbanded False Memory Syndrome Foundation 's advisory board and

3895-468: The 14th president. Nathaniel Hathorne, as his name was originally spelled, was born on July 4, 1804, in Salem , Massachusetts; his birthplace is preserved and open to the public. His great-great-great-grandfather, William Hathorne , was a Puritan and the first of the family to emigrate from England. He settled in Dorchester, Massachusetts , before moving to Salem. There he became an important member of

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3990-552: The Procrustean details of academic life, rather choosing to nurse my own fancies than to dig into Greek roots and be numbered among the learned Thebans. Hawthorne's first published work, Fanshawe: A Tale , based on his experiences at Bowdoin College, appeared anonymously in October 1828, printed at the author's own expense of $ 100. Although it received generally positive reviews, it did not sell well. He published several minor pieces in

4085-752: The Rock Park estate in Rock Ferry in one of the houses directly adjacent to Tranmere Beach on the Wirral shore of the River Mersey. Thus to attend his place of employment at the United States consulate in Liverpool, Hawthorne would have been a regular passenger on the steamboat operated Rock Ferry to Liverpool ferry service departing from the Rock Ferry Slipway at the end of Bedford Road. His appointment ended in 1857 at

4180-535: The UC Berkeley English Department, where he taught for 36 years before retiring as its chair in 1994. He was a Fulbright scholar with a lectureship at University of Turin in Italy for the 1961–1962 academic year. Crews was an anti-war activist from 1965 to about 1970 and advocated draft resistance as co-chair of Berkeley's Faculty Peace Committee. Though he shared the widespread assumption during

4275-531: The Unconscious (1970) with beginning a twenty-five-year-long reevaluation of the position of psychoanalysis within the history of medicine, and acknowledged other book-length critical analyses of Freud and psychotherapy, including Frank Sulloway 's Freud, Biologist of the Mind (1979), Grünbaum's The Foundations of Psychoanalysis (1984), and Malcolm Macmillan's Freud Evaluated: The Completed Arc (1991). Crews wrote

4370-531: The afternoons and evenings have done. I should be happier if I could write. This employment, like his earlier appointment to the custom house in Boston, was vulnerable to the politics of the spoils system . Hawthorne was a Democrat and lost this job due to the change of administration in Washington after the presidential election of 1848. He wrote a letter of protest to the Boston Daily Advertiser , which

4465-754: The age of 91. Crews completed his undergraduate education at Yale University in 1955. Though his degree was in English, Crews entered the Directed Studies program during his first two years at Yale, which he describes as his greatest experience because the program was taught by a coordinated faculty and required students to distribute their courses among sciences, social sciences, literature, and philosophy. He received his PhD in literature from Princeton University in 1958. Crews cited Fyodor Dostoyevsky , Friedrich Nietzsche , Hawthorne, and Freud as major influences during his time at Princeton. In 1958, Crews joined

4560-467: The basis for Crews' submission to Skeptic Magazine , "Trial by Therapy: The Jerry Sandusky Case Revisited". Crews expanded on his thoughts in the case in an interview with John Ziegler on the World According to Zig podcast in October 2019. In his capacity as a reviewer for The New York Review of Books , Crews wrote on various topics including: Crews served on the editorial board of Cybereditions,

4655-691: The belief that Jerry Sandusky is an innocent man. In recent years, Crews has written articles such as "A Shower of Lies and the Mess at Penn State" and "The Sandusky Case is Exactly opposite to What the Public Believes: The Case Against Jerry Sandusky Revisited". His last interview on this topic was with the Daily Mail reporter Emma James as part of recent articles revisiting the Sandusky conviction in light of new evidence and

4750-617: The campaign biography of his friend, which depicted him as "a man of peaceful pursuits". Horace Mann said, "If he makes out Pierce to be a great man or a brave man, it will be the greatest work of fiction he ever wrote." In the biography, Hawthorne depicts Pierce as a statesman and soldier who had accomplished no great feats because of his need to make "little noise" and so "withdrew into the background". He also left out Pierce's drinking habits, despite rumors of his alcoholism, and emphasized Pierce's belief that slavery could not "be remedied by human contrivances" but would, over time, "vanish like

4845-489: The close of the Pierce administration . The Hawthorne family toured France and Italy until 1860. During his time in Italy, the previously clean-shaven Hawthorne grew a bushy mustache. The family returned to The Wayside in 1860, and that year saw the publication of The Marble Faun , his first new book in seven years. Hawthorne admitted that he had aged considerably, referring to himself as "wrinkled with time and trouble". At

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4940-465: The country was wild then, with only scattered clearings, and nine tenths of it primeval woods." In 1819, he was sent back to Salem for school and soon complained of homesickness and being too far from his mother and sisters. He distributed seven issues of The Spectator to his family in August and September 1820 for fun. The homemade newspaper was written by hand and included essays, poems, and news featuring

5035-487: The end of March 1850. He became friends with Herman Melville beginning on August 5, 1850, when the authors met at a picnic hosted by a mutual friend. Melville had just read Hawthorne's short story collection Mosses from an Old Manse , and his unsigned review of the collection was printed in The Literary World on August 17 and August 24 titled "Hawthorne and His Mosses". Melville wrote that these stories revealed

5130-420: The few men of indisputable genius to whom our country has as yet given birth. John Neal 's magazine The Yankee published the first substantial public praise of Hawthorne, saying in 1828 that the author of Fanshawe has a "fair prospect of future success." Ralph Waldo Emerson wrote, "Nathaniel Hawthorne's reputation as a writer is a very pleasing fact, because his writing is not good for anything, and this

5225-438: The foreword to the revised 1997 edition of Freud Evaluated , suggesting that its republication "advanced the long debate over psychoanalysis to what may well be its decisive moment". Crews, who described himself as "a one-time Freudian who had decided to help others resist the fallacies to which I had succumbed in the 1960s", sees his criticisms of Freud as two-pronged – one aimed at Freud's ethical and scientific standards, and

5320-639: The funeral: "I thought there was a tragic element in the event, that might be more fully rendered—in the painful solitude of the man, which, I suppose, could no longer be endured, & he died of it." His wife Sophia and daughter Una were originally buried in England. However, in June 2006, they were reinterred in plots adjacent to Hawthorne. Hawthorne had a particularly close relationship with his publishers William Ticknor and James T. Fields . Hawthorne once told Fields, "I care more for your good opinion than for that of

5415-466: The hot soil of my Southern soul." Edgar Allan Poe wrote important reviews of both Twice-Told Tales and Mosses from an Old Manse . Poe's assessment was partly informed by his contempt for allegory and moral tales, and his chronic accusations of plagiarism, though he admitted: The style of Mr. Hawthorne is purity itself. His tone is singularly effective—wild, plaintive, thoughtful, and in full accordance with his themes ... We look upon him as one of

5510-501: The means of doing it." In October 1845, the Hawthornes moved to Salem. In 1846, their son Julian was born. Hawthorne wrote to his sister Louisa on June 22, 1846: "A small troglodyte made his appearance here at ten minutes to six o'clock this morning, who claimed to be your nephew." Daughter Rose was born in May 1851, and Hawthorne called her his "autumnal flower". In April 1846, Hawthorne

5605-460: The mid-1960s that psychoanalytic theory was a valid account of human motivation and was one of the first academics to apply that theory systematically to the study of literature, Crews gradually came to regard psychoanalysis as a pseudoscience . This convinced him that his loyalty should not belong to any theory but rather to empirical standards and the skeptical point of view. Throughout his career, Crews brought his concern for rational discourse to

5700-447: The miraculous wealth of thoughts. Poet Ellery Channing came to the Old Manse for help on the first anniversary of the Hawthornes' marriage. A local teenager named Martha Hunt had drowned herself in the river and Hawthorne's boat Pond Lily was needed to find her body. Hawthorne helped recover the corpse, which he described as "a spectacle of such perfect horror ... She was the very image of death-agony". The incident later inspired

5795-525: The model women of Hawthorne's other novels—from Ellen Langton of Fanshawe to Zenobia and Priscilla of The Blithedale Romance, Hilda and Miriam of The Marble Faun and Phoebe and Hepzibah of The House of the Seven Gables —are more fully realized than his male characters, who merely orbit them. This observation is equally true of his short-stories, in which central females serve as allegorical figures: Rappaccini's beautiful but life-altering, garden-bound, daughter; almost-perfect Georgiana of " The Birth-Mark ";

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5890-421: The most inherent natural qualities of humanity. Many of his works are inspired by Puritan New England , combining historical romance loaded with symbolism and deep psychological themes, bordering on surrealism. His depictions of the past are a version of historical fiction used only as a vehicle to express common themes of ancestral sin, guilt and retribution. His later writings also reflect his negative view of

5985-630: The next day; coincidentally, he was initiated into the Delta Kappa Epsilon fraternity on the same day by being blindfolded and placed in a coffin. Longfellow wrote a tribute poem to Hawthorne published in 1866 called " The Bells of Lynn ". Hawthorne was buried on what is now known as "Authors' Ridge" in Sleepy Hollow Cemetery, Concord , Massachusetts . Pallbearers included Longfellow, Emerson, Alcott, Oliver Wendell Holmes Sr. , James T. Fields , and Edwin Percy Whipple . Emerson wrote of

6080-428: The novel's "morbid intensity" and its dense psychological details, writing that the book "is therefore apt to become, like Hawthorne, too painfully anatomical in his exhibition of them", while 20th-century writer D. H. Lawrence said that there could be no more perfect work of the American imagination than The Scarlet Letter . Hawthorne and his family moved to a small red farmhouse near Lenox, Massachusetts , at

6175-766: The other aimed at showing that psychoanalysis is a pseudoscience. Crews rejected psychoanalysis entirely in his article "Analysis Terminable" (first published in Commentary in July 1980 and reprinted in his collection Skeptical Engagements in 1986), citing what he considered its faulty methodology, its ineffectiveness as therapy, and the harm it caused to patients. In 1985, Crews reviewed The Foundations of Psychoanalysis in The New Republic . Two of Crews's essays, "Analysis Terminable" and "The Unknown Freud," (the latter published in 1993), have been described as shots fired during

6270-535: The outset of the American Civil War , Hawthorne traveled with William D. Ticknor to Washington, D.C., where he met Abraham Lincoln and other notable figures. He wrote about his experiences in the essay " Chiefly About War Matters " in 1862. Failing health prevented him from completing several more romance novels. Hawthorne was suffering from pain in his stomach and insisted on a recuperative trip with his friend Franklin Pierce, though his neighbor Bronson Alcott

6365-547: The points of view of critics such as a Marxist , Freudian , and New Critic . Crews, in his 2002 interview with NPR, said that the book was well received, even by the community of literary critics it was satirizing. A 1964 review published in College Composition and Communication felt that the book would be difficult to read in one sitting, but was "a tonic for those of us who read literary criticism and may be therapeutic for those who write it." The CEA Critic published

6460-425: The publication of Max Beerbohm 's A Christmas Garland ." Prescott positively received all of the essays, writing that he considered them necessary reading for those involved in literary criticism, although they might not appeal to the general public, and noted that R. P. Blackmur , Leslie Fiedler and F. R. Leavis were clearly targeted by them. He concluded that it was "not only a triumph of ridiculous parody. It

6555-466: The risk of collecting these stories in the spring of 1837 into the volume Twice-Told Tales , which made Hawthorne known locally. While at Bowdoin, Hawthorne wagered a bottle of Madeira wine with his friend Jonathan Cilley that Cilley would get married before Hawthorne did. By 1836, he had won the bet, but he did not remain a bachelor for life. He had public flirtations with Mary Silsbee and Elizabeth Peabody , then he began pursuing Peabody's sister,

6650-441: The satire of the original, covering more recent critical approaches such as deconstruction , feminism , queer theory , and recovered memory therapy , in part basing the essay authors and their approaches on actual academics and their work. In The Patch Commission (1968), Crews satirized the activities of Presidential Commissions , displaying his disapproval of American involvement in the then-ongoing Vietnam War . The book

6745-615: The scenery of the Berkshires, although Hawthorne did not enjoy the winters in their small house. They left on November 21, 1851. Hawthorne noted, "I am sick to death of Berkshire ... I have felt languid and dispirited, during almost my whole residence." In May 1852, the Hawthornes returned to Concord where they lived until July 1853. In February, they bought The Hillside, a home previously inhabited by Amos Bronson Alcott and his family, and renamed it The Wayside . Their neighbors in Concord included Emerson and Henry David Thoreau . That year, Hawthorne wrote The Life of Franklin Pierce ,

6840-551: The sinned-against (abandoned) Ester of "Ethan Brand"; and goodwife Faith Brown, linchpin of Young Goodman Brown's very belief in God. "My Faith is gone!" Brown exclaims in despair upon seeing his wife at the Witches' Sabbath. Perhaps the most sweeping statement of Hawthorne's impetus comes from Mark Van Doren : "Somewhere, if not in the New England of his time, Hawthorne unearthed the image of

6935-489: The stage stop in Portland, and the two became fast friends. Once at the school, he also met future poet Henry Wadsworth Longfellow , future congressman Jonathan Cilley , and future naval reformer Horatio Bridge . He graduated with the class of 1825, and later described his college experience to Richard Henry Stoddard : I was educated (as the phrase is) at Bowdoin College. I was an idle student, negligent of college rules and

7030-416: The steps by which Freud was constrained to pursue a medical career, reveals how he overrode therapeutic failures by advancing dubious theoretical claims, and ends by exploring the authoritarian means by which he guided a movement lacking an empirical foundation. The psychiatrist E. Fuller Torrey concluded: "The culmination of more than 40 years of research ... [, it] is doubtful whether it will be surpassed as

7125-512: The study of various issues, from the controversy over recovered memory, the credibility of the Rorschach test , and belief in alien abductions to Theosophy and " intelligent design ." He also advocated for clear writing based on standards of sound argument and rhetorical effectiveness rather than adherence to rigid school-book rules. "What interests me is general rationality," said Crews in an interview: General rationality requires us to observe

7220-418: The subject of his book because it was widely read and "very transparent[...] so that it [could] be exploited by all these critics." Crews wrote twelve essays on the book under various pseudonyms that 'analyzed' the book through various lenses such as Marxism . The book was first published by E. P. Dutton in 1963. The book includes twelve essays by fictional critics (all Crews writing under pseudonyms), from

7315-669: The type of casebooks then assigned to first-year university students in introductory literature and composition courses. The book featured a fictitious set of English professors writing essays on A. A. Milne 's classic character Winnie-the-Pooh , parodying Marxist , Freudian, Christian, Leavisite and Fiedlerian approaches to analyzing literary texts. Though urged by readers to publish a follow-up volume, Crews delayed writing one until after his retirement in 1994, producing Postmodern Pooh in 2001. While The Pooh Perplex parodies earlier trends in literary criticism, Postmodern Pooh parodies later trends in literary theory. In it, Crews extends

7410-405: The world carefully, to consider alternative hypotheses to our own hypotheses, to gather evidence in a responsible way, to answer objections. These are habits of mind that science shares with good history, good sociology, good political science, good economics, what have you. And I summarize all this in what I call the "empirical attitude." It's a combination of feeling responsible to the evidence that

7505-419: The young author's adolescent humor. Hawthorne's uncle Robert Manning insisted that the boy attend college, despite Hawthorne's protests. With the financial support of his uncle, Hawthorne was sent to Bowdoin College in 1821, partly because of family connections in the area, and also because of its relatively inexpensive tuition rate. Hawthorne met future president Franklin Pierce on the way to Bowdoin, at

7600-429: Was a reclusive person. Throughout her early life, she had frequent migraines and underwent several experimental medical treatments. She was mostly bedridden until her sister introduced her to Hawthorne, after which her headaches seem to have abated. The Hawthornes enjoyed a long and happy marriage. He referred to her as his "Dove" and wrote that she "is, in the strictest sense, my sole companion; and I need no other—there

7695-679: Was a sea captain who died in 1808 of yellow fever in Dutch Suriname ; he had been a member of the East India Marine Society . After his death, his widow moved with young Nathaniel, his older sister Elizabeth , and their younger sister Louisa to live with relatives named the Mannings in Salem, where they lived for 10 years. Young Hawthorne was hit on the leg while playing "bat and ball" on November 10, 1813, and he became lame and bedridden for

7790-544: Was an American essayist and literary critic . Professor of English at the University of California, Berkeley , Crews was the author of numerous books, including The Tragedy of Manners: Moral Drama in the Later Novels of Henry James (1957), E. M. Forster : The Perils of Humanism (1962), and The Sins of the Fathers: Hawthorne's Psychological Themes (1966), a discussion of the work of Nathaniel Hawthorne . He received popular attention for The Pooh Perplex (1963),

7885-672: Was attacked by the Whigs and supported by the Democrats, making Hawthorne's dismissal a much-talked about event in New England. He was deeply affected by the death of his mother in late July, calling it "the darkest hour I ever lived". He was appointed the corresponding secretary of the Salem Lyceum in 1848. Guests who came to speak that season included Emerson, Thoreau, Louis Agassiz , and Theodore Parker . Hawthorne returned to writing and published The Scarlet Letter in mid-March 1850, including

7980-547: Was based on a prize-winning essay written by Crews while an undergraduate student at Yale University, initially published as part of a series. In the book, Crews discussed three late novels by Henry James : The Ambassadors (1903), The Wings of the Dove (1902), and The Golden Bowl (1904), analyzing how, in those novels, adherence to social conventions serves to keep hidden relationships from coming to light. In 1962, Crews's doctoral dissertation from Princeton University

8075-503: Was better than The Scarlet Letter and called "the most valuable contribution to New England history that has been made." He also wrote The Blithedale Romance (1852), his only work written in the first person. He also published A Wonder-Book for Girls and Boys in 1851, a collection of short stories retelling myths that he had been thinking about writing since 1846. Nevertheless, poet Ellery Channing reported that Hawthorne "has suffered much living in this place". The family enjoyed

8170-530: Was concerned that Hawthorne was too ill. While on a tour of the White Mountains , he died in his sleep on May 19, 1864, in Plymouth, New Hampshire . Pierce sent a telegram to Elizabeth Peabody asking her to inform Mrs. Hawthorne in person. Mrs. Hawthorne was too saddened by the news to handle the funeral arrangements herself. Hawthorne's son Julian, a freshman at Harvard College , learned of his father's death

8265-415: Was described as "leading a backlash against recovered memory therapy." In 1974, Crews published The Random House Handbook , a best-selling college composition textbook that offered extensive rhetorical advice for writing academic essays as well as reference information on correct and effective use of the English language. The book brought together two aspects of writing instruction not generally covered in

8360-448: Was elected to Phi Beta Kappa in 1824, and graduated in 1825. He published his first work in 1828, the novel Fanshawe ; he later tried to suppress it, feeling that it was not equal to the standard of his later work. He published several short stories in periodicals, which he collected in 1837 as Twice-Told Tales . The following year, he became engaged to Sophia Peabody . He worked at the Boston Custom House and joined Brook Farm ,

8455-613: Was officially appointed the Surveyor for the District of Salem and Beverly and Inspector of the Revenue for the Port of Salem at an annual salary of $ 1,200. He had difficulty writing during this period, as he admitted to Longfellow: I am trying to resume my pen ... Whenever I sit alone, or walk alone, I find myself dreaming about stories, as of old; but these forenoons in the Custom House undo all that

8550-459: Was one of "the primitive energies of fecundity and creation." Critics have applied feminist perspectives and historicist approaches to Hawthorne's depictions of women. Feminist scholars are interested particularly in Hester Prynne : they recognize that while she herself could not be the "destined prophetess" of the future, the "angel and apostle of the coming revelation" must nevertheless "be

8645-435: Was published anonymously in 1828. Hawthorne defined a romance as being radically different from a novel by not being concerned with the possible or probable course of ordinary experience. In the preface to The House of the Seven Gables , Hawthorne describes his romance-writing as using "atmospherical medium as to bring out or mellow the lights and deepen and enrich the shadows of the picture". The picture, Daniel Hoffman found,

8740-467: Was published as E. M. Forster: The Perils of Humanism . In 1966, he published a study of Hawthorne, The Sins of the Fathers: Hawthorne's Psychological Themes , in which he examined Hawthorne's entire literary career including unfinished novels; it was re-issued in 1989 with Crews's reassessment of his initial position and an analysis of how literary criticism had dealt with Hawthorne since 1966. In 1970, Crews edited Psychoanalysis and Literary Process ,

8835-427: Was published in August 2017. Crews's research into letters that Freud wrote to Martha Bernays revealed that Freud's use of cocaine "was more severe and far longer-lasting than previously known. It significantly affected his writing, marriage, moods, and treatment assessments." The letters also revealed that Freud's daughter Anna and his biographer Ernest Jones covered up treatments that were ineffective. Crews traces

8930-559: Was very literary; my father was very scientific. I feel that I got a little something of both sides." In high school, Crews was co-captain of the tennis team, and for decades he remained an avid skier, hiker, swimmer, and runner. Crews lived in Berkeley with his wife, Elizabeth Crews, a photographer who was born and raised in Berkeley, California. They had two daughters and four grandchildren. Crews died in Oakland, California on June 21, 2024, at

9025-703: Was wholly devoted to literary criticism. It was nominated for the National Book Critics Circle Award for nonfiction and won the Spielvogel-Diamonstein Award for the Art of the Essay. Parts of Crews's 1975 collection Out of My System , the 1986 collection Skeptical Engagements , and the 2006 Follies of the Wise were also dedicated to literary criticism. Crews's repeated message to literary critics

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